A variant of the virus caused disease in people in 1997, when there was a small but deadly outbreak in Hong Kong. Eighteen people had confirmed diagnoses, and six of them died. Since then, there have been sporadic cases around the world—but no large outbreaks.

With reports of the first human death from bird flu in the US, some Americans are feeling an uncomfortable flashback to the early days of Covid-19, when infectious disease experts were talking about a new virus that was sending people to the hospital with respiratory infections.

America should have more aggressively intervened almost a year ago.

The death comes at a time when the H5N1 virus has recently undergone an unusual mutation that is causing concern to the World Health Organization.

Hundreds of Canadian geese have been found dead this winter in Owatonna, Albert Lea, Waseca and other southern Minnesota cities.

The U.S. will rebuild a stockpile of bird flu vaccines for poultry that match the strain of the virus circulating in commercial flocks and wild birds, the Department of Agriculture said on Wednesday,

Any time a person catches H5N1, or bird flu, their infection is a chance for the virus to mutate in the wrong direction. When someone dies from the bird flu—as an elderly Louisiana man did on Jan. 6,