Michigan Confirms First Human Case of High-Risk Bird Flu, Marking Second U.S. Case This Year
By Jim Hᴏft May. 28, 2024
The infected individual, employed on a dairy farm already grappling with the H5N1 virus among cattle, presented only with eye symptoms, similar to another case earlier this year in Texas.
The Gateway Pundit previously reported that a Texas dairy farmer experienced the first documented case of bird flu transmission to humans from farm animals.
The individual developed pink eye – with his eyeballs seen bleeding, according to a case report in the peer-reviewed New England Journal of Medicine.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) disclosed this latest infection on Wednesday, revealing that, similar to the Texas case, the Michigan dairy worker presented only with eye symptoms initially.
The CDC reported:
“A human case of highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) A(H5) (“H5 bird flu”) virus infection in the United States has been identified in the state of Michigan. This is the second case associated with an ongoing multistate outbreak of A(H5N1) in dairy cows.As with the case in Texas, the individual is a worker on a dairy farm where H5N1 virus has been identified in cows. While a nasal swab from the person tested negative for influenza in Michigan, an eye swab from the patient was shipped to CDC and tested positive for influenza A(H5) virus, indicating an eye infection. Similar to the Texas case, the patient only reported eye symptoms. CDC has been watching influenza surveillance systems closely, particularly in affected states, and there has been no sign of unusual influenza activity in people, including in syndromic surveillance.”
The CDC has insisted that the risk to the general U.S. public remains low. The agency added that human illnesses caused by the bird flu virus have ranged in severity from “no symptoms or mild illness to severe disease that resulted in death.”
So-called experts have cautioned that a bird flu pandemic may be looming on the horizon, one that could be catastrophic on a scale ‘100 times worse than Covid-19.’
During a recent briefing, scientists highlighted the increasing risk of the H5N1 bird flu strain turning into a pandemic.
The meeting, attended by leading bird flu researchers, medical professionals, and government officials, was convened in response to the human bird flu case and organized by John Fulton, a vaccine consultant and pharmaceutical industry expert, according to Daily Mail.
“This appears to be 100 times worse than Covid, or it could be if it mutates and maintains its high case fatality rate,” said Fulton. “Once it’s mutated to infect humans, we can only hope that the [fatality rate] drops.”
In a recent Senate Committee briefing, Dr. Robert Califf, the head of the FDA, warned of a potential bird flu pandemic that could kill one in four Americans.
“This virus, like all viruses, is mutating,” Dr. Califf claimed to the lawmakers. “We need to continue to prepare for the possibility that it might jump to humans.”
The FDA’s primary concern centers on the possibility of the virus mutating to affect human lungs—a scenario previously observed in other regions where the mortality rate has escalated to 25 percent, or one in every four infected individuals.
