Are we at the edge of another pandemic? H5N1

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Bird Flu is striking Poland's in poultry.

The European Commission is set to adopt emergency measures next week to combat the spread of bird flu in Poland, particularly in the Masovian and Greater Poland regions. Over the past two months, Poland has reported 73 confirmed outbreaks of Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza (HPAI), with the majority occurring in these two regions.

Source: European Commission steps up to combat bird flu in Poland

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Bird flu is spreading across many species of animals. Some recent articles have begun to show the transition into horses.

A recent study published in “Emerging Infectious Diseases” revealed a concerning discovery: horses in Mongolia can be infected with H5N1. Researchers from the University of Glasgow found evidence of asymptomatic carriers, marking the first confirmed case of avian influenza in equines. This discovery challenges the previous understanding that H5N1, while transferable from birds to mammals, wouldn't spread easily between mammals. The implications are significant, especially in regions like North America, where horses frequently encounter livestock.

Source: H5N1 Bird Flu Spreads to Mammals: Pandemic Threat Looms

Why is this important? The Spanish Flu which is now known as H1N1 exploded during WWI in 1918. Horses were used extensively in the war. Both humans and horses died in the battlefield and their bodies were left to rot. It was too dangerous to retrieve them with battlefield bullets flying everywhere. Their bodies were eaten by wild animals and insects. And if I am correct, H1N1 was spread by blood sucking insects, such as mosquitoes. Insects were transmission agents for the plague.

Another variant of the H5N1/H1N1 virus has been moving across the world. This variant strikes horses and is called H3N8. Here is a little history of this variant which was posted on 12 April 2025.

Japan: First Report Of Equine Influenza Since 2008

Yesterday Japan's Light Horse Quarantine Council announced that country's first detection of equine (H3N8) influenza since 2008, affecting at least 3 horse breeding farms in Kumamoto Prefecture on the island of Kyūshū.

Over the past few years China has confirmed at least 3 H3N8 infections in humans, causing severe illness and at least 1 death.

Originally, Canine H3N8 evolved directly from Equine H3N8, when it abruptly mutated enough to adapt to a canine host, and rapidly began to spread among greyhounds at a Florida race track in 2004.

The article then goes on to say: In 2016, in Epizootics, Host Ranges, and Conventional Wisdom we looked at the history of equine epizootics - including the panzootic of 1872 - and at a study (see A Review of Evidence that Equine Influenza Viruses Are Zoonotic) that argued that human EIV infections occasionally occur.

Despite all the spreading to different species the basic questions remain. One question has been answered, it has spread to humans. We do not know how contagious among humans any future variant will be and if it is contagious will it be like most flu variants another respiratory illness to deal with or a crippling pandemic?

If I am correct in my analysis, it can be very deadly and very contagious. But not in the normal sense.

According to the internet:
Infectious diseases are illnesses that happen when tiny living beings get inside the body and multiply. Bacteria, viruses, fungi and parasites are examples of organisms that can cause illness. Some infectious diseases can pass from person to person. Some spread through insects or other animals.

Source: Infectious diseases

Some well known parasites are fleas, ticks, parasitic mites, leeches, worms (e.g. round worms) and some parasitic flies (e.g. mosquitoes).

We are dealing with a very, very small bacteria that is spread by insects. For humans the primary spreader is mosquitoes. The biting insect become infected and spread the disease directly with a blood to blood transfer.

In times past moving back hundreds of years, these pandemics were fairly localized. They only affected a very small area. But in our present world where people can fly in a jet aircraft and move to the other side of the world in hours, this virus can spread across the globe.

H3N8 is a subtype of the species Influenza A virus that is endemic in birds, horses and dogs. It is the main cause of equine influenza and is also known as equine influenza virus. In 2011, it was reported to have been found in seals.

