How worried should we be about bird flu?

Insider

The new strain of bird flu has infected more than 90 million chickens and has spread to dairy cows and even humans. Here's what you need to know about the "global pandemic for animals."

Transcript

00:00 (chicken clucking)

00:01 Bird flu has been around for many years,

00:03 but recent outbreaks have raised concerns

00:06 that it could spread to humans and impact our economy.

00:09 Since 2022, H5N1 has infected

00:13 more than 90 million chickens, 9,000 wild birds,

00:18 34 dairy herds, and cattle in nine states.

00:22 Officials are calling it an animal pandemic

00:24 that could spread to humans.

00:26 I'm Mia de Graaf, I'm a health editor at Business Insider,

00:29 and today we're going to be talking about bird flu.

00:32 Bird flu is a virus.

00:33 The type we're talking about today is called H5N1.

00:37 This highly contagious form of bird flu,

00:41 which is known as 2344B, first emerged in 2020.

00:46 It was seen in birds in Europe, Africa, and Asia.

00:51 In 2021, it was detected in North America.

00:54 This bird flu is different

00:55 from previous strains in a few ways.

00:57 It's more lethal.

00:58 We're seeing unusually high rates of death,

01:01 for example, among chickens, a 90% death rate.

01:04 What's been alarming about this outbreak

01:07 is that we've seen it move from mammal to mammal.

01:10 There's a lot of migration going on right now,

01:12 and that's quite unusual.

01:14 We've seen it in cows.

01:15 We've seen it in domestic cats, domestic dogs.

01:19 We've also seen it in foxes and sea lions,

01:21 and we've seen it in humans.

01:23 One person in Colorado who was in close contact

01:27 with poultry that was being culled,

01:29 and then one farm worker in Texas

01:31 who was in close contact with a cow who was infected.

01:34 We haven't yet seen human-to-human transmission,

01:38 but those kinds of interactions, that is cause for concern.

01:41 Sometimes this virus doesn't have very clear symptoms.

01:45 You might just be a little groggy.

01:47 It's kind of the same as a flu.

01:49 You might have muscle aches.

01:51 You might have a headache, but it can range.

01:53 The cost of this is huge.

01:56 The US government has a pretty blunt approach

01:59 to trying to curtail this outbreak.

02:01 Basically, they pay farms to proactively kill

02:05 all of its chicken, turkey, any poultry

02:09 that may have been exposed to bird flu.

02:11 In 2023, the US government paid farms half a billion dollars

02:16 for the animals that they killed,

02:18 proactively preventing bird flu.

02:20 Bird flu outbreaks definitely drive up

02:22 the price of grocery store items,

02:24 the reason being that you suddenly have a scarcity

02:26 of product due to culls, but the demand hasn't changed.

02:30 So you might have seen in recent years

02:32 that sometimes, independent of inflation,

02:35 there'll be these fluctuations in the price of, say, eggs.

02:38 You might get your normal carton of eggs

02:40 that would cost $3 is suddenly costing $7.

02:44 The 2022 bird flu outbreak cost the US poultry industry

02:48 around $3 billion.

02:51 The way bird flu is contracted

02:53 is really through close contact with an infected animal.

02:57 If you're worried about contracting bird flu,

03:00 definitely do not consume raw milk.

03:03 Anything that's unpasteurized,

03:05 it's risky at the best of times,

03:07 but right now, it's really not something you want to do.

03:09 Generally, the FDA says that pasteurized products are safe,

03:13 but if you are concerned about it,

03:15 just make sure you're cooking things extra good.

03:18 The best way to stay safe as farm workers

03:20 is really to have protective gear,

03:22 so goggles, masks, gloves,

03:25 things that will protect them from coming into contact

03:28 with infected bodily fluids,

03:30 respiratory droplets, feces, anything like that.

03:33 If these workers are given the right protection

03:36 and also the right training,

03:38 they could actually play a really crucial role

03:40 in helping us to detect and curtail the spread of this virus.

03:44 It's higher stakes than before, for sure.

03:47 There are more countries involved.

03:49 There are more species involved.

03:51 There are more opportunities for this virus

03:53 to mutate and spread,

03:55 but the one thing I can say about flu

03:57 is that it is really surprising,

03:59 sometimes in positive ways.

04:02 So we've been monitoring this H5N1 for years.

04:05 In 1997, H5N1 was seen in humans for the first time

04:10 in workers in Hong Kong,

04:12 and everyone thought that this was then

04:14 gonna become the big pandemic.

04:15 It was actually the leading candidate ahead of a coronavirus

04:18 for what we thought would be a global pandemic,

04:21 but that wasn't the case.

04:22 Flu is often a sort of right place, right time kind of thing

04:26 where it could bubble up into a huge outbreak.

04:29 This has been in the right place at the right time

04:32 so many times, and it still hasn't got there.

04:35 So scientists are saying that is some cause for optimism.

04:38 The fact that this hasn't exploded

04:40 maybe suggests that it's not going to get there.

04:43 The other thing, though, is that it does show us

04:45 how little we really know about flu.

04:47 We keep thinking that we understand where it's gonna go,

04:49 and then it doesn't go that way.

04:51 People at home don't need to panic about bird flu right now.

04:55 But this is certainly a rapidly evolving situation

04:58 that the government and scientists are monitoring closely.

05:02 [laughter]

05:04 [music]

05:06 [music]

05:08 (upbeat music)

05:10 [MUSIC PLAYING]

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