On Monday, the Louisiana Department of Health reported that a patient with a severe case of bird flu, caused by the H5N1 virus, had died from their infection, a first for the United States. The deceased was over age 65 and was reported to have underlying medical conditions. Even before the patient died, their case made headlines for several reasons: bird flu is raging across North America, swamping dairy and poultry farms and causing at least 66 human infections. But most of these cases, with the exception of three, have not been severe i.e. they haven’t warranted hospitalization or caused death.

Historically, bird flu has been a nasty bug to catch. Since it was first documented in the ‘90s, it has generally had a 50% mortality rate — far higher than something like COVID-19, with a death rate of around 2% to 3% at its peak or seasonal influenza, which has an average death rate of about 0.1% for most adults. But despite H5N1’s reputation as a killer in other countries, no patients in the U.S. have died, until now.

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Public health experts have long warned that H5N1 has extreme pandemic potential, but so far, the risk to the general public remains........

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