Bird Flu: The Next Pandemic?

Speaker 1 Hi, I'm Wendy Zuckerman and you're listening to Science Versus.

Speaker 3 Today on the show, we are pitting facts against bird flu.

Speaker 2 And to tell us all about it is editor of Science Versus Blive Terrell.

Speaker 4 Hey, Blive.

Speaker 3 Yeah, hey, Wendy.

Speaker 8 So you've spent the last few months, I feel like, coming into meetings and saying, oh my God, I just learned something crazy about bird flu.

Speaker 9 Oh my God, Wendy.

Speaker 10 And I have kept telling you to wait for this conversation right here.

Speaker 12 So

Speaker 13 the day has finally come when I get to talk to you about bird flu.

Speaker 4 The day has come.

Speaker 14 Tell me this crazy stuff you're hearing about bird flu.

Speaker 4 I will.

Speaker 13 I will. And actually, Wendy, I will say it's been years that we've been talking about bird flu, not mere months.

Speaker 15 It's true. It's true.

Speaker 5 I mean, when I think about it, the alarm bells about bird flu just in general becoming a global pandemic, I feel like they've been going on

Speaker 7 and off and on again

Speaker 5 for like 20 years?

Speaker 8 I mean, to be honest, it is feeling a little boy who cried wolf at this point.

Speaker 14 I mean, has something changed?

Speaker 15 Yeah, right.

Speaker 13 Yeah. What's different? What's different? That is an extremely fair question.
I can say there are a few things that have kind of tipped things over the edge here.

Speaker 13 And for one thing, we have had like poultry farms being hit super, super hard.

Speaker 17 So right now, the biggest outbreak of bird flu in U.S. history is sweeping across this country, leaving millions of hens dead.

Speaker 18 Since the outbreak started in 2022, the avian flu has impacted more than 135 million birds.

Speaker 13 We're hearing about these super high egg prices. You can't find eggs, which is partly because of bird flu.

Speaker 19 Eggflation is back with a vengeance, and it's cooking the family's grocery budget.

Speaker 20 Are they going up more? Are all the birds going to die?

Speaker 13 Wendy, I've seen reports of eggs smuggling, like people getting busted, bringing eggs across the border.

Speaker 13 Also, like in New York City and the Bronx, the bodegas are like selling egg looseies. Like, you know, you can usually buy like one cigarette at a time.
They're selling like two eggs at a time.

Speaker 22 In Australia too, eggs, crazy expensive right now.

Speaker 2 Supermarkets empty.

Speaker 7 Kind of like the pandemic where the toilet paper used to be, just like, it's kind of like that, but for eggs.

Speaker 13 Yeah. And I mean, it is really like blowing up beyond chickens and eggs.
So, you know, at this point, they found the bird flu in like all sorts of animals, more than 450 species.

Speaker 24 Recent tests show avian flu was detected in foxes, raccoons, skunks, and even domestic cats.

Speaker 25 Many health experts are calling this a global pandemic of animals.

Speaker 13 The UN has called the spread in animals, quote, unprecedented, actually.

Speaker 13 And then, yeah, like all this is happening while the Trump administration is making cuts to science and to a bunch of the agencies that handle public health in the U.S.

Speaker 4 Right.

Speaker 13 So with all this going on, we are just getting this steady drumbeat of headlines and news reports saying that this bird flu flu is the real deal. No more boy who cried wolf, Wendy.

Speaker 13 It's only a matter of time before this thing could totally blow up and land us in another global pandemic.

Speaker 19 What I'm here to tell you is this is a very serious threat to humanity.

Speaker 27 When we say we are in emergency mode, that is the mode we are in right now.

Speaker 24 Could potentially lead to another pandemic.

Speaker 4 Oh man, are they right?

Speaker 13 That's what we're going to find out after the break.

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Speaker 23 Welcome back.

Speaker 3 Today we're talking about bird flu.

Speaker 2 Blythe is about to tell us if this is going to be the next pandemic.

Speaker 13 Okay, yeah, so I want to start actually by talking about why exactly this bird flu scares the crap out of us so much. Okay.

Speaker 13 And a huge reason is that generally speaking, this type of bird flu, H5N1, can be really deadly for humans.

Speaker 13 Like some of the warnings out there say that if we do get a bird flu pandemic, it could kill 100 million people.

Speaker 2 Why do they think that?

Speaker 13 Yeah, so there's a couple reasons, right? So, you know, if you look at past flu pandemics, like often a lot of people get sick. And this flu has a really high fatality rate.

Speaker 13 So when humans get this kind of bird flu, it tends to kill 50 to 60 percent of the people who get it.

Speaker 13 And, you know, with the caveat that there are some people who get bird flu and we don't know about, so maybe that death rate is a little high.

Speaker 13 But still, I mean, over the past few decades, on and off, about a thousand people have been diagnosed with this H5N1,

Speaker 13 and about half of them have died.

Speaker 4 Whoa.

Speaker 7 And so how exactly are people dying from bird flu?