In 1963, the H3N8 (A/equine/2/Miami/63) subtype created an epidemic of equine influenza in Miami and subsequently spread throughout North and South America and Europe, creating massive outbreaks during 1964 and 1965. Since 1963, the H3N8 virus has drifted along a single lineage at a rate of 0.8 amino acid substitutions per year. Between 1978 and 1981, there were widespread epidemics of the A/equine/2 strain throughout the US and Europe despite the development of vaccines. Since the late 1980s, evolution of the H3N8 virus has diverged into two families: an "American-like" lineage and a "European-like" lineage. A 1997 study found H3N8 was responsible for over one quarter of the influenza infections in wild ducks.

H3N8 has been suggested as a possible cause of the 1889–1890 pandemic in humans, and also another epidemic in 1898–1900.

Source: Influenza A virus subtype H3N8

I decided to look a little deeper into the H3N8 outbreak. Three have occurred recently in humans in China.

The National Health Commission of the People's Republic of China reported a confirmed case of human infection with avian influenza A(H3N8) virus "H3N8 bird flu" on March 27, 2023. The patient was an adult with multiple underlying medical conditions from Guangdong Province who became ill on February 22, 2023, was hospitalized with severe pneumonia on March 3, 2023 and later died on March 16, 2023. This is the third human infection with H3N8 bird flu virus and first fatality ever reported. The previous two human infections with H3N8 virus (were in children and) were also reported in China, during 2022.

Sporadic human infections with bird flu viruses have occurred with different bird flu virus subtypes. Over the past two decades, H7N9 viruses have caused the highest number of human infections with bird flu viruses, and H5N1 viruses have caused the second highest number of human infections.

H3N8 bird flu has never been detected in the United States in people; however, H3N8 viruses of a different genetic lineage have been detected in U.S. wild birds and some mammals in the past. In 2011, there was an outbreak of H3N8 viruses among harbor seals in New England that caused deaths in 162 seals.

Source: Human Infection with Avian Influenza A(H3N8) Virus Reported by China

Another recent article shows the ability of H3N8 to create a transmission pathway into humans.

H3N8 avian influenza viruses (AIVs) in China caused two confirmed human infections in 2022, followed by a fatal case reported in 2023. H3N8 viruses are widespread in chicken flocks; however, the zoonotic features of H3N8 viruses are poorly understood. Here, we demonstrate that H3N8 viruses were able to infect and replicate efficiently in organotypic normal human bronchial epithelial (NHBE) cells and lung epithelial (Calu-3) cells. Human isolates of H3N8 virus were more virulent and caused severe pathology in mice and ferrets, relative to chicken isolates. Importantly, H3N8 virus isolated from a patient with severe pneumonia was transmissible between ferrets through respiratory droplets; it had acquired human-receptor-binding preference and amino acid substitution PB2-E627K necessary for airborne transmission. Human populations, even when vaccinated against human H3N2 virus, appear immunologically naive to emerging mammalian-adapted H3N8 AIVs and could be vulnerable to infection at epidemic or pandemic proportion.

Source: Airborne transmission of human-isolated avian H3N8 influenza virus between ferrets

I came across an article that looked a little deeper into the origin of a very deadly bird flu.

The flu has long been a threat to public health. The first recorded influenza pandemic occurred in 1518, but references to illnesses possibly caused by influenza stretch back as early as 412 B.C., to a treatise called Of the Epidemics by the Greek physician Hippocrates.

Today, the World Health Organization estimates that the flu infects 1 billion people every year. Of these, 3 million to 5 million infections cause severe illness, and hundreds of thousands are fatal.

Influenza is part of a large family of viruses called orthomyxoviruses. This family contains several subtypes of influenza, referred to as A, B, C and D, which differ in their genetic makeup and in the types of infections they cause. Influenza A and B pose the largest threat to humans and can cause severe disease. Influenza C causes mild disease, and influenza D is not known to infect people. Since the turn of the 20th century, influenza A has caused four pandemics. Influenza B has never caused a pandemic.

