Here’s the latest you need to know about bird flu

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What you need to know

  • Although bird flu continues to spread in wild birds, livestock, and humans, the risk to the public remains low.
  • The majority of U.S. bird flu cases have been reported in farm workers who had direct contact with infected birds and cattle. Health officials are working to monitor the spread of the virus and improve protections for those most at risk.
  • Recent data suggests that mutations in bird flu viruses could make them more dangerous to humans and potentially increase the risk of a pandemic.
  • On January 6, Louisiana health officials confirmed the first U.S. death from bird flu.

Throughout 2024, dozens of human cases of H5N1 bird flu were detected as the virus spreads rapidly in livestock. The current risk to humans is low but not nonexistent. Here’s everything you need to know about the current status and future outlook of H5 bird flu in the United States.

Current U.S. bird flu status (as of January 6, 2025)

As of January 6, 66 human bird flu cases have been reported in eight states. Over half of all cases are in California. The state’s governor declared a state of emergency as a “proactive” action against bird flu on December 18. 

On January 6, the Louisiana Department of Health reported the first U.S. bird flu death. The patient, a man over age 65, was previously confirmed to be the first severe bird flu case in the U.S. and the first case linked to backyard flocks. The department emphasized that the risk to the public is low and that no new cases or evidence of human transmission have been detected in the state.

All but two human bird flu cases this year were in farm workers who were exposed to infected livestock. The exposure source of the remaining cases—one in California and one in Missouri—is unknown. 

The CDC reported on November 22 that a child in California tested positive for bird flu, the first known pediatric bird flu case in the U.S. However, it is unclear how the child contracted the virus, as they had no known contact with infected animals. 

To date, there have been no reports of human transmission of bird flu during the current outbreak. Additionally, most human cases have not been severe, and no deaths have been reported. For these reasons, experts are confident that the bird flu risk to humans remains low. 

“In the short term, there is very little threat,” Dr. Scott Roberts, an infectious diseases specialist with Yale Medicine said. “The risk for the general public is so low,” he emphasized to Yale Medicine.

How the U.S. is monitoring bird flu 

The CDC continues to monitor the circulation of bird flu in humans as part of its year-round flu monitoring. The agency is also working to improve protections for farm workers, who are at the highest risk of contracting bird flu.

In November 2024, the CDC also announced expanded actions and updated guidance for farm workers, including improved access to and training for using personal protective equipment (such as N95 face masks), more rigorous testing procedures, and increased outreach. These updates followed a CDC report finding that 7 percent of participating dairy workers had signs of a recent bird flu infection. A second CDC study, also released in November, found inadequate use of personal protective equipment among dairy workers on farms with bird flu outbreaks. 

After the H5N1 virus was found in raw milk being sold in California, the U.S. Department of Agriculture announced on December 6 that unpasteurized milk must be tested for bird flu. The USDA order also requires dairy farms with positive bird flu cases to cooperate with health officials in disease surveillance. 

Is a bird flu pandemic possible?

In early November, a Canadian teen was hospitalized with bird flu caused by a virus that’s closely related to the H5N1 virus circulating in the U.S. The case has troubled experts for a few reasons. 

First, it is Canada’s first human bird flu case where the patient was not infected while traveling, and the source of exposure is unknown. Second, the teen experienced severe symptoms and developed a lung infection requiring critical care, raising concern that bird flu infections may be more severe in younger people. 

The final and biggest concern about the case is that genetic analysis revealed several changes in the virus’s DNA sequence, called mutations, that could potentially make the virus better able to infect humans. Researchers say that two of those mutations could make it easier for the virus to infect humans, and another one may make it easier for the virus to replicate after infecting a human. However, it’s unclear if the changes occurred before or after the teen was infected.

Scott Hensley, a professor of microbiology at the University of Pennsylvania, told Nature that “this should serve as a warning: this virus has the capacity to switch very quickly into a form that can cause severe disease.”

Notably, even in this more severe case, there is still no evidence of human transmission, which is necessary for a potential bird flu pandemic. However, the case underscores the risk of new and potentially dangerous mutations emerging as the H5N1 virus continues to spread and multiply. 

A study published in Science on December 5 found that a genetic change on a protein on the surface of the virus could make it easier for the virus to attach to and infect human cells. But none of the mutations observed in the Canadian case are those identified in the study. 

Importantly, the researchers stressed that the ability of the virus to attach to a specific part of human cells “is not the only [factor] required for human-to-human transmission of influenza viruses.” 

How to stay safe

Most people are not at high risk of being exposed to bird flu. The virus is spreading between animals and from animals to humans through direct contact. The CDC recommends avoiding the consumption of raw milk products and direct contact with wild birds and potentially infected livestock. 

“Pasteurization kills the bird flu virus and other harmful germs that can be found in raw milk,” says a November 24 California Department of Public Health press release. “CDPH advises consumers not to drink raw milk or eat raw milk products due to the risk of foodborne illnesses.”

Additionally, although the annual flu shot does not protect against bird flu, getting vaccinated helps prevent infection with seasonal flu and bird flu at the same time. In very rare instances, getting infected by two influenza viruses at the same time can result in a combination of genetic material that produces a new virus. 

This phenomenon, known as antigenic shift, triggered the 2009 swine flu pandemic.

Learn more about how to protect yourself and your loved ones against bird flu.

For more information, talk to your health care provider.

This article first appeared on Public Good News and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

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  • The Burden of Getting Medical Care Can Exhaust Older Patients

    10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.

    Susanne Gilliam, 67, was walking down her driveway to get the mail in January when she slipped and fell on a patch of black ice.

    Pain shot through her left knee and ankle. After summoning her husband on her phone, with difficulty she made it back to the house.

    And then began the run-around that so many people face when they interact with America’s uncoordinated health care system.

    Gilliam’s orthopedic surgeon, who managed previous difficulties with her left knee, saw her that afternoon but told her “I don’t do ankles.”

    He referred her to an ankle specialist who ordered a new set of X-rays and an MRI. For convenience’s sake, Gilliam asked to get the scans at a hospital near her home in Sudbury, Massachusetts. But the hospital didn’t have the doctor’s order when she called for an appointment. It came through only after several more calls.

    Coordinating the care she needs to recover, including physical therapy, became a part-time job for Gilliam. (Therapists work on only one body part per session, so she has needed separate visits for her knee and for her ankle several times a week.)

    “The burden of arranging everything I need — it’s huge,” Gilliam told me. “It leaves you with such a sense of mental and physical exhaustion.”

    The toll the American health care system extracts is, in some respects, the price of extraordinary progress in medicine. But it’s also evidence of the poor fit between older adults’ capacities and the health care system’s demands.

    “The good news is we know so much more and can do so much more for people with various conditions,” said Thomas H. Lee, chief medical officer at Press Ganey, a consulting firm that tracks patients’ experiences with health care. “The bad news is the system has gotten overwhelmingly complex.”

    That complexity is compounded by the proliferation of guidelines for separate medical conditions, financial incentives that reward more medical care, and specialization among clinicians, said Ishani Ganguli, an associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School.

    “It’s not uncommon for older patients to have three or more heart specialists who schedule regular appointments and tests,” she said. If someone has multiple medical problems — say, heart disease, diabetes, and glaucoma — interactions with the health care system multiply.

    Ganguli is the author of a new study showing that Medicare patients spend about three weeks a year having medical tests, visiting doctors, undergoing treatments or medical procedures, seeking care in emergency rooms, or spending time in the hospital or rehabilitation facilities. (The data is from 2019, before the covid pandemic disrupted care patterns. If any services were received, that counted as a day of health care contact.)

    That study found that slightly more than 1 in 10 seniors, including those recovering from or managing serious illnesses, spent a much larger portion of their lives getting care — at least 50 days a year.

