Since early last year, the bird flu has resulted in the deaths of more than 58 million birds here in the United States, but as long as the disease stayed in birds scientists weren’t going to be too alarmed.
Unfortunately, H5N1 has now started to spread among mammals.
Lots of them.
In fact, dozens of mammals have already caught the disease in the United States alone…
Of course H5N1 is not just spreading among mammals here in the United States.
Over in the UK, “nine otters and foxes” have tested positive…
In the UK, the Animal and Plant Health Agency (APHA) has tested 66 mammals, including seals, and found nine otters and foxes were positive for highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) H5N1.
If you have been alarmed by what I have shared with you so far, this next item should really get to you.
In Spain, over 50,000 minks had to be wiped out because H5N1 was rapidly spreading among them…
So why are those minks so important?
Well, it turns out that minks have “a respiratory system very similar to humans”…
But when the virus was analyzed, it was revealed that the mink were infected with a new variant of avian flu, including genetic mutations that are known to make it easier to spread in mammals. This is “uncharted territory,” Wendy Puryear, a virologist at Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts, told Nature News. It presents a severe problem because mink have a respiratory system very similar to humans.
If you thought that the restrictions and the mandates under COVID were bad, just imagine what a global H5N1 pandemic would look like.
People would be dropping like flies and we would see tyranny on a scale that most of us don’t even want to imagine right now.
According to WebMD, a new H5N1 vaccine will soon be tested on poultry here in the United States…
The Biden administration will test a vaccine that could be given to poultry to counter the current bird flu outbreak that has killed about 58 million birds, mostly in commercial poultry flocks.
These would be the first vaccine given to poultry to protect against avian influenza in years. Poultry are already vaccinated for diseases like infectious bronchitis, and shots have been licensed for past outbreaks.
A vaccine for H5N1 has been approved by the Food and Drug Administration for people 18 through 64 years who are at increased risk of exposure, according to an agency spokesperson.
The country has a small supply of vaccine, a spokesperson from the Health and Human Services told USA TODAY. The vaccine can be used to match against strains with pandemic potential and scale-up as needed, which health experts estimate could take up to six months.
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