We’re Applying Lessons From Covid to Bird Flu. That’s Not Good.

Almost two years after the current outbreak of bird flu began in the United States, we are still flying blind.

Indications that H5N1 may have jumped to mammals first appeared the same year, when the virus killed hundreds of seals in New England and Quebec that summer, and then that fall there was a mass infection event at a Spanish mink farm. Epidemiologists have been warning about the risks of an overdue bird flu pandemic for decades, and so each new development arrived like the next beat in an already familiar story, almost too perfectly plotted to alarm. The outbreaks on American dairy farms began this March and the first human case in the United States since then was identified in April, which means that it has now been more than three full months since a pathogen long identified as among the most worrisome potential sources of a new pandemic infected an American this year. There is still nothing like a serious plan to even properly monitor the spread.