Speaker 13 So when bird flu gets like really bad in a person, they can get this terrible fever. They can't breathe, they might go into respiratory failure, and sometimes their organs will fail too.

Speaker 13 They can get inflammation in their brain.

Speaker 13 It can be really bad.

Speaker 22 So bird flu has been going around for a while now, every now and then, killing people over the last 20 years.

Speaker 7 What's been happening recently?

Speaker 13 So over the years, there's been all these different types. And I mean, I've been talking about H5N1, sort of this umbrella type.
But then several years ago, something changed the game here.

Speaker 13 So H5N1 has been making virus babies, let's call them.

Speaker 13 Each one a little different. These are different clades.
Clades is what they're called.

Speaker 13 And then this one called 2344B popped up.

Speaker 4 2344B,

Speaker 21 it's called.

Speaker 21 I didn't realize that when they started calling those coronavirus variants Delta and Omicron, that they were being all fancy with us.

Speaker 13 Yeah, I know, I know. We didn't realize most of the time it's these really nerdy number names that are a little bit hard to keep track of.

Speaker 8 Okay, so, but this 2, 3, 4, 4, B, that is what people are freaking out about right now.

Speaker 13 Yeah.

Speaker 13 And I mean, that's because when it started showing up in Wild Birds, it was clear that something was really different about this guy.

Speaker 4 Okay.

Speaker 13 I talked about this with Seema Loctawala, who is a virologist at Emory University. And so Seema came across this because she works with other nerds who monitor bird flu like worldwide.

Speaker 13 And she remembers first hearing about this virus from some other scientists out of the UK.

Speaker 6 I would say 2021 where like birds were just falling out of the sky dead.

Speaker 13 Wait, like, wait, they were like literally falling out of the sky dead?

Speaker 6 Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 6 That's their description. We've had more birds fall out of the sky.
Like it is bad.

Speaker 13 I actually watched a video of this.

Speaker 13 bald eagle with bird flu and it's like flying down to the ground and then it stumbles and it like can't can't really land and it's trying to walk and it's going around in circles and it's just like shaking its head, shaking its head all over the place.

Speaker 13 It's really sad.

Speaker 11 And so scientists are seeing all these awful deaths in birds.

Speaker 13 And of course, what can happen with bird flu is that it moves with the birds who also move. So it makes its way to other countries, including the U.S.

Speaker 13 And we start seeing it in wild birds and in chickens. And this is like late 2021, 2022.
Okay.

Speaker 13 And so in the US, what we do when this happens, when it shows up on like a poultry farm, whatever, we kill those birds.

Speaker 13 And we are killing millions of birds, which is definitely like one thing that can make eggs more expensive, right? You got fewer birds, you get fewer eggs. Right.

Speaker 13 So overall, as this happens, though, when it first kind of pops up, it's not ringing like huge alarm bells for humans, right? Like it's crappy, but we're kind of used to bird flu and birds. Right.

Speaker 13 But then this virus starts showing up in like more and more mammals.

Speaker 13 And scientists always keep an eye on that because

Speaker 13 once a virus starts like jumping species, maybe adapting to these different hosts, you start to worry that it could get to a point where it is easier for it to move from human to human.

Speaker 31 Which at this point hasn't really happened.

Speaker 4 Right.

Speaker 13 But here is SEMA.

Speaker 6 Every time a virus, like a bird virus, gets into a mammal, it can then adapt to that mammal, right? Because viruses change. We know this, COVID, right? Omicron, Delta.

Speaker 6 Like I'm, you know, I'm saying things that people remember. Viruses change when they infect hosts.

Speaker 11 Uh-huh. Okay.

Speaker 13 So we're finding this new bird flu in all these different animals, but the important thing that happens next in our story is when it shows up in this particular mammal.

Speaker 28 We've had sporadic spillover events from birds into seals in lots of different places, right?

Speaker 4 You might remember this?

Speaker 2 Seal outbreaks.

Speaker 4 Oh, yeah.

Speaker 2 And so this is

Speaker 32 2022, we're at 2022, 23.

Speaker 13 Okay.

Speaker 28 Yeah. How did the seals get it?

Speaker 13 So we don't know for sure, but it could be that seals live along the shorelines, like along the waterline. And you also get a ton of birds who live and hang out in that same space, right?

Speaker 13 So we're thinking, oh, maybe the birds are crapping on or near the water. And the seals are like, maybe they're licking it up or maybe they're swimming in like bird crap infested waters or whatever.

Speaker 2 Pooh, I thought it was the crap.

Speaker 7 Those birds crap so much and so they're crapping out the

Speaker 23 virus. Yeah.

Speaker 13 And well, the thing is that it wasn't just the dead seals that like freaked people out here because they were sad about seals.

Speaker 13 The important thing was that the seals started giving this virus to each other.

Speaker 13 So they think it wasn't just like one seal sucks up some bird crap, another one does, another one does. They think the seals were actually spreading it.
And this kind of thing is pretty unusual.

Speaker 13 You know, bird flu going mammal to mammal. It's not the first time, but scientists start to worry that this could help it mutate to where it could go human to human.

