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.
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