Why are you seeing so much misinformation already about a possible bird flu pandemic and H5N1 vaccines?

While misinformation about a bird flu pandemic is fairly new, H5N1 bird flu was first detected in 1996.

Psychics? H5N1 bird flu was first detected in 1996. After wide-spread outbreaks between 2003-05, the first H5N1 vaccine was approved by the FDA for the US national stockpile. An adjuvated H5N1 vaccine was approved in 2013 and lastly, an adjuvated H5N1 vaccine (AUDENZ) was approved for use in children in 2020. Since 2021, we have once again been seeing H5N1 outbreaks in birds and rare cases in humans.

The usual suspects...

How a Bird Flu Pandemic and H5N1 Vaccines Have Become Misinformation Hot Topics

I guess they have gotten tired of talking about turbo cancer, blood clots, and nanobots in COVID vaccines...

So what are some misinformation hot topics about bird flu that you have heard and seen?

Pushing misinformation about H5N1 vaccines has become common for anti-vaccine influencers.

The Audenz H5N1 vaccine was approved in 2020 and was neither marketed nor used in 2022. And while folks like Joe Mercola and other anti-vaccine influencers might think bird flu is a hoax, who thinks they will use a bird flu pandemic to sell supplements to make money off anyone who gets sick?

If you regularly read Robert F. Kennedy, Jr's site, you might believe that the recent news of a dairy worker getting sick with H5N1 has triggered our stockpiling H5N1 vaccine...

H5N1 vaccines are not new, despite what anti-vaccine influencers might be trying to tell you.

The first H5N1 vaccine was approved in 2007! Mary Talley Bowden is trying to make you think that bird flu vaccines were quickly made and approved just because bird flu has been in the news... In reality, health experts have been long prepared just in case we were to have a bird flu pandemic.

A stockpiling operation that began 17 years ago, in 2007!

What about the idea that natural bird flu infections are harmless to humans?

That's actually kind of true!

After all, we are talking about bird flu. Humans rarely get bird flu. Tragically, when they do get it though, those infections are often severe, even life threatening.

"From a public health perspective, we're perennially concerned about any infectious agent that has the potential to move from one species to another species, and in particular from an animal species into a human. And if that becomes the kind of virus that can transmit human-to-human, that's where we see outbreaks, epidemics, or even pandemics. Of course, the SARS-CoV-2 virus that caused the COVID-19 pandemic is one example of this, and we're still struggling with it."

How Concerned Should We Be About Bird Flu?

Still, the concern about bird flu is mostly about it becoming more common in people, especially as it has already made the jump to many other mammals, including cats, squirrels, and cows, etc.

More Bird Flu Misinformation

Have you heard any other conspiracy theories or bird flu misinformation?

Sherri Tenpenny is pushing bird flu misinformation.

Since 2022, H5N1 has been detected in 81 countries on five continents, so no, it is hardly a coincidence that a lab detected H5N1, despite what Sherri Tenpenny might say. It is everywhere!

Of course, these folks all have the idea that Bill Gates and Anthony Fauci and others have been trying to turn H5N1 into a pandemic virus.

Anti-vaccine influencers are pushing bird flu misinformation.

The bird flu virus has been around a long time and has occasionally made the jump to cats, seals, wild foxes, sea lions, and other mammals, including humans. We are seeing more infections in more mammals lately because the H5N1 pandemic in birds has been going on for a few years now, not because of a lab leak, 5G, or whatever 'they' are doing.

Influenza viruses mutate easy enough though, and don't need our help to become a pandemic strain.

Remember the 2009 H1N1 swine flu pandemic?

Anti-vaccine influencers are ramping up misinformation about H5N1 vaccines and a bird flu pandemic.

They are ramping up that misinformation about H5N1 and bird flu vaccines!

Oh wait, that might be a bad example.

A lot of these folks thought that was a hoax too...

What to Know About H5N1 Bird Flu

Instead of this kind of bird flu misinformation, know instead that:

there has been a case of H5N1 bird flu in a person in Texas (April 2024). They contracted it after exposure to dairy cattle infected with the virus.
the previous case in a person was in 2022 - this person in Colorado had exposure to infected poultry.
there have been 889 cases and 463 deaths in people from the H5N1 virus since 2003 worldwide
wild birds around the world can be infected with bird flu, often leading to outbreaks in domesticated birds (poultry)
bird flu viruses rarely infect people and even more rarely, those infected people spread the disease to another person
bird flu viruses can infect other animals, such as cows, seals, and coyotes, etc. The concern is the virus will be able to more easily mutate the more often it infects more mammals.

So again, the concern is that one of these viruses mutates enough to allow widespread, sustained, human-to-human transmission, especially of a deadly strain.

If it does, hopefully we will be ready!

How a Bird Flu Pandemic and H5N1 Vaccines Have Become Misinformation Hot Topics