Speaker 11 Oh.

Speaker 13 Okay, so at this point, when we start to see all these dead seals, I asked Seema like how she was feeling. And she actually said she was not freaking out.

Speaker 6 It's not terrifying yet.

Speaker 4 Okay, she's okay.

Speaker 21 Not terrifying yet.

Speaker 22 Yet.

Speaker 32 Noting the yet.

Speaker 31 Interesting.

Speaker 22 It's just a sign.

Speaker 13 That, huh?

Speaker 3 We don't like that, but a seal is not a human.

Speaker 22 That seems like that's her mindset.

Speaker 13 Exactly. Also, I mean, humans don't hang around seals all that much, right? So we have a low chance of getting it from them.

Speaker 13 Which kind of leads me to what you might be wondering, which is when does it get terrifying

Speaker 13 for people like Seema?

Speaker 6 The biggest shift in my perspective happened in March and April of 2024. That was when it was first identified in cattle.

Speaker 23 Cattle?

Speaker 21 Why?

Speaker 7 Oh, I'm so sure she was going to say human. So why?

Speaker 23 I mean, cows just feel like

Speaker 12 seals of the land.

Speaker 9 Why is she worried about cattle?

Speaker 13 I believe that's actually what farmers call them, is the seals of the land.

Speaker 1 Got those big eyes, you know,

Speaker 22 charismatic megafauna.

Speaker 21 Yes.

Speaker 13 The reason, so I asked Seema that question. I asked why the cows matter.

Speaker 6 Yeah. So I'll tell you two reasons why I think it's really important.
The first one is that they're farm animals. They're domestic.

Speaker 6 Humans have a lot of interaction with these animals compared to, say, seals.

Speaker 13 She's like, cattle? We've got cattle all over this country. We have people giving them medicine, helping them give birth, milking them, feeding them, tending them when they're sick.

Speaker 4 Okay.

Speaker 13 But there's also other reasons why scientists kind of freak out when the cows get it. And one of them is that as far as we knew, cows generally like did not get.
this kind of flu.

Speaker 13 So this bird flu belongs to this group of flus known as influenza A's, which just like are not much of a thing in cows.

Speaker 13 I mean, one virologist actually told me that people in his science community would like test cows for influenza A, and he would like laugh at them because he was like, It was so dumb to think that a cow could get this kind of flu.

Speaker 7 Oh, because they were so sure,

Speaker 23 you know, these cows don't have it.

Speaker 13 Yeah, exactly. Yeah, and because of this, it was like actually really impressive how scientists figured out that it was bird flu in the first place.

Speaker 13 So, we, Wendy, we were lucky to have some very clever nerds on the case, and um, yeah, and it basically started with some dairy cows in Texas that were looking a bit sick. They were eating less.

Speaker 13 They were like maybe pumping out a little bit less milk.

Speaker 3 And they actually had mastitis in their udders.

Speaker 6 So this is where like the milk from a cow becomes like yogurty and yellowy

Speaker 6 and chunky. And it's typically caused by bacteria.

Speaker 13 Okay. So these veterinarians, they ran their tests.
They did their thing. They were like, okay, is it this? Is it this? It doesn't seem to be any of these infections we thought it was.
Right.

Speaker 13 And they were like pretty confused.

Speaker 6 And so then a veterinarian went on the farm and noticed some dead birds and a neurologically sick cat, like a cat with neurological symptoms.

Speaker 13 Whoa, this is like house.

Speaker 6 This is like, yeah, like, right.

Speaker 13 It's super, it's super like again, detective work.

Speaker 4 Right.

Speaker 13 And then, of course, they work out that it's bird flu.

Speaker 3 And the bird flu was giving the cat neurological symptoms and the cows mastitis.

Speaker 13 Yeah, right, which is like kind of crazy. And what's interesting here is that they didn't just like pop a swab up the cow's nose and swirl it around in there.

Speaker 13 They also tested the milk.

Speaker 6 And what they found was like massive amounts of virus in the milk. And when I talk about massive amounts, like it is scary how much virus is in the milk of a cow.

Speaker 6 And I'm talking 10 million to 100 million infectious particles in one milliliter, one milliliter of milk.

Speaker 4 Oh, gosh.

Speaker 23 Was the virus alive? I mean, are we drinking that virus?

Speaker 13 The virus that is actually in the milk is alive.

Speaker 13 Are we drinking it?

Speaker 13 If you are drinking pasteurized milk,

Speaker 13 pasteurization does seem to kill the virus. Okay.

Speaker 28 From everything I've found.

Speaker 13 Like, there's already, there's been a lot of research on this where they're like, the pasteurization process seems to make the milk safe. Right.
Now,

Speaker 13 where you might run into problems, Wendy, is if you are drinking raw milk, which is the whole point of it is it's not pasteurized, right? Right.

Speaker 13 For real, it is like not a good idea to be drinking that right now. Like people are playing with fire because they could be straight up drinking bird flu.

