Scientists Fear Bird Flu Surge as Billions of Birds Start to Fly Home - The Daily Beast

Not only for other birds—including domestic flocks of chickens, ducks and turkeys—but also for the growing number of mammal species that have caught bird flu.

“Increased migration is definitely a concern,” James Lawler, an infectious disease expert at the University of Nebraska Medical Center, told The Daily Beast.

The one strategy that might make an immediate dent in H5N1’s spread—the mass-vaccination of domestic chickens, geese, ducks and turkeys—faces some profound logistical obstacles.

Last year saw a period of overlapping viral outbreaks—COVID, monkeypox, even polio—so you might not have noticed the bird flu outbreak that seems to have begun in mid-2021 but really accelerated in January 2022.

In 2022 alone, the U.S. poultry industry culled—that is, killed— no fewer than 50 million chickens, geese, ducks and turkeys in an effort to slow the virus’s spread.

“Some farmers and zoo workers may be at risk, but those interaction events are going to be limited,” Tony Moody, a professor of Immunology at the Duke Human Vaccine Institute, told The Daily Beast.