Media Pushes Return Of ‘Lockdowns To Combat Rising Bird Flu Cases

Media Pushes Return Of  Lockdowns To Combat Rising Bird Flu Cases

Jacob M. Thompson

Could lockdowns return because of purported cases of avian influenza spreading across the United States? Well, that’s what mainstream media would have people to the believe. As both zoonotic and human cases continue to climb, the media and other cited health ‘experts’ are sounding the alarm that a full-blown bird flu pandemic is nearing the horizon.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) claim as of Monday, November 18th, 53 Americans have been infected with bird flu, the majority of them reportedly coming from California.

15 states are now reported to have some sort of bird flu outbreak in cows, and 49 states with an outbreak in poultry. As of the 19th, over 108,412,000 poultry have been affected. 

Hawaii is reportedly the latest state to purportedly have bird flu. Ducks and geese dwelling on a backyard farm on the island of Oahu reportedly tested positive for the virus. Susan Wilkinson, who had all of her rescue birds culled as per protocol, posted a sorrowful message on Instagram warning others to take this seriously.

Oregon also reported its first human case of bird flu last week. 

Just over a week ago, a child was hospitalized in Canada – the country’s first confirmed case of the disease – and was in severe condition.

Roughly two weeks ago, the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) announced methods to monitor and contain the spread of bird flu. The department is collaborating with more state veterinarians, with the goal of strengthening biosecurity and containment measures through milk sample collection, aiming at better assessment and management of H5N1 in dairy herds.

Outlets such as the Daily Mail have suggested that the virus should be called “Cow Flu” instead, citing alerts by the CDC. Angela Rasmussen, a virologist at the University of Saskatchewan in Canada, told the publication: “It shows yet again that we are not responding effectively to the H5N1 cattle outbreak in humans or animals and if we continue to let this virus spread and jump from species to species, our luck will eventually run out,” she said.

With this rise in cases, mainstream media publications are now floating out the idea of a return of lockdowns to contain the disease. Headlines include: 

• “First human bird flu case confirmed in Oregon. Could the virus cause a lockdown like COVID?” – (NBC’s TODAY)
• “Bird Flu Outbreak: Do Human Cases Mean Future Lockdowns?” – (Newsweek) 
• “Will Bird Flu trigger another pandemic and lead to lockdowns? Here’s what experts have to say” – (The Times of India) 
• “Will Bird Flu Outbreak Cause A Pandemic or Lockdown? Experts Explain” – (Head Topics)

But with each human infection, the virus gains another opportunity to mutate and learn to spread among the population in the process. According to experts, if human-to-human transmission were to occur, the impacts would be uncertain—but potentially pandemic-causing.

“Before COVID, flu has has been the cause of most of the recent recorded pandemics that we know,” Jeremy Rossman, a senior lecturer in virology at the University of Kent in the U.K., told Newsweek.

Rossman explained that the risks of flu pandemics are, therefore, very high, but that bird flu presents a big unknown. Because the population hasn’t been exposed to H5 bird flu, immunity will be much lower than with other strains of the flu.

He added: “We just don’t know what that would look like and that’s that is the biggest concern.”

The need for a lockdown would hinge on what form the mutation that gives bird flu the ability to transmit among humans would take.

“If we start to get human-to-human transmission, especially going into the winter in the U.S. when flu spreads the best anyways, there is a very high chance that this virus would start to spread,” Rossman said.

“Now the implications of that are not clear because historically bird flu in people can have up to 60 percent case fatality rates. But we’re not seeing that even with the spillover cases from cattle here.”

In the U.S., human cases to date have been generally mild, according to the CDC, with most infected persons displaying little more than conjunctivitis and mild flu-like respiratory symptoms.

“It’s possible that the adaptation to people could restore some virulence, but it’s also possible that you end up getting H5N1 that spreads from person to person that still causes mild disease,” Rossman said.

“We just don’t know what it would be like if in fact we did get this human transmissible bird flu.”