2025-01-15
15 分钟For Scientific American Science quickly, I'm Rachel Feltman.
On January 6,
the Louisiana Department of Health reported the first human death from H5N1 in the United States.
While the CDC says that the general risk to human health is still considered low,
bird flu now looms large in headlines that identify it as a potential future pandemic.
Here to tell us more about where we stand and what we can do to prevent the worst case scenario is Amy Maxman,
a public health reporter at KFF Health News.
Amy, thanks so much for coming on to talk with us today.
Thanks.
It's my pleasure.
So let's start with a quick overview of the current bird flu outbreak.
When and how did it start?
So around February of last year,
farmers in the Texas panhandle started to notice that their cows were acting abnormally,
like they weren't producing as much milk.
They had runny noses, things like that.
And in about a couple of months,
researchers realized
that the bird flu had actually spilled over into cattle for the first time ever and was actually spreading between cattle.
That's completely unprecedented.