Immunity to seasonal flu protects against severe illness from bird flu in ferrets

A study in ferrets — which have remarkably similar respiratory systems to humans — suggests that widespread immunity to H1N1 seasonal influenza virus may explain why exposure to H5N1 bird flu causes only mild symptoms in humans

Penn State

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UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — The fatality rate for H5N1 highly pathogenic avian influenza in humans historically has been high, with more than half of people dying. Why, then, is the current H5N1 bird flu outbreak — which has caused massive die-offs in wild birds, farmed poultry and even wild mammals — causing mostly mild symptoms in the people it has infected? New research, led by scientists at Penn State and the University of Pittsburgh and published today (July 23) in the journal Science Translational Medicine, indicates that immunity to a seasonal influenza virus known as pandemic H1N1 that began circulating in 2009, provides protection from severe illness from H5N1 in a laboratory animal model.

“Every person has been exposed to H1N1 as the virus caused a pandemic in 2009 and is now the predominant circulating influenza strain in 1 out of every 3-4 years” said lead author Troy Sutton, associate professor of veterinary and biomedical sciences at Penn State. “Our findings suggest that this immunity is protective against the more recent H5N1 strain and may explain why we’re seeing fewer cases and less severe disease than we would expect.”

H5N1 viruses from clade 2.3.4.4b emerged in 2020 and were carried around the world by wild migratory birds, where they have since infected farmed poultry, wild mammals and, most recently, dairy cattle. As of June 2025, 70 human cases of H5N1 have been confirmed in the United States with one death. Most of the individuals were exposed to dairy cows or poultry and exhibited mild symptoms of conjunctivitis, fever and cough, among others. By contrast, previous human infections with H5N1 resulted in far more severe symptoms, such as seizures and respiratory failure, and some infected people died from the infection or related complications.  

"We wanted to know why H5N1 2.3.4.4b was not causing severe outcomes so we investigated whether pre-existing immunity to seasonal influenza could be providing protection," said Katherine Restori, assistant research professor of veterinary and biomedical sciences, Penn State. Restori explained that this research was conducted in ferrets, which are widely recognized as one of the best animal models for studying influenza virus infections.

To conduct their study, Sutton and his colleagues, including Valerie LeSage, research assistant professor, University of Pittsburgh, who co-led the research, studied ferrets with immunity to three common types of seasonal flu: Influenza B, H1N1 and H3N2. They also studied a control group of ferrets that had no immunity to flu. Ninety days after infecting the ferrets with these common seasonal flu viruses, the team confirmed immunity by testing the animals’ blood for antibodies. Next, the team exposed the ferrets through an inoculation in the nose to a version of the H5N1 virus that caused an outbreak on mink farms in Spain in 2022.

They found that all the ferrets without immunity to the seasonal flu viruses, as well as those with immunity to Influenza B, became sick, lost weight and reached a humane endpoint. The H3N2-immune ferrets lost 10% of their body weight but all survived. In contrast, the ferrets with immunity to H1N1 did not lose any weight and all survived.

Next, the team studied the potential protective effects of the same three seasonal influenza viruses against the more recent H5N1 virus that has been circulating in dairy cattle. This time, instead of inoculating the ferrets with H5N1 in the nose, the team exposed ferrets with immunity to H1N1, H3N2, or without immunity to a seasonal virus, to ferrets already infected with an H5N1 virus from dairy cows. Sutton said by examining exposure to H5N1-infected ferrets, the team could assess the transmissibility of the virus in addition to the effects of pre-existing immunity.

The researchers found that upon exposure to ferrets with dairy cow H5N1 infections, ferrets without any influenza immunity rapidly developed severe and lethal disease. When exposed to H5N1-infected ferrets, all the ferrets with pre-existing immunity to H3N2 became infected and replicating H5N1 virus was detected in their noses. These ferrets lost weight and half of them reached a humane endpoint. In contrast, only half of the ferrets previously infected with the 2009 H1N1 virus became infected, and the infected animals were protected against disease and had very low levels of viral replication in the nose.

“These findings demonstrate that pre-existing immunity to the 2009 H1N1 virus or H3N2 virus reduces the severity of H5N1 disease, with H1N1 providing even greater protection than H3N2,” Sutton said. “This study provides a potential explanation for the mostly mild disease we are seeing in humans, as humans already have immunity to H1N1.” However, Sutton noted, as the H5N1 virus continues to circulate in animals, it has opportunities to evolve to become more dangerous.

Experiments using the mink H5N1 and dairy cattle H5N1 viruses were performed in Penn State’s biosafety level 3 Eva J. Pell Laboratory for Advanced Biological Research. This facility is approved by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and United States of Department of Agriculture for work with highly pathogenic avian influenza. All experiments were performed in compliance with all local, state and federal rules and regulations.

Other Penn State authors on the paper include Veronika Weaver, research technologist; Devanshi Patel, graduate student; Kayla Septer, graduate student; Cassandra Field, graduate student; Michael J. Bernabe, graduate student; Ethan Kronthal, graduate student; Allen Minns, research technician; and Scott Lindner, associate professor of biochemistry and molecular biology. Grace Merrbach, laboratory research technician, University of Pittsburgh, and Seema Lakdawala, associate professor of microbiology and immunology, Emory University, also are authors of the paper.

The National Institutes of Health, Centers of Excellence for Influenza Research and Response (CEIRR) and United States of Department of Agriculture supported this research.

At Penn State, researchers are solving real problems that impact the health, safety and quality of life of people across the commonwealth, the nation and around the world. 

For decades, federal support for research has fueled innovation that makes our country safer, our industries more competitive and our economy stronger. Recent federal funding cuts threaten this progress. 

Learn more about the implications of federal funding cuts to our future at Research or Regress.  

 

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Journal

Science Translational Medicine

DOI

10.1126/scitranslmed.adw4856 

 

Is Europe doing enough to prepare for bird flu risks?

Copyright Alberto Pezzali/AP Photo

By Gabriela Galvin

Published on 26/05/2025 - 

Public health risks remain low, but experts in Europe are calling for more surveillance given the virus is so widespread among birds.

As bird flu spreads across Europe and jumps to more animal species, health experts warn that gaps in surveillance and preparedness could leave the region vulnerable to future threats to human health.

Avian influenza has been spreading at elevated levels worldwide over the past five years, including in wild and farm birds in the European Union. 

Hungary has reported the most outbreaks since last autumn, followed by Germany, the Netherlands, and poultry giant Poland.

But in recent years, bird flu has also spread to mink, cats, a captive bear, and other mammals, raising the risk that the virus will eventually reach people.

Tens of millions of birds and other animals have been culled to keep that from happening, but gaps in surveillance systems increase the likelihood that the virus could circulate undetected and become harder to control.

Related

• Bird flu cases spreading faster and with greater impacts - report

Since 2003, about half of the nearly 1,000 people infected with H5N1 bird flu globally have died.

Now, EU health officials say public health risks remain low, and there is no evidence of human-to-human transmission. But preparations are already underway: the European Commission recently clinched a deal to secure more than 27 million influenza vaccines in case of a pandemic.

Monitoring bird flu

Officials are also eyeing an outbreak among dairy cows in the United States – which has spread to people, infecting 70 and killing one – as a reminder to monitor animals beyond birds and mink, which are more prone to infection.

“It's not a time to really sit back and relax and say, ‘oh well, this is just business as usual,’” Marion Koopmans, who directs the centre of excellence at the Global Virus Network and leads the viroscience department at Erasmus Medical Centre in the Netherlands, told Euronews Health.

Related

• Bird flu: UN experts raise alarm over growing risks to food supply

“It has really changed compared with just a few years ago,” she added. “It’s not a good situation to have”.

EU countries actively monitor wild birds and poultry for avian influenza. When they find infections, they must take steps to stamp out the virus, such as culling birds and imposing farm restrictions.

Now, with the US cattle outbreak in mind, the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) is working with member states to boost surveillance in cows and other mammals, according to Alessandro Broglia, one of the agency’s senior scientists.

“There is a kind of reactivity and enhanced preparedness in Europe, also to prevent the infection in cattle and other farm animals,” Broglia told Euronews Health.

Related

• EU experts warn: Emerging avian flu mutations could adapt to humans and increase risks

Vaccination is also playing a bigger role. In 2023, France began immunising birds, a move it says has helped its poultry industry recover after outbreaks ravaged its farms and annihilated tens of millions of birds.

And last summer, Finland became the first EU country to offer bird flu vaccines to people, doling out jabs to 10,000 workers who were at higher risk of infection.

Even so, EU audits have identified gaps in these systems that could be just large enough for the virus to slip through undetected.

Weaknesses in prevention

Over the past two years, they have found delays in setting up restriction zones to prevent the virus from spreading in Poland; “limited effectiveness” in Portugal's early warning system for poultry infections; shortcomings in investigations of suspected cases in Spain; and poor risk assessment, a lack of surveillance, and inadequately trained staff in Hungary that constitute “crucial weaknesses” that have not been rectified since the country was last audited in 2020.

Related

• 3-year-old girl in Mexico dies of bird flu in country's first human case

A Commission spokesperson told Euronews Health that Spain and Portugal have taken steps to fix these issues, but that it is “seeking additional commitments” from Hungary and Poland, which suspended poultry exports last month due to outbreaks.

Alexandre Fediaevsky, acting head of preparedness and resilience at the World Organisation for Animal Health (WOAH), said that “in all countries, Europe included, there is still some room for improving biosecurity and early warning systems”.

But there has been some resistance from some farmers and poultry industry groups, who fear new rules and restrictions could threaten their businesses.

“We need to have some strategic dialogue with the industry,” Fediaevsky told Euronews Health, but “it will be a long process to really transform the production systems”.

Related

• Measles, beef fat, and bird flu: What Europeans say about RFK Jr’s Make America Healthy Again agenda

The EU and the US are not the only places grappling with elevated bird flu risks. Last week, the Commission said poultry and meat imports from Brazil had been halted after the country confirmed its first bird flu outbreak on a farm.

For now, bird flu appears to pose a greater risk to the EU’s food supply than to public health. However, Koopmans warned that without stronger measures to curb the virus’ spread among birds, the bloc could be caught off guard if human infections begin to emerge.

et's also not become negligent,” she said, “because this is how these viruses eventually trigger pandemics”.

