Post Reply - A new pandemic

- perhaps million

   DJ, CoViD seems NOT to be a factor in the increase of H5N1 in wild birds since 2022...
https://afludiary.blogspot.com/2025/04/the-role-of-wild-birds-in-global-highly.html or https://afludiary.blogspot.com/2025/04/the-role-of-wild-birds-in-global-highly.html (continuation from above);In 2022 we also saw a report from Defra on The Unprecedented `Order Shift' In Wild Bird H5N1 Positives In Europe & The UK, with many species of birds that were previously unaffected, suddenly dying from - or carrying - they H5N1 virus.  A year later, the virus spread into South America, and has been reported in both Antarctica and above the Arctic circle .This impressive global spread has come at a tremendous cost to both the avian population, and a large number of susceptible mammalian species (see Nature Reviews: The Threat of Avian Influenza H5N1 Looms Over Global Biodiversity).
Numbers are impossible to quantify, but hundreds of millions of wild birds, hundreds of millions of captive birds, and hundreds of thousands - perhaps millions - of wild mammals have succumbed to the HPAI H5 virus over the past 5 years. 
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What was once almost exclusively an avian virus was now infecting mammalian livestock (cattle, alpacas, pigs, goats, sheep, etc.) and spilling over (and killing) dozens of species of peridomestic animals (cats, dogs, mice, foxes, skunks, along with many marine mammals). 
While surveillance and reporting is spotty at best, we are arguably witnessing the largest, most diverse, and widespread epizootic in human history.  
Even if it turns out that H5N1 doesn't have what it takes to spark a human pandemic, the damage it has done (and continues to do) to our shared ecosystem is incalculable, and the knock-on effects of these losses may not be fully appreciated for years. 
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Nearly two years ago, in Avian Flu's New Normal: When the Extraordinary Becomes Ordinary, I wrote about the numbing effect that comes with the constant barrage of HPAI H5 reports from around the world.

Events that were nearly unthinkable four years ago (e.g. Repeated trans-Atlantic introduction of avian flu from Europe, the spread of HPAI H5 across the length of South America, numerous spillovers of H5 into mammalian species, and  > 77 human cases in the U.S. ) have somehow become routine. 
While the future course and impact of HPAI H5 remains unknown, HPAI's recent trajectory represents an escalation of its threat level, and we'd do well to take that seriously.