An influenza A strain called H1N1 caused the famous 1918 Spanish flu pandemic, which killed about 50 million people worldwide. A related H1N1 virus was responsible for the most recent influenza A pandemic in 2009, commonly referred to as the swine flu pandemic. In that case, scientists believe multiple different types of influenza A virus mixed their genetic information to produce a new and especially virulent strain of the virus that infected more than 60 million people in the U.S. from April 12, 2009, to April 10, 2010, and caused huge losses to the agriculture and travel industries.

Both swine and avian influenza are strains of influenza A. Just as swine flu strains tend to infect pigs, avian flu strains tend to infect birds. But the potential for influenza A viruses that typically infect animals to cause pandemics in humans like the swine flu pandemic is why experts are concerned about the current avian influenza outbreak.

Source: How bird flu differs from seasonal flu − an infectious disease researcher explains

The article then goes on to explain.

Although H5N1 mainly infects birds, it occasionally infects people, too. Human cases, first reported in 1997 in Hong Kong, have primarily occurred in poultry farm workers or others who have interacted closely with infected birds.

Initially identified in China in 1996, the first major outbreak of H5 family avian flu occurred in North America in 2014-2015. This 2014 outbreak was caused by the H5N8 strain, a close relative of H5N1. The first H5N1 outbreak in North America began in 2021 when infected birds carried the virus across the ocean. It then ripped through poultry farms across the continent.

This threat is a shape-shifter. It is constantly moving and changing shapes moving from one type to another. I think the end goal is to generate an extremely deadly H1N1 variant for humans.

As H5N1 Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza (HPAI) continues its spread across species and continents, a vaccine being developed by University of Buffalo (SUNY) spin-off POP Biotechnologies has demonstrated complete protection in preclinical trials. This advancement arrives at a critical juncture, with the virus impacting poultry, dairy cattle, wild birds, and domestic pets, raising alarms about its pandemic potential.

In results published today in Cell Biomaterials, an international team reported that a nanoparticle vaccine displaying two recombinant virus-derived proteins—hemagglutinin (H5) and neuraminidase (N1)—could protect mice from lethal avian flu challenge (H5N1 clade 2.3.4.4b). The vaccine is being developed for both human and veterinary use to tackle zoonotic and pandemic threats at their source.

The vaccine targets the 2.3.4.4b clade of H5N1, the infectious strain responsible for significant spread and mortality in avian populations and increasing human infections. Utilizing POP Biotechnologies’ proprietary POP BIO SNAP™ nanoparticle vaccine platform, the vaccine achieved 100% protection in mice, preventing illness and eliminating detectable virus in lung tissues.

Magnet-Like Nanoparticle Vaccine Achieves 100% Protection Against H5N1 (Bird Flu) in Preclinical Trials

This is interesting research. It is focused on the specific variant 2.3.4.4b clade of H5N1. This variant may not correlate with the extremely deadly variant that can strike humans and create a massive pandemic. But if you can kill one variant, you can also build one for another variant that is deadly for humans. In other words this is a pathway for produce a vaccine that will work on humans.

The effort to develop a vaccine for H5N1 in dairy cattle is underway. This may be an important first step to developing one for humans as this potential threat gets closer.

H5N1: The Outbreak the US Got Bored With

From the beginning, the US has been on the back foot regarding surveillance for H5N1, which means it is vital that widespread efforts are made to increase testing. From additional wastewater surveillance sites to testing in higher-risk workers and economic protections for farmers/workers, there are steps we can take now to improve our stance in this outbreak.

New human cases have recently included a hospitalized woman from Wyoming, but we have also seen H5N1 spill from one species to another. The Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service within the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) reported the following on February 13, 2025: “Confirmed by whole genome sequence a detection of highly pathogenic avian influenza [HPAI] H5N1 clade 2344b, genotype D11 in dairy cattle in Arizona.” Furthermore, the agency shared in the announcement, “The detection of this virus genotype in dairy cattle is not unexpected because genotype D11 represents the predominant genotype in the North American flyways this past fall and winter and has been identified in wild birds, mammals, and spillovers into domestic poultry. Whole genome sequencing indicates that this detection is a separate wild-bird introduction of HPAI to dairy cattle, now the third identified spillover event into dairy cattle. This finding may indicate an increased risk of HPAI introduction into dairies through wild bird exposure.

