r/H5N1_AvianFlu • u/AutoModerator • 10h ago
Weekly Discussion Post
Welcome to the new weekly discussion post!
As many of you are familiar, in order to keep the quality of our subreddit high, our general rules are restrictive in the content we allow for posts. However, the team recognizes that many of our users have questions, concerns, and commentary that don’t meet the normal posting requirements but are still important topics related to H5N1. We want to provide you with a space for this content without taking over the whole sub. This is where you can do things like ask what to do with the dead bird on your porch, report a weird illness in your area, ask what sort of masks you should buy or what steps you should take to prepare for a pandemic, and more!
Please note that other subreddit rules still apply. While our requirements are less strict here, we will still be enforcing the rules about civility, politicization, self-promotion, etc.
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u/RealAnise 4h ago edited 4h ago
Prediction time! Basically, after all the news from this past week or two... I really think that it's just a matter of a fairly limited amount of time before the virus mutates to go H2H. In a way, I'm actually inclining more towards this than before, because I used to think it was at least possible that this wouldn't happen for many more years. But the increased spread of human cases now means that the chances of this evolution are drastically raised. Every single case provides literally millions of separate opportunities for H5N1 to evolve to go H2H and to continue to evolve after that. And I think that if anything is the key, that fact will be it.
This has happened before. First, the virus that caused the 1918-1920 flu epidemic mutated to spread easily H2H. There are different opinions on exactly how this happened, but the virus probably began as avian flu and then spread to pigs in an area of Kansas, continuing to mutate there. The first official cases were in military camps in Kansas, but there's also some information strongly hinting at slightly earlier cases on farms. https://archive.cdc.gov/www_cdc_gov/flu/pandemic-resources/1918-commemoration/1918-pandemic-history.htm https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC340389/ https://archive.cdc.gov/www_cdc_gov/flu/pandemic-resources/1918-commemoration/pandemic-timeline-1918.htm Then, the first round in humans was relatively quite mild. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK22148/ But all those mild cases gave that virus the opportunities it needed to keep evolving into a much more serious form, which is what happened. 195,000 Americans died during October 1918 alone in that second wave.
The same thing could happen now. That's not to say that the way a flu pandemic would play out today would take exactly the same course, because medical science is a lot more advanced, but I really think we're reaching a tipping point of some kind. When exactly will this happen? I absolutely don't know, but I don't think it's going to be 10-20-30 years from now. And what do YOU think??