    “Some of this may be very beneficial and valuable for people, and some of it may be less essential,” Ganguli said. “We don’t talk enough about what we’re asking older adults to do and whether that’s realistic.”

    Victor Montori, a professor of medicine at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, has for many years raised an alarm about the “treatment burden” that patients experience. In addition to time spent receiving health care, this burden includes arranging appointments, finding transportation to medical visits, getting and taking medications, communicating with insurance companies, paying medical bills, monitoring health at home, and following recommendations such as dietary changes.

    Four years ago — in a paper titled “Is My Patient Overwhelmed?” — Montori and several colleagues found that 40% of patients with chronic conditions such as asthma, diabetes, and neurological disorders “considered their treatment burden unsustainable.”

    When this happens, people stop following medical advice and report having a poorer quality of life, the researchers found. Especially vulnerable are older adults with multiple medical conditions and low levels of education who are economically insecure and socially isolated.

    Older patients’ difficulties are compounded by medical practices’ increased use of digital phone systems and electronic patient portals — both frustrating for many seniors to navigate — and the time pressures afflicting physicians. “It’s harder and harder for patients to gain access to clinicians who can problem-solve with them and answer questions,” Montori said.

    Meanwhile, clinicians rarely ask patients about their capacity to perform the work they’re being asked to do. “We often have little sense of the complexity of our patients’ lives and even less insight into how the treatments we provide (to reach goal-directed guidelines) fit within the web of our patients’ daily experiences,” several physicians wrote in a 2022 paper on reducing treatment burden.

    Consider what Jean Hartnett, 53, of Omaha, Nebraska, and her eight siblings went through after their 88-year-old mother had a stroke in February 2021 while shopping at Walmart.

    At the time, the older woman was looking after Hartnett’s father, who had kidney disease and needed help with daily activities such as showering and going to the bathroom.

    During the year after the stroke, both of Hartnett’s parents — fiercely independent farmers who lived in Hubbard, Nebraska — suffered setbacks, and medical crises became common. When a physician changed her mom’s or dad’s plan of care, new medications, supplies, and medical equipment had to be procured, and new rounds of occupational, physical, and speech therapy arranged.

    Neither parent could be left alone if the other needed medical attention.

    “It wasn’t unusual for me to be bringing one parent home from the hospital or doctor’s visit and passing the ambulance or a family member on the highway taking the other one in,” Hartnett explained. “An incredible amount of coordination needed to happen.”

    Hartnett moved in with her parents during the last six weeks of her father’s life, after doctors decided he was too weak to undertake dialysis. He passed away in March 2022. Her mother died months later in July.

    So, what can older adults and family caregivers do to ease the burdens of health care?

    To start, be candid with your doctor if you think a treatment plan isn’t feasible and explain why you feel that way, said Elizabeth Rogers, an assistant professor of internal medicine at the University of Minnesota Medical School. 

    “Be sure to discuss your health priorities and trade-offs: what you might gain and what you might lose by forgoing certain tests or treatments,” she said. Ask which interventions are most important in terms of keeping you healthy, and which might be expendable.

    Doctors can adjust your treatment plan, discontinue medications that aren’t yielding significant benefits, and arrange virtual visits if you can manage the technological requirements. (Many older adults can’t.)

    Ask if a social worker or a patient navigator can help you arrange multiple appointments and tests on the same day to minimize the burden of going to and from medical centers. These professionals can also help you connect with community resources, such as transportation services, that might be of help. (Most medical centers have staff of this kind, but physician practices do not.)

    If you don’t understand how to do what your doctor wants you to do, ask questions: What will this involve on my part? How much time will this take? What kind of resources will I need to do this? And ask for written materials, such as self-management plans for asthma or diabetes, that can help you understand what’s expected.

    “I would ask a clinician, ‘If I chose this treatment option, what does that mean not only for my cancer or heart disease, but also for the time I’ll spend getting care?’” said Ganguli of Harvard. “If they don’t have an answer, ask if they can come up with an estimate.”