A Dead World, Plastic-Wrapped to Preserve Freshness

If people who try to steer clear of plastics are still thoroughly enmeshed in them, what does that say for everyone else? And how worried should we all be?

A globe is covered in plastic wrap.
(Photo: Adobe Stock)


LONG READ


Richard Heinberg
May 26, 2025

Common Dreams

In the classic 1967 film The Graduate, a family friend of lead character Benjamin Braddock (played by Dustin Hoffman) offers him career advice: “One word. Plastics!”



I was 16 when The Graduate was released, and, like Hoffman’s character, completely uninterested in plastics as a career option. But here we are nearly six decades later, and I must admit that, from a purely economic standpoint, Benjamin Braddock received a smart tip.

World plastics production exploded over the intervening decades, from about 25 million metric tons in 1967 to roughly 450 million in 2024. The stock prices of plastics manufacturers soared as the industry expanded, capitalizing on research into new kinds of (and ways of using) synthetic, polymer-based materials. Seemingly endless varieties of vinyl, polystyrene, acrylic, and polyurethane could be extruded, injection-molded, pressed, or spun into a blizzard of products with a stunning array of desirable properties—including durability, disposability, flexibility, hardness, insulative properties, heat resistance, and tensile strength. Plastic was cheap and it could take on any shape or color. It was a magic material that could do almost anything. Soon it was everywhere: in toys, packaging, fabrics, paints, building supplies, medical devices, car interiors, electronics, and more.





The chemical stability of plastics meant that, as objects made of it were eventually discarded, shards and particles would make their way into the natural environment and persist there. Today, traces of plastic can be found everywhere on our planet—in rivers, the air, Arctic snow, at the tops of mountains and bottoms of seas, in plants and soil, and in the bodies of animals from insects to humans.

If fossil fuels enabled the modern age by providing the energy for industrial expansion, they also radically altered the materials that both support and imperil human life. Most plastics are made from fossil fuels, and, like it or not, we now live in an age of oil and plastic. Since fossil fuels are finite, depleting resources, this age will necessarily be brief in geologic terms. If there are future geologists and archaeologists, they will easily identify strata from our fleeting era by evidence of the rapid growth (and decline) of human numbers and their environmental impact, and by durable materials we have left behind—many of which will be plastics.

In this article, we’ll explore plastic’s impacts on humans and nature. And I’ll indulge in a little speculation on the world after plastic.

Humans: Swimming in Plastic

My wife Janet and I have been concerned about plastic pollution for years. We keep food in glass containers, and we use fabric shopping bags. And yet, looking around our house, I see plastic everywhere. The keyboard on which I type this article is plastic. So is the computer monitor in front of me. Even the cloth shopping bags we use (to avoid single-use polyethylene bags) have plastic as a fabric component and are sewn with nylon thread. If people who try to steer clear of plastics are still thoroughly enmeshed in them, what does that say for everyone else? And how worried should we all be?

Scientific data on the human health impacts of environmental plastic, and especially microplastics, has burgeoned in recent years. We eat microplastics, inhale them, and absorb them through our skin. They can impair respiratory and cardiovascular health and disrupt the normal functioning of digestive systems. Studies have shown that microplastics can induce persistent oxidative stress, inflammation, and DNA damage, and are implicated in chronic diseases like cancer.

One potentially existential impact, explored in Shanna Swan’s book Count Down (and my recent article on the subject) is the impact of plastics and other chemicals on sperm counts and women’s reproductive health. Men’s average sperm counts have declined by over half in the last 50 years. During the same period, estrogen-mimicking synthetic chemicals (including plastics) have proliferated in the environment. Correlation does not prove causation, but research has shown clear pathways by which plastics-related chemicals disrupt reproductive cells and systems. One of the most widespread disruptors of sperm cells is a group of chemicals called phthalates, which we absorb from plastic food packaging. Phthalates are easily measured in urine, and elevated levels typically follow the consumption of plastic-packaged cheese.

Often there simply is no option for receiving the health benefit of supplements, organic foods, medical care, and medicines without a concomitant exposure to health-compromising plastics.

Here's another correlation in which causation is implicated, though in this case still unproven: As sperm counts are declining, so are population growth rates, with global human population set to shrink in the decades ahead (many countries are seeing plummeting fertility rates, while others are still adding population rapidly). While some environmentalists are breathing a sigh of relief, since fewer people could translate to reduced pollution and resource depletion, growthist commentators see population shrinkage as a crisis requiring heroic pushback; hence the recent rise of pronatalism in many nations. Falling birthrates are usually ascribed to families delaying childbirth for economic reasons, but the reproductive impacts of chemical pollution cannot be ruled out as a contributing cause. In a recent article, chemistry professor Ugo Bardi argues that the link between plastics and plummeting fertility is real, and that the result will be, in the best case, a shrinking and aging population; in the worst case, extinction.

Just as frightening as losing the ability to reproduce is losing the ability to think. Recent studies have documented the presence of microplastics in the human brain. Of even greater concern is the finding that the brains of dementia patients tend to contain more plastic particles than others. Are plastics a cause of dementia? We don’t know yet.