Speaker 2 Got it.

Speaker 7 Do not drink raw milk in this moment.

Speaker 31 Correct.

Speaker 13 If you take nothing else away, Wendy, take that away from this.

Speaker 8 It's taken away.

Speaker 4 Yep.

Speaker 13 And the same goes for unpasteurized cheese, by the way.

Speaker 4 Oh.

Speaker 4 Yeah.

Speaker 13 And we actually do know that eating bird flu virus, like it can get animals sick. And in fact, it's one way that cats are getting it by drinking raw milk or eating raw pet food.

Speaker 13 And raw pet food, which can be like stuff like ground up chickens or turkeys, that has made some cats sick and some of them have died.

Speaker 11 Oh, and eggs?

Speaker 16 Is it okay to eat eggs right now?

Speaker 13 Yeah, they say basically, as long as you're, you know, cooking up your eggs, well, they think eggs are safe.

Speaker 3 Uh-huh.

Speaker 7 Don't be guest onning in this moment.

Speaker 13 Oh my God.

Speaker 9 Five dozen eggs.

Speaker 6 Don't do it.

Speaker 13 Right. Don't guess on your way to getting bird flu, please.

Speaker 13 The other thing that I would just want to point out is that it's showing up in cows and we're like really not doing all that much to stop it.

Speaker 13 Like definitely not to the level of what we do with other animals, chickens.

Speaker 22 We're not killing the cows in the same way we would the chickens.

Speaker 13 Yeah, exactly. And I mean, it kind of makes sense that we're not killing the cows cows because like what's reassuring is that a lot of the cows are surviving.

Speaker 13 It's not like they're getting super, super sick from this bird flu.

Speaker 7 So then, okay, so we're seeing all of these animals get it.

Speaker 12 This was,

Speaker 23 we're up to last year with the cows.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 13 So once it gets into cows, it starts spreading among the cows like crazy. Oh, gosh.
So it's so far been found in more than a thousand herds of cows in 17 states in the U.S.

Speaker 13 And I will tell you one more thing, Wendy.

Speaker 6 Oh, yeah. So, this is oh, this is also one of the most interesting things that I've learned.

Speaker 13 Yeah, so to go back to one of the big concerns here, that we end up in a situation where the virus gets in more and more animals, more and more animals.

Speaker 13 Now that the cows have it, we think a whole bunch of new animals might also be at risk. Yeah.

Speaker 13 And that's partly because of this disgusting and kind of fascinating thing called a manure lagoon.

Speaker 3 Oh, sounds like a 90s band.

Speaker 13 You wish it were a 90s band, Wendy.

Speaker 12 And here's Sima.

Speaker 6 When a cow is sick, it has, like, say with H5 or with any bacterial infection, it has to be milked, right? It's, it's inhumane to not milk a lactating cow.

Speaker 6 And so it is this like yogurt, chunkity milk, right? This messitis milk. So it does not make it into our drinking milk.

Speaker 6 It gets collected separately and then it is poured into, typically on farms, into what's called a manure lagoon.

Speaker 7 Oh, no.

Speaker 6 And this manure lagoon is this large area where there's water. So there's always birds like feeding at it.
The milk is not treated in most cases before it is poured in the manure lagoon.

Speaker 6 And again, just remind you, like I said, 10 million to 100 million virus, infected virus particles per small milliliter.

Speaker 6 This is one of the ways we think that peridomestic animals on farms, near farms, are getting infected, right? Because it's just in the environment.

Speaker 7 Oh, no. Don't, don't put the milk in the manure lagoons.

Speaker 15 Oh, my gosh.

Speaker 13 So it's like, like it's just in the environment. It's just out there.

Speaker 21 So, okay, so there's all this potential for humans to now get infected, not just from the cow to human interface, but also the cat human interface and the rodent human interface and the raccoon human interface and the opossum.

Speaker 21 I'm sure those opossums are also getting it.

Speaker 12 So

Speaker 12 where

Speaker 3 are we at now?

Speaker 13 Yeah. So after the break, we hear what happens when humans get this new type of bird flu.

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Speaker 21 Welcome back.

Speaker 22 Today I'm here with Blythe, our editor at Science Versus,

Speaker 7 who is about to tell us what bird flu is currently doing in humans.

Speaker 31 What's going on?

Speaker 13 Okay, so we heard about the cows, all the birds, the seals, all these other animals, right? Yes.

Speaker 13 So after all this cow stuff starts popping off, pretty quickly we start getting reports of bird flu in humans in the U.S.

Speaker 1 And they're now getting that

Speaker 1 newish version, that H5N1 baby that you were talking about.

Speaker 3 Yes.

Speaker 13 So in the U.S., we start seeing cases in people around March 2024. That's when we get the first known case of someone getting it from a cow.

Speaker 13 And actually scientists think that not only is this the first time that they know about that bird flu has gone cow to human, they actually think that this is the first time they know about that any mammal has given bird flu to any human.

Speaker 32 Oh, because we normally get it through the birds.

