Pandemic airborne human-to-human bird flu could be out there right now and we could just not know.
this post was submitted on 05 Jan 2026
233 points (98.7% liked)
News
34073 readers
3178 users here now
Welcome to the News community!
Rules:
1. Be civil
Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.
2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.
Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.
3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.
Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.
4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.
Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.
5. Only recent news is allowed.
Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.
6. All posts must be news articles.
No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.
7. No duplicate posts.
If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.
8. Misinformation is prohibited.
Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.
9. No link shorteners.
The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.
10. Don't copy entire article in your post body
For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
This is very flimsy so take it for what it's worth, but I have a really bad feeling that bird flu is about to become a much bigger deal, at least in the bird population if it doesn't make the jump to humans
It's winter here, I live in an area where most of the birds migrate south for the winter. Some species don't migrate, some individuals don't, and some birds even migrate to here, so there's usually some birds around here for the winter.
This year I've seen more.
And when I'm out walking my dog at night, they're on the ground, not up in trees or in bushes where you'd expect to see birds, or even hiding out in the undergrowth of wooded areas they're out in the open on the grass, sidewalk, middle of the road, etc. in the middle of the night.
I see one almost every night, sometimes a few of them. And I have a bad feeling that these birds are sick and too weak to do much besides flutter away to a different patch of grass when I get close.
I've been in this house for about 5 years, been taking my dog for walks almost every night since then, rain or shine, summer or winter. This isn't something I've seen until this year. And I've seen it in a handful of places outside of my neighborhood as well.
It may be me being paranoid, it may be something other than bird flu, but it's not exactly giving me the warm-fuzzies.
Not to destroy any scraps of warm fuzzies you may have left, you're right to worry. It's foolish so many are ignoring how big of a threat this really is.
In October a review was published in JAMA showing that bird flu can be asymptomatic and that these cases are likely confirmation human to human transmission has already occurred (the asymptomatic individuals came in direct contact with a symptomatic person infected by an animal).
Rick Bright, (who was fired for going against Trump on COVID during his first administration) wrote a commentary about it https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2840687
When you hear dumbasses like Dr. Oz apparently downplaying the importance of getting the flu vaccine, it's hard to believe their response to another pandemic (when they have even more power and fewer safety nets) will be anything but a disaster.
When you hear dumbasses like Dr. Oz apparently downplaying the importance of getting the flu vaccine, it’s hard to believe their response to another pandemic (when they have even more power and fewer safety nets) will be anything but a disaster.
We don't even have to guess. We saw how Taco and his most ardent supporters treated science.
I think we know exactly how terrible they'd be about another pandemic, since he's even less restrained than he was before. There won't be a Fauci around this time...
It's not scientific, but sometimes your gut instinct is your brain taking in a lot of data and processing it subconsciously. When animals act out of sorts, it's probably something. Could be not sickness, but just a lack of food due to other things in nature having problems.
Monitor the trend and avoid contact of whatever the birds frequently sit on
Finishing what the asteroids started; sending the last of the dinosaurs back to their fucking maker.
A human story.
Is this new shitshow of a "CDC" just reporting Covid as "just the flu" now, though?
Shot by fascist police in cold blood? Flu.
Like we can trust the CDC, so it's 100x worse because "if we don't report then it doesn't exist"
They're still doing their part. If the currently compromised CDC is reporting an increase in a disease, that means it's bad and they can't pretend it's fine.
I'm less shocked about the metrics than this administration allowing the CDC to pubslish them.
They'll fix that right away! CDC shouldn't report that anymore! Problem fixed!
Its definitely a big uptick here in my city since the week before Christmas and it was way more apparent with the amount of sick people still trying to commute to work with public transit today after the holidays have ended. Also directly dealing with about 80/20 sick people atm with my job, seems meds are the main thing people are wanting expressed atm.
Wait, the CDC still collects data? Somebody ought to do something about that!
So do the Covid stats reflect “flu like” data in the past? As in, is the current trend worse than the apex of covid? Or is that different?
[x] doubt