With this news, it comes as a welcome relief that the USDA has conditionally approved a poultry vaccination to protect flocks. However, Science’s Jon Cohen noted, “Even with the conditional approval, USDA must still approve its use before farmers can start to administer the vaccine because special regulations apply to H5N1 and other so-called [HPAI] viruses.” Hopefully, this approval indicates a shift in response that might help reduce potential spillover, but we are not out of the woods yet.

This is an important first step in developing a vaccine for humans. This enemy is a shape-shifter. It moves with incredible speed and is extremely deadly. It passes from a virus to a very, very small bacteria and then a much larger bacteria. It is always on the move. It explodes in humans as an antibiotic resistance form of Mycoplasma Pneumoniae Pneumonia (MPP).

Bird Flu is on the move.

H5N1's evolutionary leap could undermine vaccines and heighten human infection risk

According to recent findings by a team of bioinformatics and genomics experts at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, the virus has already adapted itself to escape immunological defenses (such as those raised by previous infection or vaccination) in mammals. The risk to human health is expected to rise as H5N1 evolves to better infect mammals, the study finds.

This rapid adaptation means that "an H5N1 vaccine made (for an earlier strain) will have less efficacy."

While many refer to the virus as simply "bird flu," scientists have long surveilled avian influenza to find it is indeed a zoonotic virus – meaning it can and does hop from birds to mammals, such as cows and humans. In fact, the most recent H5N1 strains show signs of the virus being able to replicate itself much more readily in mammals than previously known.
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So what is the solution?

I discussed this approach earlier. Develop a vaccine that will work for humans. How can this be done? Find an animal that is almost human and test the efficiency to immunize against this virus. On 27 Mar 2025, 11:26 am on this thread, I wrote:

Vaccinations may provide protection from a very deadly form of H5N1. A neutralizing antibody bnAb called MEDI8852, which was discovered and developed by Medimmune, now part of AstraZeneca. MEDI8852 targets a portion of a key flu protein that is less prone to change than other parts of the virus and thus is capable of conferring protection against a wide range of flu viruses. This vaccination was tested on Macaque, a species (with almost human qualities), and this vaccine provided a remarkable and measurable cure.

Macaque are a species with near human construction. They are a breath away from the human species. They have developed and tested a cure for H5N1 in Macaque. And this vaccine provided a remarkable and measurable cure.

I came across an article describing how bird flu is spreading across birds in Europe.

A report from Hungary

Over the past week, official notifications from Hungary include confirmation a further 12 highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) outbreaks linked to the H5N1 virus serotype. Ten of the outbreaks occurred in Bacs-Kiskun and one in each of Bekes and Csongrad-Csanad — all counties in the south of the country. Flocks of foie-gras ducks in Bacs-Kiskun were involved in seven of the outbreaks. Three more involved meat turkeys, and there was one farm with meat ducks and meat geese.

But this is only a small part of the story.

Based on data from this source, the presence of this HPAI virus variant has been confirmed at 287 commercial poultry farms across 12 Hungarian counties since September of last year. By far the worst affected has been Bacs-Kiskun, where 222 of the infected farms have been located.

The only other European state to report new HPAI outbreaks in commercial poultry over the past week has been Poland.

Among the latest to test positive for H5N1 virus there were five farms, bringing the nation’s total for the year to date to 81. More than 6.67 million birds have been directly affected.

The most recent of the outbreaks began on April 18, and occurred in the central-western province of Greater Poland (Wielkopolskie). It is the location of all but one of Poland’s most recent 34 farm outbreaks.