Speaker 13 Right, right, yeah. We normally get it directly from a bird.
Okay. And some people in the U.S.
do start getting it from birds too.

Speaker 13 So overall, in the past couple of years, we have seen about 70 known cases of this bird flu in the U.S., of this H5N1 baby.

Speaker 32 Uh-huh. 70 known cases.

Speaker 22 And so what's happening now when people get it?

Speaker 7 Are they getting really sick?

Speaker 13 Yeah. So actually, this is what's pretty surprising.
So despite all the scary headlines, every time someone gets bird flu, generally speaking, people who have gotten this in the U.S.

Speaker 13 are not getting that sick. Oh, we are mostly seeing people who have fluy symptoms, your typical stuff, fatigue, respiratory.

Speaker 13 We do see this one weird symptom that I want to talk about for a sec cropping up a lot because a lot of people are getting conjunctivitis or pink eye.

Speaker 13 Actually, one study looked at this, the people who'd gotten it and found that 93% of them had gotten pink eye, which is like not typical for flu.

Speaker 2 No, that is, that is strange.

Speaker 13 Yeah, but overall, like a lot of people are getting these sort of like milder symptoms.

Speaker 11 Good news, great news there.

Speaker 13 But then there are some serious cases where things played out really differently. And I want to talk about a couple of those.

Speaker 4 Okay.

Speaker 13 So there's one in Canada.

Speaker 18 Canada's first human case of bird flu has everyone talking.

Speaker 17 Canadian teenager with the virus has been actually hospitalized in critical condition.

Speaker 13 Had to be on life-saving machines, super scary, ends up surviving. And then there's a person in Louisiana who, same thing, gets really sick and ends up in the hospital, and that person ends up dying.

Speaker 17 For the first time, bird flu has claimed a human life in the U.S.

Speaker 10 The first person to die of bird flu, it's alarming.

Speaker 2 Right? Because this feels like it was a threshold, an alarm bell sounding.

Speaker 13 And when the scientists genetically tested the virus that's in these two people, they're like, oh no,

Speaker 13 this

Speaker 13 is a slightly different type of bird flu.

Speaker 13 Because H5N1's baby, she's got babies of her own. And this particular baby, it seems to be making people sicker.

Speaker 13 And it is spreading in birds and now also in the cows.

Speaker 4 Oh, no.

Speaker 13 Yeah, and we've since seen a few more cases of it in the US, a couple more people hospitalized. In addition to this, you know, we are seeing bird flu cases and deaths in other countries, too, in H5N1.

Speaker 13 It's showing up in Cambodia. It's killed several people there, including children.
We just had a child die in India, a child in Mexico.

Speaker 13 And we don't always know exactly what of these types of H5N1 it is, which version, if it's this creepier one, if it's something else.

Speaker 13 In some cases, though, it does seem likely that it is.

Speaker 7 So these cases, they're kind of trickling out.

Speaker 21 But

Speaker 7 the question obviously becomes, have we had a case where the virus has gone human to human?

Speaker 13 That is 100% the question, right? Because that, if that starts happening, Wendy, like that's when we're like,

Speaker 13 we've got an outbreak. Yes.
And we start freaking out about a pandemic, right?

Speaker 2 Exactly. Then we're like the SEALs, you know?

Speaker 13 Yeah, exactly. So is that happening?

Speaker 13 Here's what Seema told me about what's been going on in the U.S.

Speaker 6 There has been no documented human-to-human transmission. Does that mean it hasn't happened?

Speaker 6 No.

Speaker 13 So basically there are a few cases of people who've gotten bird flu and we just don't know how.

Speaker 4 Like they're not agriculture workers.

Speaker 16 Right.

Speaker 33 Okay.

Speaker 2 And we don't know if those people got it through wild birds.

Speaker 31 through

Speaker 31 another person.

Speaker 21 That's so difficult to know.

Speaker 7 When you look at the genetics of the

Speaker 7 virus, does it give us any clues about where this might go?

Speaker 13 The big thing scientists are watching is exactly that, Wendy. Like, it's exactly the genetics of the virus.
Like, they're watching how this thing mutates.

Speaker 13 Because what they want to see is if it ends up mutating in a way that makes it way easier to spread from one person to another. Yes.

Speaker 13 And one of the scientists who is watching this is a guy named Richard Webby. He's a virologist at St.
Jude Children's Research Hospital in Tennessee.

Speaker 13 I did come across an article that called you the flu catcher. What do you think about that nickname?

Speaker 26 Yeah, I'm not sure. I must admit, I don't do much catching a flu myself anymore.

Speaker 21 What's he do? What's he doing on our bird flu episode then?

Speaker 13 He was mostly like, my kids aren't in daycare anymore.

Speaker 4 Oh, okay.

Speaker 13 So Richard tells me that flu viruses, including bird flu viruses, are generally really good at mutating.

Speaker 13 And that's partly because when they get inside an animal or a person and start making copies of themselves, they tend to make a whole bunch of little mistakes.

Speaker 13 And then in some cases, those mistakes are very helpful and like help them adapt.

