Front Burner - Bird flu is spreading faster. Should we worry?

Episode Date: February 14, 2025

Last week, Parks Canada confirmed a dead goose in a Scarborough park tested positive for bird flu, raising concerns that with more birds flying north for spring, the virus will spread. Canada saw its first and only domestically-acquired human case in November, but in the U.S., at least 68 people have been reported infected in the last year, according to CDC data. One person has died from the illness. The poultry industries on both sides of the border have been grappling with the virus for years, and outbreaks have led to the culling of millions of birds in the last year. Now, the U.S. dairy industry is being impacted as herds of cattle in several states have fallen ill. Nicholas Florko, a staff writer with The Atlantic, joins the show to talk about the virus, how it’s spreading in the U.S. and why some people are worried that it could be the beginning of the next pandemic.

In Scarborough, there's this fire behind our eyes. A passion in our bellies. It's in the hearts of our neighbors. The eyes of our nurses. And the hands of our doctors. It's what makes Scarborough, Scarborough. In our hospitals, we do more than anyone thought possible. We've less than anyone could imagine.

But it's time to imagine what we can do with more. Join Scarborough Health Network and together, we can turn grit into greatness. Donate at lovescarborough.ca. This is a CBC Podcast. Hey, I'm Jamie Poisson. So, dead Canadian geese have been turning up in southern Ontario quite a bit recently. Parks Canada confirmed last week that a goose in a park in Scarborough tested positive for bird flu, confirming a lot of suspicions and raising concerns that with more birds flying

north for spring, the virus will spread. As you might remember, Canada did see its first and only human case in BC in November. Canada has what's believed to be its first human case of avian flu caught by a teenager in BC's Fraser Valley. What isn't known is how the young person got infected. Meantime in the US things are escalating even more. Bird flu has been spreading. More human cases are popping up in different states. The total is now at 68 people.

One person has died. The dairy industry is now being hit quite hard. And of course, it has been hitting the poultry industry hard on both sides of the border for quite some time. In the last year, millions of birds have been killed to try to stop the spread. So, how worried should we all be about bird flu? Nicholas Florco is a staff writer with The Atlantic, and we're going to talk about the virus, how it's spreading in the states, and why some people are worried that it could be the beginning of the next pandemic.

Hey Nick, thank you so much for coming on to the show. Of course. Thanks for having me. I wonder if we could start with the basics here. If you could just explain to me what bird flu is. Sure. There's actually several kinds of bird flu. So the one that we're talking about today is called H5N1. And H5N1 has been around actually for decades,

but it's become an issue for us here in the US, where I am, when it started showing up in wild birds in 2022. We saw it spread then to domestic poultry, and then things got even more worrisome when we started to see this spreading to dairy cows, which here in the US was documented in March of last year. Now, luckily, we haven't seen the virus spreading from human to human.

But that's, of course, why everyone is paying attention to this virus. If we start to see consistent human to human transmission, that's when things really start being worrisome. And we could be heading towards another flu pandemic. What do we know about how it spreads from animals to humans though? So infected birds can spread it through their mucus, their saliva, their feces. So if a human is around a sick bird without protective equipment, they could potentially catch the virus.

And the leading theory of how it spreads from cows to humans is through their milk. So that means folks that are might be at risk or folks who might be consuming raw, unpasteurized milk or handling raw unpasteurized milk. Are there any risks if you are just drinking like grocery store milk or what or and sorry if this is a silly question but what if you're eating like meat from one of these birds? Luckily it seems that pasteurization of milk especially has prevented the spread of the virus so milk that is in your grocery store is safe as long as you are not in a place where they are selling or allowed to sell raw milk, unpasteurized milk.

We haven't seen any cases as far as I'm aware at all of someone eating potentially a sick bird and I think that's just because birds are relatively symptomatic when this occurs so we wouldn't see those ending up in the meat supply. This idea that it could potentially spread from human to human, like how could that happen? Well, the virus would likely have to mutate. And that is the fear always when we're talking about potential influenza. You know, that is actually how we got the swine flu, a pandemic, if you remember that back in 2009. And so the fear is that if we keep letting this virus spread unabated, that gives it more and more

chances to pick up mutations, and then potentially picks up a mutation that does allow it to actually spread readily from human to human. I mentioned in the intro, the Canada sides first and only domestically acquired human case. In this BC teenager back in November, this 13-year-old girl is all right now, but she was quite sick for a while. She was hospitalized for two months. She was in respiratory distress and she actually had to be intubated at one point. And I know the US has seen dozens of cases in people and generally speaking, what are the symptoms of how serious this can get? Here in the US, most cases have been much more mild than the one that you just described. The most common symptom that we've actually seen is