Trying personally to avoid the dangers of plastics invites irony and contradiction. An example that springs to mind is the food supplements industry. Its products appeal to consumers who seek “natural” health benefits from vitamins and other micronutrients. Yet most of the health-promoting pills, powders, and potions that consumers take are delivered in plastic bottles; even glass bottles are often shrink-wrapped. Much the same could be said for pharmaceuticals: Most are plastic packaged. Similarly, the food industry, including its health-food segment, relies on sanitation and food preservation typically entailing plastics. Often there simply is no option for receiving the health benefit of supplements, organic foods, medical care, and medicines without a concomitant exposure to health-compromising plastics.

Nature: Shrink Wrapped



(Photo: Adobe Stock)

If the negative impacts of plastic affected only humans, it might be possible (though callous) to say that our overly clever species is just reaping its just deserts. However, those impacts are falling on other creatures as well, and on whole ecosystems. As a result, our entire planet is being transformed—and not in a good way.

Let’s start with water. As Jeremy Rifkin argues in Planet Aqua: Rethinking Our Home in the Universe, life is all about water. Unsurprisingly, plastic pollution is typically swept via storm drains into streams, rivers, and lakes, which supply drinking water for local communities.

Rivers then carry plastic particles (as well as plastic bags, toys, and other larger objects) into the oceans—which provide the world with food and oxygen, regulate the global climate, and are home to between 50 and 80% of all life on Earth. Intact plastic objects, such as single-use shopping bags, may entangle, or clog the digestive systems of, animals such as fish, whales, and sea turtles, in some cases causing them to die of malnutrition. Gradually, the churning of ocean waters breaks these objects down into smaller and smaller particles, which even more marine creatures ingest. Ocean plastics also impact the overall health and function of marine ecosystems by altering habitats, such as by changing the physical structure of coral reefs and seagrass beds. A widely cited 2016 report by the World Economic Forum estimated that by mid-century, plastics in the world’s oceans will outweigh all the remaining fish.

They don’t just harm the humans who have unleashed them. They impact all of life.

Microplastics are dispersed not just in water, but also in the atmosphere. In an urban environment, humans may be exposed to as many as 5,700 microplastic particles per cubic meter of air, and each of us may be inhaling up to 22,000,000 micro- and nanoplastics (i.e., particles less than a micron in size) annually. The human health impacts of airborne plastics are increasingly being documented; however, atmospheric micro- and nanoplastics likewise affect other creatures. They even change the weather by promoting cloud formation, thereby increasing rain- and snowfall.

From water and air, plastics pass into the soil. Also, plastics enter farm soils by deliberate human action—in processed sewage sludge used for fertilizer, in plastic mulches, and in slow-release fertilizers and protective seed coatings. Some estimates suggest that, altogether, more plastics end up in soils than in the oceans. Studies have shown that microplastics alter soil bulk density, microbial communities, and water-holding capacity.

From water, air, and soil, plants take up micro- and nanoplastics. Research suggests that microplastics generally have a negative effect on plant development, affecting both seed germination and root or shoot growth, depending on environmental conditions, plant species, and plastic concentration.

From water, air, soil, and plants, microplastics enter the bodies of humans and other animals. We’ve already noted impacts on human reproductive health. Similar impacts on hormones and sperm have been observed in wild mink in Canada and Sweden, alligators in Florida, crustaceans in the U.K., and in fish downstream from wastewater treatment plants around the world.

The environmental impact of plastics is complicated and often indirect, as plastics collect and spread other pollutants. While some plastics are themselves relatively inert, they accumulate other chemicals on their surface—including persistent organic pollutants (POPs), heavy metals, and antibiotics—and serve as dispersal vectors, thereby leading to an overall increase of toxicity and bioaccumulation in the environment.

In short, plastic particles are now systemically present worldwide. While it may be possible to remove large plastic objects from oceans, rivers, creeks, or shorelines, microplastics can’t be cleaned up at scale by any means currently widely deployed. They are part of the biosphere and are changing the way nature functions. They don’t just harm the humans who have unleashed them. They impact all of life.
The World After Plastics

Many folks’ first response upon learning of the dire impacts of plastics pollution is to explore alternative materials. Prior to the plastics revolution, people used objects made of wood, stone, metal, clay, glass, animal skin or bone, and plant fibers. In many instances we could revert to those materials, though often with a sacrifice of affordability or durability. Researchers are finding ways to increase desirable qualities in traditional materials; for example, one company promises to produce wood stronger than steel.

Bioplastics have been around for nearly two centuries in the form of the celluloid once used by the early motion picture industry and fountain pen manufacturers. However, because they often lack the durability of petro-plastic, bioplastics’ main current usage is largely confined to disposable cutlery and plates, and biodegradable supermarket produce bags. Ongoing research will likely expand the range and usefulness of bioplastic materials.

Plastics recycling has been explored since the 1980s; still, after nearly a half-century, most recycling facilities reject the great majority of plastic items that make it into recycle bins (most items go directly into trash bins and hence to landfills that leach toxics). There is research underway by plastics manufacturers to make their products more recyclable, but those efforts are in their infancy.

Even though it’s hard to avoid plastics, make your best effort.

Perhaps the best hopes for cleaning up some of the plastics already choking our environment lie with bioremediation processes using bacteria and mushrooms. Small-scale trials, using a variety of species, show promising results for removing plastics from water and soil, though the atmosphere will pose a bigger challenge.

