Everything You Need to Know About H5N1 Bird Flu Everything You Need to Know About H5N1 Bird Flu

Something is happening, and we knew it would.

A recent piece in Bloomberg has finally declared in the mainstream what some of us have been saying for two years now:

Bird flu is a big threat, and we should take it more seriously.

It could be spreading through the wind via aerosolized bird droppings from ducks, which “could explain several of the 67 recent human cases with no known route of exposure.” In other words, you could be exposed to bird flu just by going to a park or being near wild birds, via their droppings. As we head into migration season, that’s not the best news in the world. But it’s also just as likely that H5N1 is showing early signs of airborne transmission. We’re seeing the most flu activity in 15 years, and some of us have even been getting text messages from local pharmacies about the unusually high flu activity in our areas.

Instead of investigating, the current administration has twisted the previous one’s apathy and neglect into a more malicious, intentional campaign to suppress information about the virus. As the Trump team suspends regular flu reporting to WHO agencies, they’ve also just gutted the CDC’s ability to track diseases, eliminating the Epidemic Intelligence Service.

This feels very intentional.

As one important account recently announced, a surge of Flu A has started to overwhelm hospitals as patients go on ventilators in Indiana as well as New York. Hospitals are trying to subtype the virus, but we don’t have much more information than that. On a related note, coroners are starting to report a substantial uptick in dead bodies. As Darin Wolfe posted, “The only time in [my] medical career I’ve seen this… is during the absolute height of Covid.”

It’s worth remembering the 1918 flu appeared mild at first, so mild that doctors around the world dismissed it as harmless. Then it mutated into something highly contagious and deadly. The Woodrow Wilson administration devoted their energy to censoring information and manipulating public sentiment instead of preparing. As historian Guy Beiner notes in Pandemic Re-Awakenings, the 1918 flu caused more devastation than previously understood, with higher mortality and disability tolls than reported, and it likely altered the course of human history, beginning with the rise of fascism. It might be about to happen again.

The Trump administration is operating from the Woodrow Wilson playbook. It’s also worth noting that, like Trump and his team, Wilson was a card-carrying eugenicist who believed only “the strong” should survive. Bird flu could ignite a pandemic in a global population whose immune systems are already beaten down by another disease. Once again, this would echo how the 1918 pandemic began, by targeting soldiers who had already been trounced by measles and pneumonia.

As this virus continues to make headlines, we’re all left wondering what’s going to happen next, when it will become officially airborne, whether it’s safe to consume meat or dairy products, and what we should do to prepare. Last year, I started gathering information about the virus and how to get ready.

We’re not going to get answers from our leaders.

So, here they are: