Bald Eagles and Avian Flu

 

Our national symbol, the bald eagle, is suffering from a spiking death rate from avian flu.  As much as I love and worry about this magnificent bird, it is the avian flu part that keeps me up nights.

Several years ago, my book club chose The Ghost Map by Steven Johnson as one of our selections.  It is a non-fiction book about the search for the source of the cholera epidemic in London in 1854.  It is an excellent book, and, like most good authors, Johnson gives us not just historical facts, but their relevance to our modern world. He also gives us lots to think about. 

In the last chapter of The Ghost Map Johnson talks about why workers in the poultry industry in Asia are given flu shots.  The shots don’t keep them from getting avian flu, the shots keep them from getting the basic, human influenza.  Why?  Because doctors and scientists want to make sure that there is no way for the deadly avian flu to mutate into human influenza because human flu, while not so deadly as avian, is airborne—easy to transmit.  Avian flu, while extremely lethal to humans can only be passed from host (a bird) to victim (a human) through physical contact.  That is why avian flu (and it’s death rate of over 55% in humans) is thankfully rare. 

Avian Flu is running rampant right now and has been for some years.  If you want to know why egg prices are so high, don’t look to inflation, which has been at less than 3% for over two years, look at how egg prices have been inching up since avian flu began spreading in 2003.  This virus, like all viruses, is in constant evolutionary flux.  They are always seeking newer and better victims, looking for an advantage in their need to survive.  Viruses don’t plan this.  They don’t think about it.  They just respond to their environment and what works best for them gives them an edge.  They thrive, multiply and spread.  

We know what flu pandemics can do.  The Spanish flu pandemic of 1918 (which, despite its name, began in Kansas, not Spain) killed millions, but that still represented only 2% of all patients.  By contrast, on the rare occasions when avian flu passes to humans, it kills 55% of them.  Dr. Donald A. Henderson, one of the leaders in the eradication of smallpox, describes H5N1 as the ultimate organism for the destruction of humans on this planet. 

Yet there are people who, for political reasons, think flu vaccines are optional.  They think a changing climate either doesn’t exist or will make no difference in the world’s natural petri dish (warm, wet, food-rich environments).  They think that any news they don’t like, that challenges their intellect, that upsets their 1950’s era emotional applecart is fake news.  These people may well be the first ones to catch avian flu when it finally becomes transmissible human-to-human.  But they will not be the only ones.  Viruses prey on the just and unjust alike.  They don’t pick their enemies, they simply spread.  This is one reason why the conspiracy theorists who want to blame COVID on some nefarious scheme by the Chinese are wrong.  No one chooses to kill their enemy with a virus.  The virus doesn’t have an enemy, it just has hosts—Chinese, American, male, female, responsible citizen or anti-vaxxer—it doesn’t matter to the virus. 

COVID killed over 6 million people worldwide and over 1 million just in the United States.  The day avian flu becomes airborne, that virus will circle the globe and thin this human herd in a way that will make COVID look like the common cold. 

Pray for the bald eagle, pray for sanity and keep the faith.