Under the Microscope - The H5N1 Outbreak's Unsettling Spread from Birds to Dairy Cattle
The 2024 H5N1 "Bird Flu" crisis is expanding. Dairy cows provide a dangerous new space for viral mutations, and the CDC director in charge of the problem isn't sleeping so well.
As I wrote in my piece Bird Flu Outbreaks and Factory Farms, a serious crisis is looming on our doorstep. Due to the terrible practices United States farms have around animal welfare, the H5N1 bird flu has started to spread across the country... but now it's spreading beyond birds.
In April, Helen Branswell at statnews.com conducted an in-depth interview with Vivian Dugan, the director of the CDC's influenza division. They talked about the nature and spread of this virus, and their conversation highlighted some of the difficulties faced by government agencies trying to combat a problem evolving with this much speed.
The short of the long? Dugan and her team are staring down the barrel of a gun as the H5N1 bird flu spreads into the dairy cattle population in the United States. An outbreak like this normally isn't much of a problem for most people... right up until the point where it's very suddenly everyone's problem.