The transition to alternative materials, the development of more useful bioplastics, the growth of plastics recycling, and plastics bioremediation all confront two formidable obstacles—scale and speed. Currently, the scale of these solutions is too small, and their rate of adoption is too slow to make much of a difference. That is unlikely to change without government regulations to discourage the use of current plastics along with subsidies to promote alternatives and cleanup efforts. Such post-plastic regulations and subsidies might be seen as one of the Big Solutions needed (along with the global energy transition from fossil fuels to renewables, intended to slow climate change) to keep the current global polycrisis from descending into an unstoppable Great Unraveling. But, with the advent of the second Trump administration, Big Solutions are no longer a priority for the world’s economic, military, and cultural superpower. Indeed, the Trump administration is overturning efforts to rein in a range of harmful chemicals and has thrown climate action into reverse gear. Without U.S. leadership, campaigns to forge global solution treaties will probably be stymied.

So, it is unlikely that government policy will halt the global proliferation of plastics and plastic pollution. In contrast, resource depletion, spasmodic economic and financial contraction, deglobalization, and war are more likely to be limiting factors.

Sadly, however, by the time falling rates of fossil fuel extraction close the spigot on world plastics production, we will be living in a world even more contaminated with plastics. And those plastics will continue to break down into ever smaller bits. They won’t fully decompose into harmless molecules for a very long time, if ever. While plastics are expected to last decades or centuries, one expert argues they may never really go away.

Even after the end of the age of plastics, its wake of destruction will persist. In the worst instance, if sperm counts continue to plummet, higher life could mostly disappear, at least for a few million years. Eventually, evolution will probably find a way to work around microplastics and the other hazards that humanity has generated in just the past century or two. But our species may not be part of that workaround.

What can any of us do in the face of this profound dilemma? First, treat plastics and toxics proliferation as the existential crisis it is. Educate others: Share this article with friends and sign up for the free live PCI online event, “Troubled Waters: How Microplastics are Impacting Our Oceans and Our Health.” Contact your elected representatives. Although President Donald Trump has embraced the fossil fuel industry, and federal health agencies are undertaking worrisome actions, there could be opportunities to raise the issue of plastics—many of which are produced outside the U.S.—with folks in the MAGA and MAHA worlds.
Second, take the crisis personally. Even though it’s hard to avoid plastics, make your best effort. There are multiple products, websites, and influencers to help you reduce your personal plastic consumption.

Third, make plastics reduction and cleanup a focus of community action. Spend an hour each week picking up plastic garbage in your local creek. Bonus points if you get some friends and neighbors to help. It may seem like a paltry response in the face of the enormity of the threat, but it’s certainly better than nothing. You’ll feel more engaged, less victimized. Maybe the exercise you get will improve your brain function and you’ll be able to think of even more and better ways to defeat the plasticization of our planet and our future.

Note: This is one of the most depressing articles I’ve ever written. Near the beginning of the article, I shared how my wife and I try (mostly unsuccessfully) to avoid plastic. I went on to build the case that humanity is toying with life on Earth, all for short-term profit and convenience. That’s truly dispiriting. I concluded with some ideas for de-plasticizing. I hope you’ll run with some of these ideas, and I just want to say that I intend to take my own advice and double down on my efforts to eliminate plastic from the scene.


Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.


Richard Heinberg
Richard Heinberg is a senior fellow at the Post Carbon Institute and the author of fourteen books, including his most recent: "Power: Limits and Prospects for Human Survival" (2021). Previous books include: "Our Renewable Future: Laying the Path for One Hundred Percent Clean Energy" (2016), "Afterburn: Society Beyond Fossil Fuels" (2015), and "Peak Everything: Waking Up to the Century of Declines" (2010).
Full Bio >

Scapegoating Wild Birds Won’t Solve Avian Flu: We Need Radical Farming Reform

As we reflect on the wonder of migratory birds, and the spotlight focuses on how our cities and communities can be made more bird-friendly, we must also consider how our food system is posing a threat to their very existence.


South Korean health officials inspect a rice field frequented by migrating birds in Seosan, 130 kilometers (78 miles) southwest of Seoul, on November 24, 2006.
(Photo: Jeon Young-Han/AFP via Getty Images)

Peter Stevenson
May 10, 2025

Common Dreams

For migratory and other wild birds, bird flu is a disaster. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, or CDC, states that 169 million U.S. poultry have been affected by highly pathogenic bird flu since January 2022. Yet worldwide, tens of millions of wild birds have died of bird flu—which has also spread to mammals, including over 1,000 US. dairy herds.

Saturday 10 May is World Migratory Bird Day, a global event for raising awareness of migratory birds and issues related to their conservation. The poultry industry and governments like to blame wild birds for bird flu. However, the Scientific Task Force on Avian Influenza and Wild Birds—which includes the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the World Organization for Animal Health (WOAH) stresses that wild birds are in fact the victims of highly pathogenic bird flu; they do not cause it. As a recent study states, “This panzootic did not emerge from nowhere, but rather is the result of 20 years of viral evolution in the ever-expanding global poultry population.”

