Scientists have been keeping an eye on bird flu ever since it was first discovered nearly 30 years ago. Experts have long recognized that the H5N1 virus that causes the disease has pandemic potential, just like COVID-19 or swine flu. In the past three years, outbreaks of bird flu, formally called highly pathogenic avian influenza, in wild animals spilled over to dairy cows and poultry, infecting several dozen humans and even killing one American.
Each human and mammalian infection gives the virus an opportunity to mutate and evolve better ways of transmitting from person to person — a key benchmark for what makes a pathogen a pandemic-level threat. And numerous headlines and scientific publications have warned that we're inching closer and closer to just such a scenario.
