BIRD FLU TWO: The Media’s Next Pandemic Panic

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In an apparent effort to keep the pandemic ratings up, the media is taking a page out of the Disney playbook and offering viewers a reboot of an old story. You may remember the “bird flu” outbreak in the U.S. in 2014-2015. Avian flu first crossed into human populations from birds back in 1997, and since has been confirmed in fewer than 1000 cases in humans. Now, it looks like bird flu is being brought back for a sequel to shore up ratings that have been falling as people become fatigued with constant COVID coverage. Noga Tarnopolsky, writing for the Daily Beast, is sounding the alarm over a “massive bird flu outbreak,” in Israel. She writes:

Israel’s National Security Council has assumed control of a massive bird flu outbreak in the Galilee, which scientists warn could become a “mass disaster” for humans.

Over half a billion migrating birds pass through the area every year, heading for warm African winters or balmy European summers, making this a catastrophic location for a major bird flu outbreak—right at the nexus of global avian travel.

The virus can be deadly if it infects people. The World Health Organization says more than half of the confirmed 863 human cases it has tracked since 2003 proved fatal. Most strains or variants of avian flu, H5N1, are relatively difficult to transmit to people.

Yossi Leshem, one of Israel’s most renowned ornithologists, told The Daily Beast, however, that it is the ability of these viruses to mutate into new strains that poses such a threat, as we have seen with the coronavirus.

“There could be a mutation that also infects people and turns into a mass disaster,” said Leshem, a zoologist at Tel Aviv University and director of the International Center for the Study of Bird Migration at Latrun.

So far, at least 5,400 wild cranes have died infected with the new H5N1 avian flu, which Israeli authorities fear could expand into a global emergency.

Of the 30,000 Eurasian cranes passing this winter at the Hula Nature Reserve, 17 percent are dead, and scientists fear the worst for their surviving brethren, at least 10,000 of which appear to be ailing. The infection of the cranes is the same strain of avian flu which infected chicken coops throughout northern Israel, and led to the cull in recent days of nearly 1 million birds.

The images of cranes dying in Israel is sad for sure, but media warnings about bird flu are probably an overblown reaction feeding on pandemic hysteria.