Until recently, the bird flu viruses that circulate naturally in wild birds were usually of low pathogenicity; they generally caused little harm to the birds. It is when it gets into industrial poultry sheds—often on contaminated clothing, feed, or equipment—that low pathogenic avian influenza can evolve into dangerous highly pathogenic avian influenza.

Governments worldwide appear to have no strategy for how to end these regular bird flu outbreaks other than to hope they will eventually die down.

Industrial poultry production, in which thousands of genetically similar, stressed birds are packed into a shed, gives a virus a constant supply of new hosts; it can move very quickly among the birds, perhaps mutating as it does so. In this situation, highly virulent strains can rapidly emerge. The European Food Safety Authority warns that it is important to guard against certain low pathogenic avian influenza subtypes entering poultry farms “as these subtypes are able to mutate into their highly pathogenic forms once circulating in poultry.”

Once highly pathogenic avian influenza strains have developed in poultry farms, they can then be carried back outside—for example, through the large ventilation fans used in intensive poultry operations—and spread to wild birds. The Scientific Task Force states that since the mid-2000s spillover of highly pathogenic bird flu from poultry to wild birds has occurred “on multiple occasions.”

So, low pathogenic bird flu is spread from wild birds to intensive poultry where it can mutate into highly pathogenic bird flu, which then spills over to wild birds and can even return back to poultry in a growing and continuing vicious circle.

Following its evolution in farmed poultry, the highly pathogenic virus has adapted to wild birds, meaning that it is circulating independently in wild populations, with some outbreaks occurring in remote areas that are distant from any poultry farms.
Is There a Health Risk for Humans?


While the health risk to humans from bird flu may be low, it cannot be ignored. Highly pathogenic avian influenza has spread to mammals including otters, foxes, seals, dolphins, sea lions, dogs, and bears. Worryingly, it has been found in a Spanish mink farm where it then was able to spread from one infected mink to another.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture has said that cow-to-cow transmission is a factor in the spread of bird flu in dairy herds. The ability for bird flu to move directly from one mammal to another is troubling as a pandemic could ensue if it could move directly from one human to another.

Scientists at Scripps Research reveal that a single mutation in the H5N1 virus that has recently infected U.S. dairy cows could enhance the virus’ ability to attach to human cells, potentially increasing the risk of passing from person to person.

A 2023 joint statement from the World Health Organization, the FAO, and WOAH stated that, while avian influenza viruses normally spread among birds, “the increasing number of H5N1 avian influenza detections among mammals—which are biologically closer to humans than birds are—raises concern that the virus might adapt to infect humans more easily.”

Some mammals may also act as mixing vessels, leading to the emergence of new viruses that could be more harmful.
Pigs as Mixing Vessels

Pigs can be infected by avian and human influenza viruses as well as swine influenza viruses. Pigs can act as mixing vessels in which these viruses can reassort (i.e. swap genes) and new viruses that are a mix of pig, bird, and human viruses can emerge. The U.S. CDC explains that if the resulting new virus infects humans and can spread easily from person to person, a flu pandemic can occur.
Need for a Coherent Strategy to End Bird Flu

Governments worldwide appear to have no strategy for how to end these regular bird flu outbreaks other than to hope they will eventually die down. There is no sign of this happening. Without an exit strategy we are likely to face repeated, devastating outbreaks of bird flu for years to come. We need an action plan to restructure the poultry and pig sectors to reduce their capacity for generating highly pathogenic diseases.

We need to:Move to a poultry sector with smaller flocks and lower stocking densities to give the birds more space. Transmission and amplification of bird flu would be much less likely in such conditions.

End the practice of clustering a large number of poultry farms close together in a particular area. Between-farm spread is a major contributor to the transmission of highly pathogenic bird flu.

End the use of birds genetically selected for very fast growth. Such birds have impaired immune systems making them more susceptible to disease.

In light of pigs’ capacity for acting as mixing vessels for human, avian, and swine influenza viruses, the pig sector too needs to be restructured to make it less vulnerable to the transmission and amplification of influenza viruses. As with poultry, this would involve reducing stocking densities, smaller group sizes, and avoiding concentrating large numbers of farms in a particular area.

As we reflect on the wonder of migratory birds, and the spotlight focuses on how our cities and communities can be made more bird-friendly, we must also consider how our food system is posing a threat to their very existence. Failure to rethink industrial farming leaves us vulnerable, with the continued devastation of wild birds and poultry, and perhaps even a human pandemic.

Peter Stevenson is the chief policy adviser of Compassion in World Farming.
Full Bio >

Gatsby Meets Nietzsche on the Train to Town

by Edward Curtin / May 9th, 2025

“Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future
And time future contained in time past.
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.” – T.S. Eliot, The Four Quartets

“You can’t repeat the past,” says Nick Carraway to Jay Gatsby in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, which was published one hundred years ago this spring.

Gatsby responds incredulously, “Can’t repeat the past? Why of course you can!”

This often quoted exchange is typically used to exhibit Gatsby’s delusions, but he may have been right, in the wrong way.

A deep reading of the book suggests it offers the perfect description of today’s political and cultural life, in Nick’s words: “a satisfactory hint of the unreality of reality, a promise that the rock of the world was founded securely on a fairy’s wings.”

