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Should you be worried about Bird Flu (H5N1)?

David Gamble
Science and Critical Thinking
6 min readJan 8, 2025
Colorized transmission electron micrograph of Avian influenza A H5N1 viruses (seen in gold) grown in MDCK cells (seen in green)

For the short answer, the TL;DR; version, the answer is potentially yes, but don’t panic … yet.

COVID is now thankfully under control due to our ability to rapidly create and distribute vaccines that worked very well. It caught many by surprise because it rapidly emerged and spread, and so people are now appropriately conscious of what can happen. Due to this social awareness, stories about the transmission of Bird Flu (H5N1) to humans resonate and cause deep concern.

Will 2025 see the rapid emergence of Bird Flu?

The CDC sums the situation up as follows …

  • H5 bird flu is widespread in wild birds worldwide and is causing outbreaks in poultry and U.S. dairy cows with several recent human cases in U.S. dairy and poultry workers.
  • While the current public health risk is low, CDC is watching the situation carefully and working with states to monitor people with animal exposures.
  • CDC is using its flu surveillance systems to monitor for H5 bird flu activity in people.

So far there have been 66 humans cases in 2024 and most of those have been via exposure from infected cattle or poultry.

  • 40 via cattle
  • 23 poultry

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Science and Critical Thinking
Science and Critical Thinking

Published in Science and Critical Thinking

In the post-truth age, we are awash with many dubious claims; gods, ghosts, aliens, conspiracies, and other mysterious things. Here we strive to work out what is really true and what is sincerly belived but is just a myth.

David Gamble
David Gamble

Written by David Gamble

Blogger and writer with a keen interest in science, skepticism, critical thinking, and many other weird and whacky topics.

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