A deadly flu that is 30 times deadlier than Covid is already here… but our leaders are burying their heads in the sand and we are woefully unprepared: GEOFFREY LEAN

An elderly Louisiana man died Monday from bird flu, contracted from exposure to sick and dead chickens in his backyard flock. This makes him the first fatal victim of the disease in the country.

But what really set alarm bells ringing is that samples collected from him showed that the virus may have acquired the ability to attach to cells in the human upper respiratory tract. And the New England Journal of Medicine just reported that a similar mutation was found in a desperately ill 13-year-old girl hospitalized in Vancouver, Canada.

This could mark the first phase of something scientists have long feared: the bird flu virus evolving to pass easily between people.

Because if that happens, we will face a pandemic that will likely dwarf the death toll of Covid-19.

The last case of bird flu was in 2004, when an 11-year-old Thai girl passed the virus to her mother and aunt in the first known human transmission. The British Cabinet was officially told that it was as big a threat as bird flu. terrorism.

Emergency services were quietly told to prepare for 750,000 deaths and scoured the country for locations that could serve as mass morgues.

Poultry has been hit hard in North America, where the new threat originates. And the virus has also spread widely among mammals: mice, mink, squirrels, goats, foxes, otters, bears, mountain lions, seals, dolphins and domestic cats are among those infected.

Zoos have been hammered too. Just two weeks ago, more than half of the big cats in a Washington shelter died.

Worse still, the flu has now gotten out of control among livestock. About 900 herds in 16 US states have tested positive and California has just declared a state of emergency.

Meanwhile, as the Daily Mail reported last month, 66 Americans have been found with the disease – up from just two in the previous two years.

The good news is that almost all of them were infected directly by chickens or livestock, and not by fellow humans, with an exceptionally mild disease.

But our luck may be running out, thanks to the mutations found in the Louisiana retiree and the Vancouver teen – who has been hospitalized since November after contracting bird flu from an as yet unknown source.

The virus must continue to evolve before it becomes an existential threat, but its progress is already causing great concern.

University of Minnesota Professor Michael Osterholm, one of the world’s leading flu experts, likens it to unlocking a door. The virus may not be able to open it yet, but it has now created a key that fits in the lock but doesn’t turn.

Fortunately, the latter mutation appears to have occurred in both patients and thus, experts hope, will not spread in the wild and infect others.

But it has proven that the virus can change in ways that bring us closer to a human pandemic. And the more people who contract it, the more likely the further mutations needed to bring it about will occur.

The spread of the virus among American livestock multiplies the danger sevenfold, experts say. The virus enters cow’s milk in what normally down-to-earth scientists call ‘staggering’ and ‘astronomically high’ quantities.

Pasteurization kills it, but raw milk has become increasingly popular in the US, where 2.5 million people drink it every week. Cats have already suffered brain damage and died from consuming it.

And the risks increase dramatically during a normal flu season, such as the one currently raging, when bird flu can combine with the seasonal illness, gaining its virulent contagiousness through coughing and sneezing.

Once a pandemic starts, it is extremely difficult to stop it. No one knows how deadly it would be, but the signs so far are ominous. Nearly half of the 900 people who have contracted bird flu worldwide have died.

That terrible death rate would undoubtedly fall as infections spread, not least because the virus would have to leave enough people alive to pass it on. Maybe we were lucky. But some scientists fear a mortality rate of 25 to 30 percent. By comparison, Covid’s was just 1 percent.

The consequences in terms of human lives, health services and national economies would be so great that you would think that governments around the world would rush to take precautions. Nothing could be further from the truth.

The Biden administration has been asleep at the wheel during America’s cattle crisis. It failed to tackle the virus when it was confined to a few farms and only started testing milk this month, almost a year after the outbreak began.

And while there is a vaccine that provides partial protection, authorities have refused to immunize farm workers – the part of the population most at risk. Dr. Deborah Birx, who coordinated the Trump administration’s Covid response, says the US is ‘burying its head in the sand’.

Mind you, the incoming Trump team looks even more complacent. Robert F Kennedy Jr, his pick for the healthcare portfolio, has vowed to make raw milk more available (he says it’s the only kind he drinks himself) and pledged to take an eight-year break from focusing on infectious diseases. He adds that he will not prioritize vaccines in the event of a new pandemic.

Meanwhile, the new president has promised to disband the White House preparedness office.

Internationally, there is no surveillance that could detect human outbreaks in time, and negotiations on strengthening health systems against a pandemic have stalled. Experts say the world is less prepared now than before Covid.

Britain certainly bought more than five million doses of bird flu vaccine last month, but that is far from enough, while Covid research has exposed huge holes in our pandemic defences.

Sir Keir Starmer has lost the confidence needed to unite the nation, while Health Secretary Wes Streeting is gaining a reputation for delaying key decisions after almost kicking social care out of sight.

Governments now need to develop better vaccines, stockpile various antiviral drugs (since the virus can become immune to them) and figure out how to distribute them quickly – while preparing tests and personal protective equipment in advance.

The last time a virulent flu virus swept the world, in 1918, it killed 50 million people, about one in 35 of the world’s population.

Experts agree that another bad one is yet to come, and this time it won’t be going around the world by ship. Air travel allows viruses to circle the globe at jet speed, reaching virtually every corner of the planet in hours instead of weeks. With a population quadrupling since 1918, the death toll could reach hundreds of millions.

This fall, the Global Preparedness Monitoring Board, the main international body tasked with preparing for pandemics, warned that the next one will likely “notice the word nap.”

Given that experts like Dr. Robert Redfield, recently head of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, now say it’s a matter of when rather than if an avian flu pandemic spreads around the world, it could very well be turn out to be right.