It's Already Worse Than We Thought
A reminder, and a fleeting sense of validation.
The CDC recently posted a brief but unsettling update on H5N1 bird flu. Then they immediately retracted it. Those with sources inside the CDC or HHS say the Trump administration had it scrubbed, for obvious reasons.
The report describes a family catching bird flu from their cat. As one source puts it, “an infected cat might have spread the virus to another cat and to a human adolescent, according to a copy of the data table…” The cat died four days later after it started getting sick. My take: The virus is following a process called passage, described by John Barry in The Grea Influenza. Contrary to popular belief, viruses don’t necessarily evolve to become milder. They can become more deadly.
From an interview with a Johns Hopkins scholar:
Some examples of viruses that became more deadly over time include those that developed drug resistant variants, and animal viruses such as bird flu, which were harmless to humans initially but then mutated to become capable of killing people, according to Dr. Amesh Adalja, a senior scholar at Johns Hopkins University’s Center for Health Security.
That’s been the main theme of H5N1 bird flu. It finds a new host. It appears mild at first. Then it mutates to become more deadly.
That’s what happened with cows.
On the whole, it’s been quite a week. It’s been the kind of week that confirmed our worst predictions and offered some validation for those of us who’ve been called fearmongers and doomers over the last few years.
Of course, it’s cold comfort.