Speaker 32 Right.

Speaker 1 So they can then infect seals and cows and other animals.

Speaker 13 Yeah, exactly. And so I asked Richard, at this point, how likely do you think it is that this H5 virus will start moving from human to human?

Speaker 36 Yeah,

Speaker 13 I know you're shaking your head.

Speaker 26 You can see it.

Speaker 13 You love this question.

Speaker 36 I love it. I love it a lot, right?

Speaker 26 What is the risk?

Speaker 26 So I'll tell you why I find that difficult to answer.

Speaker 26 If we look today, so right now today,

Speaker 26 even let's look at the virus that's in cows, even the viruses that we get from people that have been infected, they still have all the characteristics of bird viruses. They want to be infecting birds.

Speaker 13 Yeah, like they look like the virus that you're pulling out of a goose or a chicken or a turkey or whatever. I mean, they haven't like really adapted to be good at infecting humans.

Speaker 2 Got it.

Speaker 4 Got it. Generally.

Speaker 13 Which is good news, except.

Speaker 26 The problem is

Speaker 26 this virus could be two, three, maybe even one mutation away from changing that.

Speaker 2 Yes.

Speaker 13 So scientists don't think it'll take that much mutating at all to get to a version that could have the capacity to spread more easily.

Speaker 13 And actually, there was like a big paper that was looking at this in the lab and actually identified one mutation. They were like, oh, if you flip this switch,

Speaker 13 that's a version that'll probably be easier to get into people.

Speaker 13 And we do know that this bird flu can get certain mutations like this out in the wild because, you know, those two patients, Wendy, who got really sick and one of them died? Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 13 They were sick for so long that scientists think the virus did mutate. inside their bodies.

Speaker 13 And when they looked at the virus's genetics, like some of the virus in those people did have mutations that might have made it easier to spread from person to person.

Speaker 22 Wow.

Speaker 13 Which is interesting because it didn't in those cases.

Speaker 13 Right. Which brings me to perhaps like a kind of surprisingly optimistic point.
Some good news, if you'll have it.

Speaker 21 I'll take it. I'll take some good news.

Speaker 13 So like we've seen it mutate. It's gotten into a fair number of people.

Speaker 13 It hasn't yet broken out as far as we can tell in any meaningful way. And Richard told me that, like, scientists are really debating what that means.

Speaker 26 So, some people look at that, you know, even some experts look at that and say, H5 can never become a human pathogen.

Speaker 28 And that's really, they say it never can?

Speaker 26 That's right.

Speaker 36 It's just not able to do it, right?

Speaker 13 They say it would have happened by now if it could. Right.

Speaker 36 Huh.

Speaker 26 That's right. It could.
I mean, I've the argument against that. I'm not in that boat.
I think the Vosh probably can, but the barrier to it making those key changes is relatively high.

Speaker 31 Yeah, that's interesting.

Speaker 22 And that's not really a gamble we want to make.

Speaker 13 Right. Yeah.

Speaker 13 And there's this other thing that could happen that could screw us on this. It is called reassortment.
And it's where different types of flus are kind of able to mix together.

Speaker 13 So the deal with that is like, say, I get infected with the regular human flu and I'm a poultry worker and I go in to work and I get exposed to bird flu and like both of these flus manage to get inside my body at the same time.

Speaker 13 What can happen is that they can kind of mix and match inside of me and that is reassortment.

Speaker 13 And that's actually like that process has triggered one scientist told me basically all the major flu pandemics in modern history.

Speaker 4 Oh,

Speaker 7 where a human flu or a human adapted flu basically has virus sex with an animal flu.

Speaker 21 And then, because that's a, yeah, I could, for a, from a virus's perspective, that's a much more efficient way to just get all of these adaptive features of like, bip, bip, bip, bip, bip, I'll take this, and now we can infect humans much easier than having to completely develop all these rinky-dink mutation by mutation by mutation by mutation.

Speaker 13 So, that's another thing that they're really watching for.

Speaker 4 Oh, okay.

Speaker 31 So, that good news was short-lived.

Speaker 4 I know

Speaker 13 it always is, isn't it? On science versus.

Speaker 13 I mean, and overall big picture, like when we talk about these viruses and how this flu is mutating and what could happen, where it could go, how it could mix with other viruses, what science has told me is that it's a numbers game.

Speaker 13 You know, the more chances you give it, the more you give it chances to have virus sex, the more likely it is that it'll mutate. into something that I can give to you and that you can pass along.

Speaker 13 Yeah. Here is how SEMA is thinking about it at this moment.

Speaker 6 What we're allowing this virus to do is take a thousand shots on goal every day, maybe 10,000 shots on goal.

Speaker 4 When would you worry?

Speaker 3 I'm already worried, Blythe.

Speaker 6 Sorry, if that's not coming across, let me make it very clear.

Speaker 7 I am worried.

Speaker 13 Given all of this, right?

Speaker 4 I asked Richard.

Speaker 28 Let's see, where's Dr.

Speaker 13 Richard Webby's worry meter?