    We’re eager to hear from readers about questions you’d like answered, problems you’ve been having with your care, and advice you need in dealing with the health care system. Visit http://kffhealthnews.org/columnists to submit your requests or tips.

    KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF—an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. Learn more about KFF.

    Subscribe to KFF Health News’ free Morning Briefing.

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  • What Matters Most For Your Heart?

    10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.

    Eat More (Of This) For Lower Blood Pressure

    Heart disease remains the world’s #1 killer. We’d say “and in the US, it’s no different”, but in fact, the US is #1 country for heart disease. So, it’s worse and perhaps some extra care is in order.

    But how?

    What matters the most

    Is it salt? Salt plays a part, but it’s not even close to the top problem:

    Hypertension: Factors Far More Relevant Than Salt

    Is it saturated fat? Saturated fat from certain sources plays more of a role than salt, but other sources may not be so much of an issue:

    Can Saturated Fats Be Heart-Healthy?

    Is it red meat? Red meat is not great for the heart (or for almost anything else, except perhaps anemia):

    The Whys and Hows of Cutting Meats Out Of Your Diet

    …but it’s still not the top dietary factor.

    The thing many don’t eat

    All the above are foodstuffs that a person wanting a healthier heart and cardiovascular system in general might (reasonably and usually correctly) want to cut down, but there’s one thing that most people need more of:

    Why You’re Probably Not Getting Enough Fiber (And How To Fix It)

    And this is especially true for heart health:

    ❝Dietary fiber has emerged as a crucial yet underappreciated part of hypertension management.

    Our comprehensive analysis emphasizes the evidence supporting the effectiveness of dietary fiber in lowering blood pressure and reducing the risk of cardiovascular events.❞

    ~ Dr. Francine Marques

    Specifically, she and her team found:

    • Each additional 5g of fiber per day reduces blood pressure by 2.8/2.1 (systolic/diastolic, in mmHG)
    • Dietary fiber works in several ways to improve cardiovascular health, including via gut bacteria, improved lipids profiles, and anti-inflammatory effects
    • Most people are still only getting a small fraction (¼ to ⅓) of the recommended daily amount of fiber. To realize how bad that is, imagine if you consumed only ¼ of the recommended daily amount of calories every day!

    You can read more about it here:

    Dietary fiber critical in managing hypertension, international study finds

    That’s a pop-science article, but it’s still very informative. If you prefer to read the scientific paper itself (or perhaps as well), you can find it below

    Recommendations for the Use of Dietary Fiber to Improve Blood Pressure Control

    Want more from your fiber?

    Here’s yet another way fiber improves cardiometabolic health, hot off the academic press (the study was published just a couple of weeks ago):

    How might fiber lower diabetes risk? Your gut could hold the clues

    this pop-science article was based on this scientific paper

    Gut Microbiota and Blood Metabolites Related to Fiber Intake and Type 2 Diabetes

    Take care!

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  • Tuna vs Catfish – Which is Healthier?

    10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.

    Our Verdict

    When comparing tuna to catfish, we picked the tuna.

    Why?

    Today in “that which is more expensive and/or harder to get is not necessarily healthier”…

    Looking at their macros, tuna has more protein and less fat (and overall, less saturated fat, and also less cholesterol).

    In the category of vitamins, both are good but tuna distinguishes itself: tuna has more of vitamins A, B1, B2, B3, B6, and D, while catfish has more of vitamins B5, B9, B12, E, and K. They are both approximately equal in choline, and as an extra note in tuna’s favor (already winning 6:5), tuna is a very good source of vitamin D, while catfish barely contains any. All in all: a moderate, but convincing, win for tuna.

    When it comes to minerals, things are clearer still: tuna has more copper, iron, magnesium, phosphorus, potassium, and selenium, while catfish has more calcium, manganese, and zinc. Oh, and catfish is also higher in one other mineral: sodium, which most people in industrialized countries need less of, on average. So, a 6:3 win for tuna, before we even take into account the sodium content (which makes the win for tuna even stronger).

