However, the virus, which is formally known as H5N1 avian influenza virus, has never actually passed from one human being to another, and although it can pass among certain animals, reports of it being passed from animals to humans are extremely rare.
Although these types of warnings can make people understandably jittery with the COVID-19 pandemic fresh in our memories, it is important to keep in mind that bird flu outbreaks have been reported since at least as far back as the 1880s and have not wiped humans off the planet yet.
Recent reports indicate that bird flu has been detected in poultry, wild birds and some mammals. It didn't take long for WHO Chief Scientist Jeremy Farrar to start sounding the alarm bells and saying that there is “great concern” that the virus could evolve and gain the capability to be transmitted among humans.
His warnings were quickly picked up by the mainstream media, with the Daily Mail warning that the virus could be “100 times worse than COVID” and the New York Times echoing Farrar’s concerns that it could mutate and be passed between humans.
However, all of this may prove to be little more than an effort to drum up support for a new vaccine now that interest in COVID-19 jabs and boosters has been dwindling as the world finally starts to see how risky and ineffective they are.
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This isn’t conjecture; Farrar even said as much himself, noting: “It’s a tragic thing to say, but if I get infected with H5N1 and I die, that’s the end of it. If I go around the community and I spread it to somebody else then you start the cycle.”
“We have to watch, more than watch, we have to make sure that if H5N1 did come across to humans with human-to-human transmission that we were in a position to immediately respond with access equitably to vaccines, therapeutics and diagnostics.”
Pursuing power and vaccine profits
His comments have spurred headlines like Barron’s “U.S. Could Vaccinate a Fifth of Americans in a Bird Flu Emergency” and the CNN opinion piece “The next pandemic threat demands action now.” The former indicated that the government would be able to distribute enough of its current stockpile of FDA-approved H5N1 vaccines to vaccinate roughly 20 percent of Americans within four months should the virus spread on a wide scale.
These vaccines, which are manufactured by GSK, Sanofi, and CSL Sequrius, have questionable efficacy, with some of them being developed back in 2007. Predictably, Farrar cautioned that development of H5N1 vaccines is “not where we need it to be.”
It’s also quite convenient that these warnings are coming just weeks ahead of the WHO Pandemic Agreement meetings, in which member countries are expected to vote on a controversial new Pandemic Agreement and a series of International Health Regulations amendments that will give the body broad authority when it comes to managing pandemics. The agreement will give the WHO executive powers to declare international health emergencies and override the responses of individual countries with their own mandates.
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