Speaker 26 So

Speaker 26 somewhere between, yeah, sitting back with my feet up on the recliner and as I I tell people running, you know, heading towards the hills, I'm in the middle.

Speaker 26 I think I'm square in the middle a little bit.

Speaker 13 Is that like buying a few extra masks? Is that toilet paper?

Speaker 26 I think that'll be the key. If my neighbors

Speaker 26 see me arriving back from Sam's club with four or five extra packets of toilet paper, then they will know I've changed.

Speaker 23 You mentioned buying a few extra masks.

Speaker 3 Would that help?

Speaker 4 Yeah.

Speaker 13 For humans, generally tends to be a respiratory virus. Like, that's what we see.
So I do think masks would help.

Speaker 2 Right. And this is still a flu.
It's still a flu. That's right.
It's still a flu.

Speaker 13 I mean, Wendy, I did buy masks last week.

Speaker 23 Oh, okay. But extra toilet paper? Did you do that yet?

Speaker 2 No, still taking my chances on that one.

Speaker 22 So do we have anything to fight against bird flu?

Speaker 21 Are there vaccines?

Speaker 13 Yeah, there are vaccines. You can't just go get one at the pharmacy.
They're not like available, but they do exist.

Speaker 8 Right.

Speaker 13 But as far as how they would do if bird flu really took off.

Speaker 26 The good answer is we don't know really, right? Because we've never had a pandemic in humans. Yeah, we've never had a pandemic to know how good they are in humans, which is a good thing.

Speaker 13 And we have stuff like antivirals that can help too.

Speaker 12 It's funny because I have to, I go get my flu vaccine now because it's an early human flu season in Australia.

Speaker 2 But it did make me think that is this something that

Speaker 5 you can do?

Speaker 13 Yeah, I mean, look, it's not going to do anything specifically for bird flu. They're just different enough.

Speaker 3 But you should do it.

Speaker 13 You should do it.

Speaker 13 I mean, a lot of scientists reminded me that the regular flu, Wendy, I mean, it kills thousands of people every year. Like that's still going on.

Speaker 13 And getting the flu vaccine does reduce the chance that, I mean, if you happen to be very unlucky, right, and also get bird flu, get that reassortment thing that we're talking about, that you, Wendy, you know, will be patient zero of the bird flu pandemic.

Speaker 13 And actually, one of the things that Health and Human Services Department here in the U.S.

Speaker 13 told me is that they are actually giving agricultural workers access to the seasonal flu vaccine as kind of part of their strategy here. Uh-huh.

Speaker 3 And so then just finally, what is the U.S.

Speaker 32 government saying about all this?

Speaker 13 So, I mean, yeah, overall, like, bird flu does not really seem to be a big focus right now. You know, at the USDA, they are looking at ways to stop it in chickens.

Speaker 13 But like I mentioned at the start of the show, you know, the Trump administration is also like firing tons of people, including people whose job it was to work on diseases like this.

Speaker 13 Right. Yeah.
And I mean, you know, the thing I'm actually kind of freaked out about here, Wendy, is like whether we're really going to be able to track this thing properly, you know,

Speaker 13 given everything that's going on, like how soon would we, would we really know if it's starting to gain steam and spread in people?

Speaker 13 And one reason this has been on my mind so much is, so when I first started working on this episode, you know, watching all this last year into this year,

Speaker 13 human cases were kind of ticking up kind of a few at a time here and there. There's reports, there's news reports, data's coming in.

Speaker 13 And it was early this year, like around February, when we hit that 70 cases or so that I mentioned, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 13 And so where we are now, it's May, more than two months later, and we're still like supposedly at 70 cases.

Speaker 13 And that just makes me a little suspicious, right? Because the flu is still showing up in cows. It's still showing up in new herds of cattle, right?

Speaker 13 There have been almost 50 new new cattle herds infected in just the past month.

Speaker 31 We're getting data on the cows.

Speaker 32 It's still clearly spreading.

Speaker 13 Yeah, so like, are we really not getting more cases in people? It's just so hard to know if we can trust that.

Speaker 3 That is

Speaker 33 scary.

Speaker 13 Yeah. And there is one more thing, you know, that

Speaker 13 I guess gets my spidey sense on this tingling.

Speaker 13 So there was this CDC report out a couple months ago, like before all these firings really got going, where what they had done is they had tested a bunch of veterinarians who work on large animals, right?

Speaker 4 Uh-huh.

Speaker 13 And they found that three of them had antibodies for this bird flu for H5N1. Okay.
Yeah, but they hadn't really been sick.

Speaker 13 And in some cases, these vets hadn't even known they were working with infected animals in the first place.

Speaker 13 So what this tells me, right, is that there have been at least some silent cases of this flu already floating around.

Speaker 12 Oh, gosh, what does this tell us? What does this tell us?

Speaker 7 Because it means they didn't even know they were sick.

Speaker 5 So

Speaker 7 asymptomatic infection is a thing.

