60 Minutes Rewind - Chasing The Flu - Dec 4, 2005 report on Avian Flu pandemic preparedness

H5N1, Avian Influenza. Like all Flu viruses, it's constantly evolving as it travels the globe in the bellies of birds. Having a 50% mortality rate for humans infected. With fewer than 100 deaths worldwide, yet the WHO calls it the most serious threat to the planet above AIDS and TB.

Scientists today understand that bird influenza viruses, like human influenza viruses, can also infect hogs, and when a bird virus and a human virus infect the same pig cell, their different genes can be shuffled and exchanged like playing cards, resulting in a new, perhaps especially lethal, virus. The 1918 pandemic virus infected cells in the upper respiratory tract, transmitting easily, but also deep in the lungs, damaging tissue and often leading to viral as well as bacterial pneumonias. Although some researchers argue that the 1918 pandemic began elsewhere, in France in 1916 or China and Vietnam in 1917, many other studies indicate a U.S. origin. It’s clear the pandemic killed more people in a year than AIDS has killed in 40 years, more than the bubonic plague killed in a century. The impact of the pandemic on the United States is sobering to contemplate: Some 670,000 Americans died. What proved even more deadly was the government policy toward the truth. When the United States entered the war, Woodrow Wilson demanded that “the spirit of ruthless brutality...enter into the very fibre of national life.” So he created the Committee on Public Information, which was inspired by an adviser who wrote, “Truth and falsehood are arbitrary terms....The force of an idea lies in its inspirational value. It matters very little if it is true or false.”
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/journal-plague-year-180965222/

Just because a ‘viral particle’ can be identified, it doesn’t mean it is the cause of disease. In fact, influenza A viruses are completely benign, silent passengers in the intestinal tracts of all types of waterfowl. During trans-global seasonal migration, thousands of ducks and geese congregate in available lakes and ponds along their journey. An examination of the lake water where flocks have converged would reveal tens of billions of influenza A particles. It is presumed that when a highly pathogenic influenza virus is found in a flock, the virus will be transmitted indefinitely through the stool of the birds. Complete destruction of all the birds is considered to be the only option for eradicating the outbreak, even if the birds show no sign of the infection. That practice continues today with the large-scale culling of flocks used to eliminate the presence of the virus.
https://drtenpenny.substack.com/p/bird-flu-in-the-newsagain