Commentating on the Roaring Twenties as they started to meow, Fitzgerald later wrote, “By 1927 a widespread neurosis began to be evident, faintly signaled, like a nervous beating of the feet, by the popularity of crossword puzzles.” He said that once “pretty much of anything went“ at Cap d’Antibes on the French Riviera near where he and his wife Zelda had lived for a while. It also was an apt description of New York City and other places where the wild life of the post-World War I reaction was in full force. It was not just speakeasies, jazz, and a sexual revolution, but the first full-blown phase of the technological and commercial world we know today. The 1920s’ modernism, with its ethos of the prohibition to prohibit still somewhat limited to certain cities, was the seedbed for postmodernism’s vastly expanded and deeper rooted transformation of cultural mores today where anything goes.

But by the late 1920s, tamed by political and economic world events, personal disillusionment from the war’s reality, and hangovers from unbridled excess, dispirited days followed, only to be followed by deeper depressions emanating from the stock market crash, followed by the Great Depression, and World War II.

Nevertheless, in 1934 Cole Porter wrote the song, Anything Goes, for the musical by the same name, that, despite being censored for its naughty lyrics, captured in witty words the aftereffects of a world where the old mores were dying as the world was sailing into disaster on a ship of fools.

In olden days, a glimpse of stocking
Was looked on as something shocking
But now, God knows
Anything goes

Good authors too who once knew better words
Now only use four-letter words
Writing prose
Anything goes
………………………………………………………………………
The world has gone mad today
And good’s bad today
And black’s white today
And day’s night today
………………………………………………………………………
Just think of those shocks you’ve got
And those knocks you’ve got
And those blues you’ve got
From that news you’ve got
And those pains you’ve got
If any brains you’ve got

It was also in the mid-nineteen thirties that Fitzgerald penned three essays for Esquire magazine about his personal breakdown that were posthumously collected in 1945 in The Crackup. Fitzgerald barely made it through the 1930s, dying in 1940 as WW II was underway, the confirmation that WW I was not “the war to end all wars.”

From “shell shock” to economic shock to “combat fatigue” to post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), the wars rolled on over millions of corpses and destroyed countries. They roll on still. The toll on the combatants and victims is obvious, but the crackups among those who danced through the carnage or sat fat and seemingly satisfied or indifferent remains unknown.

Still does, as indifference reigns with bi-partisan savagery hidden behind illusory party politics that shroud rule by the monied class via a systemic duopoly. Their elitism and materialism – for which some critics have dismissed Fitzgerald’s book because he describes and castigates its ugly characters and their careless indifference to regular people – define the lifestyles of those who today own the country yet are the envy of so many people besotted by celebrity worship and wish they too were immoral billionaires running the show.

Gatsby is set in the 1920s, but one could easily rewrite the story today – because it is a recurring American tragedy and is repeating – with some figure like Donald Trump cast as Gatsby. But Gatsby or Trump or Daisy or the racist Tom Buchanan are gross symptoms of a class system of domination. As individuals, they are replaceable, revolving characters in a structural order that repeats and repeats.

The character of Jay Gatsby and his luxurious life may be Hollywood’s focus (as are the grotesqueries of today’s celebrities and media billionaires), but the narrator of Fitzgerald’s book, Nick Carraway, who participated in WW I and who, to disguise his torment, says – that he “enjoyed the counterraid so thoroughly” – is the key. Speaking facetiously can hide a lot of pain. Fitzgerald threw a lot of his pain into The Great Gatsby. Despite its glittering surface, it is the story of lost souls, and Fitzgerald was one of them, but by writing the book he strove to find what he had lost.

If this sounds at all familiar, it may be because you are thinking of today’s focus on rich celebrities like Gatsby and Trump who pepper the news, convoluted intimations of disaster both martial and economic, and the popularity of the web based Wordle puzzle and its offshoots as well as crossword puzzles (more about pop cultural reference words these days) – among other similarities to the moribund 1920s.

What’s the right word to describe what is underway today?

Clearly there is a widespread anxiety as in the late 1920s – now a tapping of nervous fingers on billions of cells – that we are involved in a puzzle that needs solving yet are running out of chances to find the right word to characterize it, not to say solve it. For Wordle devotees, it couldn’t be “repeat” since that has six letters. How about “rerun”? That fits Wordle’s numerical format and today’s video world but leaves the question: rerun of what?

Would “havoc” work, or do we need something much stronger that doesn’t fit within the strictures of word games? Catastrophe?

WW III? A Greater Depression?

Last night I had a very disturbing dream. I am not making this up. I was in a car that was also a house with a woman I know and her mother. The woman put the car on automatic self-drive to go backwards and it was proceeding down a dark country road. I was greatly agitated as we traveled automatically backwards, “borne back ceaselessly into the past,” as Fitzgerald ends his book, and I told the woman I would ask her twenty-five times to reverse our direction or I would leave. She refused twenty-five times and I left.

I am not opposed to looking back, but not automatically. Going back by choice to come forward wiser and more enriched by all experiences – good and bad – is an essential journey.

Was my dream a premonition of what I am writing here, a prologue to my musings about The Great Gatsby, which I had been rereading for a reason unconnected to its centennial? Perhaps. For are our dreams not telling us something important, something far greater than, but not excluding, our personal lives?