Speaker 2 That also could suggest maybe

Speaker 9 this type of bird flu,

Speaker 9 if it goes pandemic on us, it's not going to be that deadly. And,

Speaker 9 you know,

Speaker 9 so that we don't have our scare hats on, we do know that that from history, viruses tend to become less deadly as they go pandemic because it allows them to spread.

Speaker 2 But it also could be that this bird flu isn't that deadly for everyone, but it still has a high case fatality rate.

Speaker 10 This is just where we're at.

Speaker 21 It's just like this tip of who knows what.

Speaker 9 And in the meantime, we can't trust that we're getting proper information about

Speaker 11 what's actually going on.

Speaker 13 That's, yeah, that's my feeling in this moment. And I guess I will say like not to

Speaker 16 put your scare hat on.

Speaker 13 Not to put my scare hat on. I will say, you know, I will say like not to, I don't want to be alarmist about it, right?

Speaker 13 Because I will also say that like I asked a bunch of scientists this question because I've had this question. I'm like, if there is, if things, if this thing really starts to spread, will we know?

Speaker 13 And all of them were like, yeah, dude. Like if this really gets going, like, and we're seeing a lot of cases, they're like, we'll know.
You know, like, reports are going to come out other ways.

Speaker 13 There's going to be, you know, you're going to start hearing from doctors.

Speaker 21 Yeah.

Speaker 32 Okay. So then,

Speaker 32 you know, we mentioned the boy who cried, Wolf, at the start of the show.

Speaker 5 So

Speaker 4 is it,

Speaker 4 are we cry, are we crying, Wolf?

Speaker 13 Well, now you have me worried, Wendy.

Speaker 8 We all know what happened to that guy. He was murdered by wolves.

Speaker 12 Yeah, I forget the ending of that. It's funny that, isn't it?

Speaker 13 So stop trying to trap me into.

Speaker 35 Watch this space.

Speaker 7 Blythe will be there on the top of the hill looking for the wolves.

Speaker 13 I've got my binoculars.

Speaker 13 I am going to do my best to keep watch for the wolves.

Speaker 4 All right.

Speaker 23 In the meantime, watch out if you get pink eye.

Speaker 13 That's right.

Speaker 4 Thanks, Blythe.

Speaker 1 How many citations are in this week's episode?

Speaker 13 So in this week's episode, we have 123

Speaker 13 citations, Wendy. Ooh.

Speaker 13 Hello.

Speaker 13 All right.

Speaker 8 And if people want to read more about bird flu, where should they go?

Speaker 13 They should go to our transcript, which they can find in the show notes of this episode.

Speaker 13 And they can find all of our sourcing, including, by the way, some citations that I'm sure will explain that a virus is not necessarily technically alive.

Speaker 13 It's complicated, we know.

Speaker 8 Yes, yes.

Speaker 11 Also,

Speaker 1 next week, you know, we did allude to the fact that there have been cuts to science funding, which we have talked about on the show before.

Speaker 33 But next week, we're going to do an update on what exactly is going on with US science right now.

Speaker 1 Yes.

Speaker 2 There's been a lot.

Speaker 4 There's been a lot happening.

Speaker 13 A lot happening. And also, like to point out, too, you know, we talk about layoffs, we talk about some people losing their jobs.

Speaker 13 There have been stories about the government trying to rehire some of those people, some of the people working on bird flu. It's just been really confusing what's actually going on with that.

Speaker 13 And I just want to note, too, that I did reach out to Health and Human Services and talk to them about a little bit of this.

Speaker 13 I did try to ask them about this whole idea that we might be missing cases of bird flu. And I just, I didn't hear back on that.

Speaker 4 All right. Thanks, Blood.

Speaker 13 Thank you, Wendy. Thanks for letting me bird flu with you.

Speaker 33 Thanks for bird fluing with me anytime.

Speaker 37 This episode was produced by Blythe Terrell with help from me, Wendy Zuckerman, Michelle Dang, Rose Rimmler, Meryl Horn, and Aketti Foster Keys. We're edited by Blythe Terrell.

Speaker 37 Mix and sound design by Bobby Lorde and Sam Vaer. Fact-checking by Erica Akiko-Howard.
Music written by Bumi Hidaka, Peter Leonard, Emma Munger, So Wiley, and Bobby Lord.

Speaker 37 Thanks so much to all of the researchers that we spoke to for this episode, including Dr. Louise Monkler, Dr.
Ted Elsasser, Dr. John Corsland, Victoria Rosato, and Lindsay Adams.

Speaker 37 A special thanks to Jeff Delvisio. Science Versus is a Spotify studio's original.
Listen to us for free on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. We are everywhere.

Speaker 37 Whatever you listen to us on, give us a five-star review because it helps people find the show.

Speaker 37 And if you are listening on Spotify, follow us and tap the bell icon so you get notifications when new episodes come out.

Speaker 37 And if you would like to get in touch with us, we are on Instagram, science underscore VS. I'm on TikTok at Wendy Zuckerman.
So come and say hello. I'm Wendy Zuckerman.
Back to you next time.