Did you say “bird flu”? In fact, this is a virus that has wings. And which circulates from country to country, from continent to continent, at the frenzied pace of globalization. Of course, we have known since the great plagues or the Spanish flu of yesteryear that microbes have no borders. But the Covid-19 wave has shown us that a disease can strike very quickly and very hard across the entire planet.
Not really reassuring: even if we have managed to contain this SARS-CoV-2, we can see that it is still smoldering and resurfaces here and there regularly.
The same goes for avian flu, which is not new. Chroniclers mention, among other devastations, the “small pox” of pigeons in Paris at the beginning of the 18th century, the slaughter of 11 million poultry in the United States in 1783, thousands of wild ducks found dead in the Landes in 1 841. We did not know, in those times, how to formally diagnose the disease. We spoke sometimes of plague, sometimes of pox, which struck magpies, chickens, geese or ducks.
What we know in 2024 is that the virus is now present everywhere in the world. For a quarter of a century, it has caused cold sweats in South-East Asia. There, men, women and children succumbed to devastating symptoms before the phenomenon could be contained.
Here, it has caused the euthanasia of millions of birds in successive waves, leaving breeders on the verge of ruin. And now in the United States today, it is contaminating cows and farmers.
The good news is that for the moment, this virus has not found the right key to easily penetrate our body. Affected humans are only affected because they have been in direct contact with sick animals. The other good news is that we are currently one step ahead of this H5N1 virus. For thirty years, it has been duly identified and analyzed. It is under close surveillance in most countries.
We managed to obtain a vaccine and use it, particularly at home to immunize millions of web-footed and gallinaceae animals. Thus, the progression of the virus remains contained and allows, for example, the foie gras sector in our South-West to breathe after catastrophic years.
Finally, the Covid-19 epidemic and its emergencies have pushed science forward at a rapid pace. Its advances, notably the use of the messenger RNA vaccine, can be directly transposed to H5N1.
However, the game is not completely won. Vigilance remains essential, in the farms and… in the test tubes. Because the virus is always susceptible to mutations. And can still choose to attack a very common and very numerous species: ours.
