CBS: Scientists Warn Bird Flu Pandemic ‘Could Make Covid Look Like a Walk in the Park’

Bird flu has been circling the globe for decades, so the discovery and 20 twenty four that the deadly pathogen had jumped from a wild bird to a cow came as a shock to virus watchers. Now, in just over a year, the virus has ripped through America’s dairy herds and poultry fly.
Fox it has jumped to other mammals, including humans. Seventy Americans have caught the virus. One has died, long, feared as a possible pandemic doctors and veterinarians. Fighting the virus told us Biden is government was slow to act, while the Trump Administration has now laid off more than a huh hundred key scientists. All as the virus keeps spreading.
To, this story will continue in a moment.
At present were given a stick and they put a blindfold on us and our set into a gunfight and we’re losing.
We are losing winner.
Veterinarian, your doctor, k, russo, told us we are running out of time to bird flu.
She was called in when the virus h five n one hit this dairy her in Colorado last summer. It cost the farm about four hundred thousand dollars to treated sick cattle, most recover some protective gear. Yet to how, but as an added precaution, we suited up to ensure we didn’t bring anything.
And onto the farm ourselves, there’s no front of their front or back high fashion is real. I fish in order. It’s not clear how bird flu spread from cow to cow, but milking equipment is a prime suspect.
The virus is thought to linger on the automaker waiting for the next cow.
Workers here in milking s have also fallen sick. So what concerns you the most, the pandemic potential for a virus like this one and yeah. That is the worst case scenario right and ultimately one we want to avoid. I can’t say that that’s gonna happen, but we don’t want to play with fire.
It started in Texas in early 20, 20 four cows were suffering from a mysterious disease, their fevers spite their milk dried up. They were coughing drooling lethargic. Soon there were more sick cattle in neighboring states, k, russo, joined a conference call of worried vet.
It’s to try to figure it out of to our. I started asking questions but of the bird’s doing on the farm and one of the veterinarians replied while they’re all dead, so they’re, seeing dead birds, yep.
On, the farm yeah a we started to see the cats that were demonstrating, neurologic symptoms and an end more alarmingly. The workers were complaining of flu like symptoms.
Tests confirmed russo worst fears each five and one had jumped cattle for the first time in past outbreaks. Bird flu has often been deadly in people. If you look at cases worldwide of h, five influenza mortality, rates, fifty percent and so were all kind of oh talking to each other, what is this me, and that was a scary space to be in despite the urgency, russo and other vets told us, the Biden Administration was slow to act. It was a month before the us department of agriculture required cows to be tested before interstate travel and 10 months before a raw milk testing program was launched. Today, some states test weekly some hardly at all. Do we have enough information about how this virus is spreading? I would say today know, and that comes down to.
Boots on the ground, where you have a strike force that comes in the middle of an outbreak and and just starts collecting data russo, told us at the moment. The virus has the upper hand yeah. I think it’s a numbers game and the more we let it move unchecked, the more likely we’re gonna have even a bigger mess on our hands. Poultry farmers have had to kill tens of millions of birds, removing them with trailers and driving egg prices sky high. Now a new strain of bird flu.
Has been discovered in cattle, it has led to more severe disease in some people. This is a threat that is very significant in very real.
And I recognize also. This is a moment where it’s easy to sound like an alarmist. What I’m here to tell you is: this is a very serious threat to humanity and the longer we let this persist, the greater the risks are going to be. So, if we think doctor kamran khan is an infectious disease physician in toronto, his company.
Blue dot was among the first to flag the virus in China. That became the cozad pandemic khan told us. Bird flu is just as concerning. He showed us how fast the virus has spread among dairy cattle ranch in the seems, like almost a wildfire to media yeah. Absolutely now add in poultry outbreaks say this is virtually the whole country pretty much. You see the next doctor cameron khan, showed us a map of all the confirmed human cases of bird flu in the last five years. Most have been in Asia are not until now.
What, you start to see around 20 twenty four. Is you start to see a case in Texas, and then you start to see this sudden rapid increase in cases across the control over the place what’s happening? Here? Is wild birds have infected cows, who have then infected other cows who have been infected humans, and so there’s as complex web of all of these different animal species. Now passing the virus in different directions? Is this one of those things you have never seen before? The world has never seen this kind of situation and it’s showing us of the virus is capable of adaptation. If you allow it, it will just get better and better at an.
Acting other mammals, including potentially humans, most of the confirmed cases in the u s have been farmworkers most had mild symptoms. The one person who died had underlying health conditions, the centers for disease control and prevention, say the virus still poses a low risk to the gym.
