THE EPOCH TIMES – Dr. Robert Redfield, former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), has issued a grim prediction that the next major pandemic will be caused by the bird flu.
“I really do think it’s very likely that we will, at some time—it’s not a question of if, it’s more a question of when—we will have a bird flu pandemic,” Dr. Redfield told NewsNation in an interview published on June 14.
U.S. officials recently confirmed that the highly pathogenic avian influenza virus had been detected in a cow herd in Wyoming, the 12th state to report an infection.
The former CDC director said the bird flu, when it enters humans, has a “significant” mortality.
“Probably somewhere between 25 and 50 percent mortality, so it’s going to be quite complicated,” Dr. Redfield said.
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Since around 2019, there’s been a progressive increase in the number of mammal species to which the bird flu virus has spread, with alpacas becoming the latest species to fall sick after coming into contact with the pathogen, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service.
Dr. Redfield said that as the bird flu has spread to more than two dozen mammals in the United States, the virus has been adapting and learning how to change its use of receptors, with the risk of making a jump to humans growing by the day.
“So it’s going through a lot of changes. And as it picks up some of these new receptors, it can get closer and closer to humans,” he said.
“Once the virus gains the ability to attach to the human receptor, and then go human to human, that’s when you’re going to have the pandemic. And as I said, I think it’s just a matter of time” …