eye redness or conjunctivitis. That in addition to some typical sort of flu-like symptoms. That being said, as you said in the intro, we have had one severe case here in the US. Last month in the state of Louisiana, we did unfortunately have a death from the virus. Health officials confirming a patient in Louisiana is the first human to die from bird flu in the US. The Louisiana Department of Health saying the person was over the age of 65 with

underlying health conditions and contracted the virus after being exposed through a flock of birds in a backyard. The CDC analyzed the virus in that Louisiana patient and found concerning new mutations, which could help the virus infect people more easily. And I think that just underscores how serious this can be. And frankly, we know from historical data that bird flu in the past has been quite deadly. So we want to be on guard here for any changes and potentially, you know, these more severe cases popping up. What would be the reason for why some people get like conjunctivitis and other people might have to be intubated?

Yeah, I mean, we still have such few human cases of bird flu that what we know and what we can say definitively about different different strains of the virus are limited. But the one thing I do wanna note is both the teenager in Canada and the person here in the US that unfortunately passed, they actually were both infected with a strain of the virus known as D1-1.

That is not the predominant strain that's been spreading throughout the dairies here in the US. And so there's this question of whether D1 might be more dangerous. And if that becomes a prominent strain, does that cause issues? But we have so few cases right now, we really can't say definitively like, yes, this is more deadly or this is more dangerous. The strain versus this one. You mentioned that bird flu had has been quite deadly in the past. And I wonder if you could just tell me a little bit more

about how it's popped up in history and what happened. Yeah, I mean, so the case fatality rate, historically for bird flu, I believe is above 50%. So we have seen some really worrisome outbreaks occurring in the past. And I think scientists are still grappling with figuring out why. As concern grows into anxiety in Hong Kong,

hundreds of people have been calling special government hotlines, worried about a new strain of a potentially deadly flu that comes from chickens. Health officials say so far there have been six confirmed cases, and now this. In four of those, the virus may have been transmitted from person to person. This time around we, you know, very luckily are not seeing this much higher death rate because I think if you talk to anybody who has studied bird flu for some time, you know,

if bird flu gets into the respiratory system, there's a lot of, you know, fears that this could cause severe illness and, you know, widespread death. But luckily we haven't seen that yet. And I really do think scientists are still grappling with why that is. I don't think we know yet. Have you heard any of them take an educated guess? Various scientists have various theories. So, I mean, one hypothesis is that people are just less susceptible to infection from H5N1 than we used to be. That would be, you know, interesting if that is what ends up playing out. And there's also, you know, a theory that the way the virus is transmitted

and the amount of virus that folks are being exposed to is limiting the severity of the disease. So I think there's this theory that workers are contracting the virus through contact with milk, maybe that the milk droplets are splashing into their eyes or they're rubbing their eyes. And that is not a large enough exposure to create this really serious illness in folks.

And then there's just a thought too that this version of the virus is just inherently less dangerous to people than the ones we've seen spreading previously. I want to ask you about the poultry industry specifically. So the biggest tool in fighting H5N1 is containment and then generally culling, right? Killing the birds. Here in Canada, 57 farms in Ontario have been impacted by the virus, 59 in Quebec, but BC has had the most infections, more than 200. I just want to play this clip of this guy for our listeners, Mark Siemens, who's an egg farmer there,

whose entire flock of 30,000 hens had to be wiped out. We started down that journey, the difficult journey of, first of all, watching the birds immediately deteriorate and get incredibly sick over the course of 24 hours. And then inevitably and quite quickly had the CFIA on site and ready to depopulate the farm. This is our livelihood and not only that, like, you know, we farm because we love

taking care of the animals and we take a ton of pride in it. Maybe you could just tell me a little bit about the effects that you've seen on the poultry industry in the US. Yeah, it has just been disastrous here in the US for the poultry industry. The last I looked, we were at 150 million birds that had been culled here. So I mean, it's having a dramatic impact. I'm sure we'll probably get into it, but it's starting to trickle down to consumers who are feeling the fact that 150 million birds here have been lost.

Wow. Wow. Tell me more about that. I've also seen these videos from Costco's and stuff in the US where people are limited to a carton or two of eggs, right? Yeah, it's funny you bring up Costco because I was gonna share my own personal story. You know, I went to a Costco this weekend and I mean, the one that I typically go to has essentially a walk-in industrial fridge full of eggs and they were limiting people to five cartons each

and they were completely wiped out this weekend. I mean, bird flu has been spreading unabated for months here in the U.S., but I think we really only started to hear everyday people talking about it until we started to see this impact on eggs. And Wagon Wheel Farm in upstate New York, farmer Jason Tau knows his eggs are expensive. I never thought I'd see the day where a dozen eggs cost more than a bale of hay. The five and a half dollars he charged for a dozen back in May became seven dollars in October and now it's eight dollars a dozen.

