TRACKING EMERGING VIRUSES – June 3, 2025 – BIRD FLU
“The U.S. hasn’t seen a new confirmed human bird flu case in nearly 4 months — why?”
By Kate Murphy
“Why haven’t we seen an increase in human bird flu infections since February?
“The short answer is, we don’t know,” Nuzzo said. But experts like her have offered some possibilities:
1. Migratory bird patterns have changed: Wild birds are primary spreaders of avian flu.”
2. It’s possible that less of the virus is circulating”.
3. “Testing at the state and local levels for H5N1 has decreased”
4. “….wastewater surveillance alone isn’t the best method in determining whether human”
5. “The current virus strain isn’t good at infecting humans”
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“The Trump administration dangerously mishandling bird flu”
By Avni Koeni
“In late March, they fired around 140 employees of the FDA’s Center for Veterinary Medicine (CVM), which is responsible for the response to bird flu outbreaks amongst animals.”
“Additionally, the administration has failed to staff the Office of Pandemic Preparedness and Response Policy (OPPR), an agency which was established by Congress in 2022 to prevent future federal mistakes like the ones made in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic. Indeed, Trump’s careless response of bird flu thus far is eerily similar to his mishandling of COVID-19; two years prior to that pandemic he disbanded a White House pandemic-response team comparable to the OPPR.”
“The government needs to invest more resources in a proactive strategy to combat the spread of this virus, not attempt to run itself like a for-profit business, as Musk has suggested it should. The functional purpose of a government is to provide for the welfare and wellbeing of its constituents — doing so is well worth the costs and federal spending it requires.”
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“Canceling Moderna’s bird flu contract could be Robert Kennedy’s most reckless act yet”
By Ashish K. Jha
“Developing and refining an mRNA vaccine demands testing and time. Scientists must design and test the antigen, determine optimal dosing, and assess safety and effectiveness — work that takes months and often years. Waiting to develop a vaccine candidate until the world is actually confronting a bird flu pandemic would leave America dangerously behind. That’s why investing in a human vaccine is one of the top things I said the Trump administration must do to combat bird flu. To be sure, the federal government does have a small stockpile of old H5N1 vaccines — but it’s not clear they would work against emerging strains. What is clear is that the mRNA platform could be used to build targeted vaccines.
This is exactly the kind of public health challenge the government should address. There’s no viable commercial market for an H5N1 vaccine — and if we’re lucky, there never will be. We cannot rely on the private sector to invest in pandemic prevention. And waiting to develop vaccines until a pandemic has started is like telling a fire department to start hiring after a neighborhood has gone up in flames.”
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“This could be RFK Jr.’s most costly mistake”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2025/06/05/bird-flu-vaccine-kennedy-rfk/
“Rewriting of Covid vaccine recommendations has doctors and other experts worried”
By Helen Branswell
“Delivering Covid vaccinations has never been an easy job. But health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s rewriting of government recommendations will make the effort to get vaccine doses into arms exponentially more difficult, experts say.
The changes will complicate discussions between pediatricians and parents, obstetricians and pregnant patients, and both groups and their insurers, these experts say. They will also likely result in Covid shots being harder to access, with fewer doctors choosing to stock them and fewer pharmacies willing to administer them, for both economic and liability reasons, the experts said.”
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“Seasonal Flu Shots Miss the Mark on Bird Flu Protection”
By Global Biodefense
“A new peer-reviewed study from the Francis Crick Institute and University College London Hospitals has found that quadrivalent seasonal flu vaccines (QIVs)—the standard annual flu shots—do not generate protective antibodies against two dangerous strains of avian influenza A(H5N1), including the version recently detected in U.S. dairy cattle and linked to human infections.”
“Despite strong responses to the seasonal H1N1 flu virus, none of the participants showed antibody responses that would help neutralize the tested H5N1 viruses—one from a 2023 outbreak in Cambodia, and one from a 2024 U.S. dairy cow linked to recent human infections. This indicates that current flu shots are unlikely to protect people from serious illness if H5N1 spreads more widely among humans.”
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“Researchers warn of bird flu survival in raw milk”
https://www.news-medical.net/news/20250604/Researchers-warn-of-bird-flu-survival-in-raw-milk.aspx
curated by Jonathan M. Metsch, Dr.P.H.
Clinical Professor of Environmental Medicine, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai