Hundreds of people have been infected with the H5N1 virus since 2003 but, until now, they have all caught it from birds. The current bird flu outbreak in the States has seen herds of dairy farm cows infected in nine states.

Hundreds of people have been infected with the H5N1 virus since 2003 but, until now, they have all caught it from birds. The current bird flu outbreak in the States has seen herds of dairy farm cows infected in nine states.

  • downpunxx@fedia.ioOP
    0·
    2 months ago

    the fact H5N1 hadn’t been recorded making the jump between mammals to humans before meant human to human transmission wasn’t as large of an immediate pandemic concern as it now is having made that intertaxinomic class bridge

      • downpunxx@fedia.ioOP
        0·
        2 months ago

        yes, but they are not the same species of mammals as other mammals. diseases exist which affect mammals like dogs, and cows, which do not affect humans, and are not passed between the mammal species. H5N1 has not been seen to have been transmitted to humans from another mammal species before this, making the danger of inter-human species transmission (read: pandemic) far greater and more likely than it’s been up until now when it was solely transmitted to humans from birds.

        • El Barto@lemmy.world
          0·
          2 months ago

          All what you’re saying is correct, but the original sentence didn’t mention species. It mentioned mammals, and to say “from humans to mammals” is a strange phrase. It’s like saying “from liquid water to liquids.”

          A correct way to say it is “transmitted to humans from other mammals.”

        • Hyperreality@kbin.social
          0·
          2 months ago

          It was already spreading from mammal to mammal. IRC there was that Mink farm last year and I think seals too. There were also cases of H5N1 jumping from birds to humans.

          Given H5N1 can make the jump from birds to mammals(including humans), and from mammals to mammals, it’s not a huge shock that it’s made the jump to humans from other mammals.

          H1N1 killed 50-100 million people, so the danger has always been there, and scientists have been warning about it for decades. For example, here’s a journal article from almost twenty years ago discussing this scenario:

          https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.1096898