When he died, Fitzgerald was working in Hollywood, the Dream Factory, where one can imagine he might still have harbored Gatsby’s “colossal vitality of his illusion,” even as his physical health deteriorated after years of very heavy drinking.

I have come back by train and choice with the woman of my dreams for a short visit to New York City where I was born and grew up. All is changed, changed utterly, yet it remains the same, filtered through memory. It is not repetition but a reminder.

The train coming into the city flashed quickly by an apartment building at 204th Street in the Bronx where I recalled hearing as a twelve year old the news that our nice neighbor’s wife, Mrs. Schwartz, had jumped to her death onto the tracks, a Bronx Anna Karenina. It was April 29th – my mother’s birthday.

After arrival at Grand Central Station, our peregrinations took us past our old railroad flat with its rascally stairwell, as our four year-old daughter used to describe it. On Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn John Curtin’s name still poses prominently for his sail making company, a reminder of a time when people as well as answers were blowing in the wind. In a park I met the white dove who might have sailed many seas and once slept in the sand but now pigeon-toes its way back and forth at my feet, cooing messages that entrance my unknowing mind. In Central Park, where as high school student I would train for basketball season by running around the reservoir track and later would wander dreamily looking for girls and watch Shakespeare plays at the Delacorte Theater, we dawdled under an avenue of cherry blossom trees whose blossoms flew like snow with the slightest breeze and little children screamed and ran in circles of delight and we silently lost ourselves in reveries of life’s ephemerality. Didn’t Eliot say that “the leaves were full of children,/Hidden excitedly, containing laughter. /Go, go, go, said the bird: human kind/Cannot bear very much reality”?

Scott Fitzgerald was right, when at the age of twenty-eight he realized through the voice of Nick Carraway that the future recedes before us year by year. It is the thought of a much older man, or a man who senses his mode of life is wrong and doomed. But he knew too that we are always “borne back ceaselessly into the past.” Dying at the age of forty-four, his past was quite brief and his future expunged.

But no matter how long or short our lifespans and no matter how fine or tragic our lives, everything and everyone who have passed through them are ours to accept or reject. One time and one time only – for every time is that one time – do we have a chance to say yes or no, to affirm or deny that everything is connected, is one. That we are who we were with all our experiences. And as Friedrich Nietzsche said, “ … if ever you wanted one thing twice, if ever you said, ‘You please me, happiness! Abide, moment!’ then you wanted all back. All anew, all eternally, all entangled, ensnared, enamored.” The good and the bad, all your life; for it is yours, no other’s.

It might sound strange that my thinking about Nietzsche brought me back to read The Great Gatsby. I first read it long ago, in high school as I recall, Regis High School, that sits on the upper east side of Manhattan between Park and Madison Avenues, a neighborhood where during four years, between my travels back and forth on the subway to and from my Bronx home, I would encounter the world of the very wealthy. Sometimes on cold evenings before basketball games, I would walk the neighborhood, mentally preparing to play my best. On Park Avenue I would watch the cabs and limousines glitter as they went back and forth, picking up and disgorging their rich passengers. Two blocks over on Fifth Avenue I would see women in mink coats walking little dogs in racoon wraps coming and going from doors opened and closed by doormen. I would often wonder what the doormen thought, having a great beloved uncle Nealy who was one. I thought that Gatsby, while wishing to also be treated with that old money obeisance, might think their wealth was also gotten by stealth, but of the legal kind. He would have been right in most cases. These thoughts that interrupted my game preparations stay with me still.

Nietzsche was always preoccupied with the connection between literature and life. He believed in making a work of art out of himself. He saw his own life as a narrative and authors’ best moments in their work. “The ‘work,’ he wrote, whether of the artist or the philosopher, invents the person who has created it, who is supposed to have created it: ‘the great,’ as they are venerated, are subsequent pieces of wretched minor fiction.”

On the train back from the city, May 1, the date of my father’s death, I read this from Freddy, as I have come to call my literary friend Nietzsche, who, despite his reputation, ironically or not, took Jesus very seriously, and who in his own way repeats his teaching that the kingdom of God is here now:

And if we consider that every human action, not only a book, is in some way or other the cause of other actions, decisions, and thoughts; that everything that happens is inseparably connected with everything that is going to happen, we recognize the real immortality, that of movement – that which has once moved is enclosed and immortalized in the general union of all existence like an insect within a piece of amber.

So do you think Gatsby was right in one way and right in the wrong way – that as individuals we not only can repeat our pasts but should (as in affirm them, not redo them) – because by doing so we take full responsibility for our identities, become who we are, assert our freedom, and immortalize our lives?

I do.

I do too, she said. Celebrate “the transitory enchanted moment” and eternity recurs! The eternal return.

As for the circumstances of our lives that we were tossed into and couldn’t control, accept them also. But from this moment on, our only time, let us try to create a social order where a book like The Great Gatsby never has to be written again, to make the world it describes a bad dream, so we can say with Nick Carraway that that “party’s over.”

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Edward Curtin: Sociologist, researcher, poet, essayist, journalist, novelist....writer - beyond a cage of categories. His new book is At the Lost and Found: Personal & Political Dispatches of Resistance and Hope (Clarity Press). Read other articles by Edward, or visit Edward's website.