Despite two decades of dire predictions - no human-to-human bird flu pandemic

A bird flu pandemic will not happen naturally

‍It's not a question of if, it's more of a question of when. We will have a bird flu pandemic. . . . Unfortunately bird flu, when it does enter humans has a significant mortality, probably somewhere between  25 and 50% mortality. . . .

Scientists in 2012 actually did experiments in the lab using gain-of-function research in the lab . . . . and they figured the five amino acids that have to change and the key receptor in order for bird flu to gain the propensity to bind with the human receptor and then go to human to human. . . .

I'm less concerned thought that this will happen from spillover and evolution in animals. I'm much more concerned that this will happen in the laboratory, through gain of function research.

                                 Former CDC director Robert Redfield in an interview with News Nation host Brian Entin

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Listen below to The HIghwire host Del Bigtree as he comments on and plays Entin's interview with Redfield.

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>> How can Redfield be so sure that a bird flu pandemic will not happen naturally?

Human bird flu pandemics never occurred — despite lab predictions

The WHO has been anticipating a catastrophic bird flu pandemic in humans since before 2004, according to an NPR report by Brian Knox, heard on All Things Considered (audio below).

The bird flu had been endemic in Asia, according to the report, for about eight years already. In all that time it had infected less than four dozen people, yet the WHO's top flu expert was surprised that it hadn't already jumped from birds to humans and then to:

Host -

. . . The highly lethal virus has infected nearly 4 dozen people and many experts think it's only a matter of time before [the bird flu] adapts and gains the ability to spread easily from human to human. That would be a catastrophe of epic proportions. Scientists who study viruses say they don't know what a pandemic strain would look like. So, as NPR's Richard Knox reports, they're planning to create one - in the laboratory.

Knox -

Klaus Stöhr is the World Health Organization's top flu expert. He's baffled by the bird flu virus. it's been circulating in Asia for nearly 8 years. By now Stöhr expected some of the bird viruses would have swapped some genes with human flu viruses. That's called reassorting and it happens all the time.

Stöhr -

We are surprised to see that this virus is not reassorting as it should, as all laboratory and authentific data would suggest. What is important now is to really better understand what is the risk of reassortment from this virus. And that cannot be established in the field. That has to be investigated in laboratories. (Emphases added.)

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>> Perhaps the real world doesn't always conform to laboratory and authentific data "suggestions?"

WHO expert predicted pandemic will kill 150 million people worldwide

In 2005 The Guardian reported that WHO health expert David Nabarro predicted an imminent bird flu pandemic sure to kill up to 150 million people.

A global influenza pandemic is imminent and will kill up to 150 million people, the UN official in charge of coordinating the worldwide response to an outbreak has warned.

David Nabarro, one of the most senior public health experts at the World Health Organisation, said outbreaks of bird flu, which have killed at least 65 people in Asia, could mutate into a form transmittable between people.

"The consequences in terms of human life when the pandemic does start are going to be extraordinary and very damaging," he said.

He told the BBC that the "range of deaths could be anything between five and 150 million".

Neil Ferguson anticipated 200 million deaths

The Guardian author James Sturcke quoted professor of mathematical biology at Imperial College, London, Neil Ferguson (who, due to his great overestimation of COVID-19 deaths, was responsible for many of the draconian COVID-19 countermeasures), who claimed that the bird flu could kill even more people — up to 200 million:

"Around 40 million people died in 1918 Spanish flu outbreak," said Prof Ferguson. "There are six times more people on the planet now so you could scale it up to around 200 million people probably."

>> Can one realistically compare bird flu with the Spanish flu?

The Spanish flu was a human-to-human influenza, while the bird flu does not transmit between humans. And in 2008, National Institute of Allergy and Infections Disease (NIAID) researchers reported that most deaths attributed to the Spanish flu were not from the flu but from a secondary pneumonia, the cause of many deaths wrongly attributed to the flu, even today.

How many people have died from the bird flu since Klaus Stöhr wondered why a pandemic wasn't happening?

Under 1,000 human bird flu cases recorded in 20 years

The WHO's own data demonstrates that for the 23 countries that had confirmed case(s), bird flu is not contracted easily by humans and is not as much a threat as we are being led to believe. Although the death rate is high, very few people have died from the bird flu.

Between 2003 to 2024 there have been 888 cases of bird flu in humans and 463 deaths, according to the WHO chart below. Egypt and Indonesia had the most cases and deaths, at 359 and 200 cases and 120 and 168 deaths, respectively. The U.S. had one case in 2022; the person died.

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Low transmission rate yet more predictions of doom?

Health agencies are again predicting doom from a potential bird flu pandemic, despite the low rate of infection among humans and previous predictions of catastrophic deaths from bird flu that never happened. How can they be so sure? It seems, Redfield may be correct that they are making it in the lab.

• In 2004 Stöhr said that they would need to go to the laboratory to understand which genes would have to "reassort" for human-to-human bird flu transmission to occur.
• In 2012, according to Redfield, they had already figured out which amino acids needed to change for that to happen.
• Since 2021, the White House has been funding gain-of-function research to carry this work further.

Check back as we look at the work that has been and is being carried out to create the pandemic Redfield is sure will happen and to learn how worried we need to be about warnings of a deadly avian virus.

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