Health Affairs November 14, 2025
After a summer hiatus, bird flu cases are once again ticking up in the United States. During the government shutdown, public health tracking systems stopped sharing updates, including CDC’s FluView and the National Wastewater Surveillance System (NWSS), both of which provide early warning of outbreaks.
We have been flying blind in the face of a potentially catastrophic pandemic threat.
Pandemics don’t wait for a convenient time to emerge, but they do give warning. H5N1—or bird flu—has been screaming at health experts for years. Although it is rarely found in humans, the virus may be one mutation or co-infection away from infecting large numbers of people. Pandemic influenza would make the COVID-19 pandemic look like a warm-up. A flu pandemic would...
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