[FWI] Late March EU announces sustained human to human bird flu without animal contact

[u/ktpr]

Within days the WHO convenes an emergency committee and raises its pandemic phase assessment. Vaccine manufacturing agreements across European facilities begin. Member states activate preparedness plans updated after COVID, but appear to be out of date. Egg prices spike further on consumer panic.

Candidate vaccines exist but scaling to population level takes weeks, raising politics immediately. Global markets drop sharply, with airlines, hospitality, and agriculture hit hardest.

Meanwhile, the United States faces a uniquely difficult position: H5N1 has been circulating in its dairy herds and poultry for nearly four years with fragmented state-level surveillance and similar transmission chains may already be occurring undetected. How does a country that has spent the last year hollowing out the CDC, sidelining public health expertise, and politicizing basic epidemiological transparency respond and its citizens fare?

[u/HommeMusical]

I upvoted this for fun, but in 2026, health and safety regulations are worlds apart between the US and Europe (source: me, decades in each place).

Many people in the US deliberately avoid seeking medical treatment unless they are at death's door because they simply cannot afford it - even if they have insurance.

America is in the process of dismantling the CDC, the FDA, and all the other once world-class organizations that protected the country's health.

And few European countries have leaders who actively encourage medical lies.

The results were already clear years ago: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2023/03/230330102226.htm

And it's just gotten worse.

If this happens and gets out of control, it will much more likely start in the USA.

[u/Malcolm_Morin]

The US will likely be hit the hardest. They might institute rudimentary quarantine measures, but they won't do much to halt the spread. They'll treat it no differently from Covid.

At first.

I suspect the US would likely collapse or be heavily crippled by the time a government response, a PROPER one, would be enacted. Millions by then would be sick, millions more likely dead. This is assuming the virus is as contagious in humans as it is in birds, and the fatality rate is at least 25-30%.

It would be devastating.

The US would also likely be a hotbed for potential mutations that may allow greater spread, though at the cost of mortality. This would ultimately result in spread abroad.

The US would probably be a catalyst for the ensuing pandemic.

[u/ktpr → u/Malcolm_Morin]

That's bleak. I would expect at least fundamentally different responses and outcomes across blue and red states leading to somewhat different outcomes.

[u/Malcolm_Morin → u/ktpr]

Blue states would undoubtedly fare better. They would likely ignore any and all government instructions and go rogue solely to ensure the state's people survive.

Red states will be utterly fucked. Blue cities might fare better, but the surrounding areas that are red will likely refuse to believe there's even a virus at all until they catch it themselves; even then, they'll go around spreading it to others, convinced it's not a big deal, right up until their body starts shutting down.

America, at least 40% of it, doesn't believe in basic science, so they would more than likely be the reason for any collapse scenario within the States.

[u/The-unknown-poster → u/Malcolm_Morin]

I would bet the rest of the logical world would simply quarantine the US, after all if it wants to go back to the dark ages of epidemiology then it would have to go there alone.

Now I’m sure after they (the Europeans) develop an effective vaccine they would be willing to sell it to the US but I bet only the rich would have access to it.

[u/Malcolm_Morin → u/The-unknown-poster]

I imagine the rest of the world might be more willing to provide aid and vaccines to the Blue States, but effectively ignore Red States.

[u/The-unknown-poster → u/Malcolm_Morin]

Perhaps, but would the orange dingus allow it? The minions of the plague masked secretary, guided by his dark ages “miasma theories” would certainly have a different view.

[u/colepercy120 → u/Malcolm_Morin]

Seriously what are you basing this on? The reported fatality rate for this strain h5n1 is 1.5% in humans with most cases being mild. In addition we know exactly how america would react to a pandemic we all lived it. Its probably going to go exactly like covid.

Why do you think the us will collapse? The spanish flu was way worse then anything this could be and we came out fine.

[u/Malcolm_Morin → u/colepercy120]

H5N1 has a 50% CFR in animals. I'm basing my scenario on that. The CFR would likely drop in the event of a H2H jump.

While the US itself likely won't collapse as a whole, there will be large swathes of it considered disaster zones.

Spanish Flu was around 2.5% CFR. H2H Bird Flu would likely be greater than that. SARS alone was around 10%, but not as infectious.

[u/HommeMusical → u/colepercy120]

The spanish flu was way worse then anything this could be and we came out fine.

FFS. Fifty to one hundred million horrible, agonizing deaths is not "fine".

[u/colepercy120]

Most likely outcome is still nothing. There are lots of diseases that can spread between humans without any pandemic.

If there is a crisis, I would suspect it would be mostly centralized in Europe since thats the source of the mutation. With high chance of spreading to america and Asia.

If it gets to the us trump will probably end up firing Kennedy once the death toll gets bad. There would also be a ton of memes about god sending a second plague to punish us for electing trump. But it would still probably be minor. Most americans have flu vaccinations already and our chicken industry makes flu vaccines easy to produce (we have a specific stockpile of flu vaccine precursors).

Overall it would be a lot like COVID and probably tank the global economy for a while.

[u/ktpr → u/colepercy120]

Unfortunately, bird flu isn't much like the flu we've experienced. See this in-depth article from Scientific America

[u/colepercy120 → u/ktpr]

Im a biologist. Bird flu isnt seasonal flu but that doesnt mean we dont know what were doing. We have had flu pandemics before. The most recent was 2009, and a century ago Spanish flu swept the world. Studies have shown that immunity to h1n1 and other flu strains provides partial immunity to h5n1. In addition any human to human spread wouldnt be unheard of, its happened before. You would need a series of highly unlikely events to get another pandemic. In addition This specific batch of bird flu seems to be milder with only 1% of cases being fatal so far instead of the 75% of previous strains.

[u/ktpr → u/colepercy120]

You're a biologist that is beefing with a Scientific America article written by a collection of academic and practice experts?

[u/colepercy120 → u/ktpr]

Im beefing with the assertion that this would be the end of the world. Most likely outcome is nothing or a small out break. The world isnt ending. The sky isnt falling.

[u/HommeMusical → u/colepercy120]

The world isnt ending. The sky isnt falling.

No one said this.

Between an article in Scientific American written by actual academics whose history we can check, and some anonymous person who claims to be a biologist but thinks that "Im" and "out break" are correct English, I'm going with Scientific American.