What happened to bird flu? How a major threat to human health faded from view
H5N1 bird flu once charted a destructive course through Asia, North Africa, and the Middle East. Today, there hasn't been a single human infection detected for two years.
Just over a dozen years ago, a bird flu virus known as H5N1 was charting a destructive course through Asia, North Africa, and the Middle East, ravaging poultry in apocalyptic numbers and killing 6 in 10 humans known to have contracted it.
The overall human death toll was low — in the hundreds — but scientists and government officials feared that the virus could ignite a human pandemic reminiscent of the catastrophic 1918 Spanish flu. Emergency plans were drafted, experimental H5N1 vaccines were created and tested, antiviral drugs were stockpiled.
And then … nothing happened.
The virus continued to kill chickens and to occasionally infect and sometimes kill people. But