I mean here in a major city, I'm in Washington D.C., a dozen eggs can go for nine dollars and sometimes the stores just won't have them like the Costco. And so that's really been, I think, the most immediate impact on consumers. Wow. Nine bucks. Wow. I'll just note for our listeners here in Canada, who might be wondering why they might not be seeing themselves restricted when it comes to eggs. I think the argument here is that our farms are a lot smaller. So up until this point, the outbreaks have actually been easier to manage and control.

If we could talk about the dairy industry a little bit as well, Nick, the state of California declared a state of emergency because of outbreaks on dairy farms in December. That state makes up about 20% of the country's dairy industry. There haven't been any cases detected in Canadian dairy farms yet and the government is trying to keep it that way. There are now import controls around cows brought in from the states. They need to test negative for the virus and they can't come from a farm that has had an exposure. But how is this affecting the dairy industry down south? Yeah, I mean, the first good thing to say is that unlike in poultry, dairy cows don't need to be culled or killed after infection and they can recover. However, the virus does result in a

decreased milk yield and infected milk isn't actually allowed to be sold. And so that can really impact dairies financially if a large portion of their cows aren't able to produce milk that can actually be sold for a profit. That being said, at least at this point, we haven't seen the type of really noticeable price spikes and shortages for milk that we've seen for eggs. In Scarborough, there's this fire behind our eyes. A passion in our bellies. It's in the hearts of our neighbors. The eyes of our nurses.

And the hands of our doctors. It's what makes Scarborough Scarborough. In our hospitals, we do more than anyone thought possible. We've less than anyone could imagine. But it's time to imagine what we can do with more. Join Scarborough Health Network and together.....we can turn grit into greatness. Do need at lovescarborough.ca. What does a mummified Egyptian child,

the Parthenon marbles of Greece and an Irish giant all have in common? They are all stuff the British stole. Maybe. Join me, Mark Fennell, as I travel around the globe, uncovering the shocking stories of how some, let's call them ill-gotten, artefacts made it to faraway institutions. Spoiler, it was probably the British.

Don't miss a brand new season of Stuff the British Stole. Watch it free on CBC Gem. In Canada, our National Public Health Agency has increased its risk assessment for the bird flu, introducing a new protocol for human surveillance on farms. And what has the government response been to date in the US? I mean, it's been kind of scattershot, if I'm being honest with you. So I will say, our CDC, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, they do say that the risk to humans is still low. But we've seen, you know, this virus essentially spread unabated on farms.

And we've seen there really be lag in, you know, testing protocols to make sure that farms are not spreading this virus. I mean, it seems like we've essentially taken the approach of hoping this burns out and doesn't spread to humans, which is really rolling the dice. I talked to a lot of infectious disease experts who for months now have been saying, we need to be doing more, we need to be doing more. We are starting to see some mitigation measures,

like a bulk milk testing program that the US government set up about a month ago. And that of course is being used to try to detect more cases. But we've just sort of seen this to spreading and spreading on farms. And I think just because humans generally at least here have only gotten conjunctivitis,

that we haven't seen this sort of major backlash and outrage calling for more mitigation measures. The people that are saying to you, we need to do more, we need to do more, what are some of the things that they think should be happening right now? The first thing, of course, is that we need to be doing more testing on farms, both animals and the people that are working on those farms. And then I think there's, of course, all to make sure that farm workers have appropriate PPE and they aren't being penalized for, say, reporting symptoms. I think it's important to note, too, that a large portion of our dairy industry here in the US is undocumented workers, meaning that

there's a fear and suspicion that if folks go to the hospital or they report this, that there could be some sort of impact on their immigration status. That's made it really difficult as well. And then I think there's a debate right now, a healthy debate on whether we should be vaccinating a certain portion of folks, maybe the folks that are most at risk, like the folks that work in dairies, for example, whether we should be preemptively vaccinating those folks against against bird flu. Right, because there is a vaccine for it. And so why not just do that? Yeah, I mean, the US has been stockpiling vaccines for, you know, a potential outbreak. And I think as of right now, I think they really are just taking a cautious approach.

Again, because we haven't seen this causing severe illness in most people, there's a thought that we shouldn't be just willy-nilly, I think, giving folks this vaccine. So far, the CDC here in the US has essentially been telling dairy workers, get the seasonal flu vaccine and then protect yourself from bird flu with protective measures. The reason why they're saying,

get the seasonal flu vaccine is because we really want to avoid a situation where someone gets infected with both viruses simultaneously. Because when that happens, we have a higher likelihood of mutations occurring. We can actually see the two viruses infect a cell together, trade some of their genetic material, and then we have a situation where we might get a bird flu virus that has the transmissibility of something like a seasonal flu. That's a really big worry. And so the CDC has been really focusing on just these efforts to get folks that are at high risk vaccinated against the typical flu.

