With reports of the first human death from bird flu in the US, some Americans are feeling an uncomfortable flashback to the early days of Covid-19, when infectious disease experts were talking about a new virus that was sending people to the hospital with respiratory infections.

Bird Flu Is One Step Closer to Mixing with Seasonal Flu Virus and Becoming a Pandemic Wastewater in several Californian cities, including San Francisco and Los Angeles, recently tested positive for bird flu. But understanding disease risk and exposure to humans isn’t so straightforward

A variant of the virus caused disease in people in 1997, when there was a small but deadly outbreak in Hong Kong. Eighteen people had confirmed diagnoses, and six of them died. Since then, there have been sporadic cases around the world—but no large outbreaks.

A child in San Francisco who had red eyes and a fever had a probable case of H5N1 bird flu, according to the city’s Department of Public Health.

The first known death from a bird flu virus in the US has sparked fears about another pandemic, yet the overall risk to the general public still remains low

Medical experts advise that people should get a vaccine for the bird flu when it becomes commercially available. One doctor said the most at-risk patients should be first.

The experiment of whether H5 can ever be successful in human populations is happening before our eyes,” Seema Lakdawala, a flu virologist at Emory University, told me. “And we are doing nothing to stop it.

Though the bird flu has spread across multiple states in cattle and other birds, infections in mammals remain low, according to the CDC.

San Francisco public-health officials said Friday the bird-flu risk to the general public is low following the discovery of The City’s first presumptive case. The Department of Public Health announced the discovery days after U.