    In short: tuna wins the day in every category!

    Want to learn more?

    You might like to read:

    Farmed Fish vs Wild Caught (It Makes Quite A Difference)

    Take care!

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  • Fiber Fueled – by Dr. Will Bulsiewicz

    10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.

    We generally know that for gut health we should eat fiber, but what of the balances of different sorts of fiber?

    That’s one of the main things that make this book stand out—fostering diversity in our microbiome by fostering diversity in our diet. Specifically, diversity of fiber-containing foods.

    The book is part “science made easy for the lay reader”, and part recipe book. The recipes come with shopping lists and a meal planner, though we would recommend to use those as a guide rather than to try to adhere perfectly to them.

    In particular, this reviewer would encourage much more generous use of healthful seasonings… and less reliance on there being leftovers several days later (tasty food gets gone quickly in this house!)

    As for the science, the feel of this is more like reading a science-based observational documentary with explanations, than of reading a science textbook. Studies are mentioned in passing, but not dissected in any detail, and the focus is more on getting the key learnings across.

    Bottom line: if you’d like to boost not just the amount, but also the diversity, of fiber in your diet, and reap the gut-health rewards, this book is a great guide for that!

    Click here to get your copy of “Fiber Fueled” from Amazon today!

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  • Beyond Burger vs Beef Burger – Which is Healthier?

    10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.

    Our Verdict

    When comparing the Beyond Burger to a grass-fed beef burger, we picked the Beyond Burger—but it was very close.

    Why?

    The macronutrient profiles of the two are almost identical, including the amount of protein, the amount of fat, and the amount of that fat that’s saturated.

    Where they stand apart is in two ways:

    1) Red meat is classed as a group 2A carcinogen
    2) The Beyond Burger contains more sodium (about 1/5 of the daily allowance according to the AHA, or 1/4 of the daily allowance according to the WHO)

    Neither of those things are great, so how to decide which is worse?
    •⁠ ⁠Cancer and heart disease are both killers, with heart disease claiming more victims.
    •⁠ ⁠However, we do need some sodium to live, whereas we don’t need carcinogens to live.

    Tie-breaker: the sodium content in the Beyond Burger is likely to be offset by the fact that it’s a fully seasoned burger and will be eaten as-is, whereas the beef burger will doubtlessly have seasonings added before it’s eaten—which may cause it to equal or even exceed the salt content of the Beyond Burger.

    The cancer risk for the beef burger, meanwhile, stays one-sided.

    One thing’s for sure though: neither of them are exactly a cornerstone of a healthy diet, and either are best enjoyed as an occasional indulgence.

    Some further reading:
    •⁠ ⁠Lesser-Known Salt Risks
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  • Healing Back Pain – by Dr. John Sarno

    10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.

    Often when we review books with titles like this one, we preface it with a “what it’s not: a think-yourself-better book”.

    In this case… It is, in fact, a think-yourself-better book. However, its many essay-length rave reviews caught our attention, and upon reading, we can report: its ideas are worth reading.

    The focus of this book is on TMS, or “Tension Myoneural Syndrome”, to give it its full name. The author asserts (we cannot comment on the accuracy) that many cases of TMS are misdiagnosed as other things, from sciatica to lupus. When other treatments fail, or are simply not available (no cure for lupus yet, for example) or are unenticing (risky surgeries, for example), he offers an alternative approach.

    Dr. Sarno lays out the case for TMS being internally fixable, since our muscles and nerves are all at the command of our brain. Rather than taking a physical-first approach, he takes a psychological-first approach, before building into a more holistic model.

    The writing style is… A little dated and salesey and unnecessarily padded, to be honest, but the content makes it worthwhile.

    Bottom line: if you have back pain, then the advice of this book, priced not much more than a box of top brand painkillers, seems a very reasonable thing to try.

    Click here to check out Healing Back Pain, and see if it works for you!

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