Wow, that's interesting. A little scary, but interesting. I'm also thinking about some of the people who were seeing step into leadership positions with federal health agencies in the US right now. I wonder if we could spend a little bit of time before we go talking about that. There's of course Robert F. Kennedy Jr. who has just been confirmed as head of the Department of Health and Human Services. He's claimed that there is quote no evidence the vaccine will work and suggested that they're dangerous. In a post on X, he also said, quote,

with so much money on the table, is it conceivable that someone might deliberately release a bioengineered bird flu? He was grilled at his confirmation hearing over some of his comments on avian flu, which he basically denied, I guess. What concerns have you heard in your reporting about what that leadership means for the response to H5N1?

Yeah, I mean, there's a huge concern. And I will say that Mr. Kennedy has previously downplayed the risks of other pandemic influenza threats as well. And so it's really hard to imagine him taking this issue seriously and sort of increasing the US's response in a meaningful way. At the same time, though, there is news that the Trump will name, President Trump will name Dr. Gerald Parker to lead the White House office here that it coordinates the bird flu response. And I think if you're concerned about bird flu, that's welcome news because Dr. Parker is an expert, first of all, on the interplay of human and animal health. And at least from his previous statements, he really understands the potential risk here and would take it seriously. But the question really is though, you know,

if there's this tug of war between Parker on one side and Kennedy on the other, who wins? We really just don't know yet. But that's really the concern is that, we put folks in that are skeptical of vaccines and of pandemic influenza, that we continue this approach of essentially just rolling the dice and hoping this doesn't get worse.

Trump also signed an executive order to withdraw the US from the World Health Organization. So we paid $500 million to World Health when I was here, and I terminated China with 1.4 billion people. We have 350. Seemed a little unfair to me. So that wasn't a reason, but I dropped out. A WHO spokesperson said this week that the withdrawal has caused communication challenges

on bird flu. And are people concerned about the downstream effects of that? Yeah, I mean, what you just named those communication challenges, I think, are one of the biggest worries here. The WHO for member states is, you know, gives people eyes and ears on all different potential outbreaks that could be occurring around the world. And if you're in another country, another member state, and now the US is not communicating what is going on with bird flu here, you're going to be concerned because you use that information to prepare and sort

of measure your own risk in other countries. And, you know, without that communication, it's an open question of how folks get that intelligence. Before we go, Nick, you know, I have heard experts talk about how this could be the next pandemic. And I know that this is something that you've been like a thread you've kind of been pulling on throughout this conversation. But I wonder if you could just tell me how bad that this could potentially get. I think a lot of people hear the word pandemic. It triggers something quite visceral in them right now.

There's a lot of anxiety around that. Obviously, how bad could this get? But the first thing I'm going to say is every pandemic flu expert that I've ever spoken to says that if someone can predict or claims to be able to predict whether something will turn into a pandemic influenza and how bad it will be, they're lying. I say that because it's really, really, really difficult to predict this. But I think the thing that is most important is that folks don't lose sight of the fact that a pandemic doesn't have to be as bad as something like COVID for it to still cause real issues. I think, for example, the swine flu pandemic in 2009, we did see thousands of

people dying from that virus, including young people. And that was nowhere near the size of COVID, but it was still an issue that we needed to deal with. And so I think we just need to keep that in mind here. A pandemic really doesn't need to be a COVID for it still to be an issue. And it's really hard to predict how this virus might mutate and how that might impact people's sickness and sort of how quickly they can recover and all these different things. So there's so many different unanswered questions now,

but I think we just need to keep in mind any pandemic we're gonna wanna try to prevent. And that's why we should be trying to prevent the bird flu pandemic. Okay. Nick, I wanna thank you so much for this. I learned a lot. It was really great to have you on.

Thank you. Yeah, of course. Thanks for having me. All right, that is all for this week. Frontburner was produced this week by Joytha Shengupta, Ali Janes, Lauren Donnelly, Cecilia Armstrong, Matt Omha, Mackenzie Cameron, and Marco Luciano. Our YouTube producer is John Lee and Evan Agard is our video producer. Music is by Joseph Shabason. Our senior producer is Elaine Chao. Our executive producer is Nick McCabe-Lokos.

I'm Jamie Poisson. Thanks so much for listening. Talk to you next week. Thanks for listening. Talk to you next week.