When bird flu first struck dairy cattle a year ago, it seemed possible that it might affect a few isolated herds and disappear as quickly as it had appeared. Nope. Via the New York Times:

Instead, the virus has infected more than 900 herds and dozens of people, killing one, and the outbreak shows no signs of abating.

A human pandemic is not inevitable, even now, more than a dozen experts said in interviews. But a series of developments over the past few weeks indicates that the possibility is no longer remote.

Toothless guidelines, inadequate testing and long delays in releasing data — echoes of the missteps during the Covid-19 pandemic — have squandered opportunities for containing the outbreak, the experts said.

Wait, you mean raw milk is a bad thing? Someone should tell Bob Kennedy!

But reinfections suggest that the virus, called H5N1, could circulate on farms indefinitely, finding opportunities to evolve into a more dangerous form — a “high-risk” scenario, said Louise Moncla, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Pennsylvania.

“You could easily end up with endemically circulating H5 in dairy herds without symptoms, obscuring rapid or easy detection,” Dr. Moncla said.

It’s impossible to predict whether the virus will evolve the ability to spread among people, let alone when, she and other scientists said. But their worry is that if bird flu finds the right combination of genetic mutations, the outbreak could quickly escalate.

“I’m still not pack-my-bags-and-head-to-the-hills worried, but there’s been more signals over the past four to six weeks that this virus has the capacity” to set off a pandemic, said Richard Webby, an influenza expert at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.

The things you can do now: Don't touch sick or dead birds, or other animals; get tested if you have flulike symptoms; do not consume raw milk or meat, or feed them to your pets.

In other words, don't be a dumbass. And wear a mask if you have symptoms, or you're around someone who does.

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