General public, but contouring blessing in many cases, are going undetected that are out there, the so in a recent study of dairy workers. Ah, their blood was tested for anti bodies to h five n, one, not looking for the virus, but looking for the immune system’s memory of this virus, and it turns out.
That, seven percent of them, one out of roughly every 15 workers, actually had antibodies to h five n one people are not generally getting very sick from this. So what’s the reason for all the alarm, influenza is a particularly formidable virus. It is constantly changing.
And, the more that we allow it to evolve and adapt by infecting people. I mean this is kind of darwinian evolution here right. It can change in ways that actually make it even more deadly or more easily transmissible or even resist against. Some of the antiviral medications that we have khan told us every new info.
Action increases the odds. Bird flu could lead to severe disease. As we saw during Kuwait in North America, six people now have ended up in the hospital. With bird flu, more worrying five people had no known exposure to sick animals. One girl in Mexico died two weeks ago. We.
We are really at risk of this virus evolving into one that has pandemic potential and the reality is. None of us know whether this is next week or next year or whenever. I don’t think it’s never.
But, it may be here far sooner than any of us would, like many scientists told us, vaccines could be our best defense. There is a vaccine for bird flu, but it has not been licensed by the food and drug administration. Madonna has a new one, but the Trump Administration has paused. It’s final funding. There are vaccines for poultry to, but they haven’t been used because many of America’s trading partners will not import vaccinated birds, a glimmer of hope by the usda milk testing programs. This is repurpose from culver adjusting from three or four years ago.
Doctor keith paulson is director of the Wisconsin’s that ordinary diagnostic lab part of the usda plan to test raw milk for each five and one pasteurization kills the virus, but raw milk can be loaded with it.
Is this, where you would identify the the virus yeah and it can detect even just one positive cow in a group of without.
Forty five states are now doing some form of testing paulson told us. It’s help to slow the spread of the virus in some states. You see the outbreak curve level awful start to decline. Do you go a few who we dodge one? I don’t think we go here and terror where deal.
Activated our lap, where still an outbreak response mode and while we may have fewer detections, we know that there are still virus, is circulating based on all the data from the virologist that we’re talking to, and we want to make sure that we catch a fat. The CDC is trying to ramp up it’s testing, but there’s.
Another problem.
Almost half of farm workers are undocumented and may be reluctant to be tested.
If we’re not testing people if we’re not looking for people who might get it if you’re, not looking for evidence of an early cluster of human to human transmission, then were going to miss it. Their ascent doctor, Angela muse in is an American virologist working in Canada. Rest music told us it’s not just the number of.
This is that is alarming, but that the virus is jumping to more mammals. Every new spillover gives the virus another chance to evolve and potentially spread person to person.
So we are now seeing the viruses spread from birds to cattle and now to fox’s goats, pigs, rats, cats, raccoons. The fact that this virus can infect so many different types of mammals.
Is a huge concern in terms of it’s ability to infect people. One of your colleagues told us that if this should spiral into a pandemic.
This flu could make coover.
Look, like a walk in the park, I agree.
You’re scaring me I’m scared about it myself. I don’t sleep very much these days bell.
It can be in, there. Rasmussen was among the scientists, given expert briefings by the Biden, administration and 20 twenty four. She told us Biden team. I miscalculated the threat at first. It was a some gambling and some wishful thinking thinking this isn’t actually gonna be that big of a deal and it turns out it was a very big deal.
Well as the Trump Administration gotten its arms around this problem know, I would say, as the short answer, but the other. The longer answer is that I don’t actually entirely know what is what is going on. Why is that? Many of the people who are working on this, at least at CDC, have have been fired from the federal government, so the influenza division at CDC has been decimated and in fact there as a communications, bad that has been put on these federal workers. Or do you think of that? I think it’s insane actually that I have to have conversations on encrypted messaging apps with my colleagues who I would normally just send emails to.
Hundreds of federal scientists and health workers who track bird flu have been laid off. Some may be rehired. The CDC declined to answer our questions saying it continues to respond to the h five n one bird flu outbreak worst case, Colorado that k, russo and others told us thief feel stymied. The current distrust of science and vaccines is hurting their fight to try to prevent the next pandemic. I would scorch the earth.
If this ends up in children, debts and so as a mother as a veterinarian. As a scientist, I’m, just asking you trust us, because I’ll do everything in my power and there’s plenty folks behind me.
That will do the same to keep this from getting to that point