How Scared Should You Be of Bird Flu?

How worried you should be about H5N1, the bird flu virus spreading on dairy farms in the United States, depends on whom you are.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has described the current H5N1 risk to the general public as low. The risk that the virus poses is tempered by the fact that it doesn’t spread easily among people — yet.

Right now public-health experts have the difficult task of urging authorities who can do something about H5N1 to take action, while maintaining public trust. Americans have just been through a pandemic that resulted in over one million U.S. lives lost. They may feel weary of more bad news or fear-based messaging. Communicating that while the threat level for most people is low, but if nothing is done it could become quite high, is not easy but is important.

Experts need to be clear that currently, the levers of action are squarely in the hands of government leaders and agricultural interests, not in the hands of the general public. But public attention is key to ensuring that authorities find the will to act.

No one knows whether H5N1, if left unchecked, will become the deadly pandemic that public health experts like me worry it could. Many of us have been watching H5N1 with alarm for more than 20 years.

As an epidemiologist, I join those who are concerned that as H5N1 continues to infect animals and people exposed to them, it could become a greater threat. The virus could mutate to gain the ability to infect people more easily. Because we don’t have immunity to this virus, a version that becomes highly contagious would likely cause a new pandemic. Influenza viruses change more rapidly than others, and have created four pandemics since the start of the 20th century.