After death of girl yesterday, 12 more detected with H5N1 bird flu in Cambodia | Hacker News Reader

After death of girl yesterday, 12 more detected with H5N1 bird flu in Cambodia

khmertimeskh.com

106 pointsvoisin101 comments

Possibly a mistranslation? I can't read Khmer, but someone on twitter claims there were 12 contacts (rather than infected individuals) with the index case (the deceased girl, I assume) of which 4 report flu-like symptoms: https://twitter.com/jurreysi/status/1628816263295438849

That's better... but 4 out of 12 of her contacts displaying flu-like symptoms isn't very comforting either.

Please don’t be h2h…

I remember reading a tweet in December of 2019 that referenced an article about a spate of deadly respiratory infections in China. They jokingly said this sounds like it’s from the opening sequence of a pandemic/disaster movie. Reading this headline gave me a fleeting moment of “ptsd”.

Same. There aren't many brief glances at my phone that are seared into my memory, but a notification from DW news on New Year's Day 2019 is one of them.

It's different this time. We have flu vaccines, and they are updated annually for the most likely dangerous strains. If this turns out to be such a strain, a flu vaccine against this could be produced (and approved) in no time.

Just to add to this, monkeypox was the last time there was a new infection panic. We fortunately nipped that in the bud because we had vaccines and were more understanding of the severity of the situation. It’s not a 1:1 situation but it’s similar enough to put me at ease.

That was also spread from direct contact, mostly through (male to male) sex. There was never any reason to panic, unless we were all planning on having post-COVID orgies.

How does it ever help to panic, but it's a pertinent fact that smallpox is highly contagious, with true airborne being one among its modes of transmission.

In my opinion there was real cause for concern, with modest probability but very high stakes, not because of the properties of that monkeypox strain in itself, but for what it might have turned into if it sustained transmission on scale in humans and the new-host-driven evolution happened to carry it through phenotype territory closer to smallpox with respect to life cycle and virulence. Virulence levels of a less benign monkeypox lineage would have been bad enough actually, if the virus could tap into properties for effective transmission.

We seem to have lucked out about the evolution (again) this time, and it probably helped that the current version had agonizing symptoms and its transmission was best targeted to a human subpopulation which overall has a lot of healthy respect for epidemics.

If we replayed COVID again our response would likely be worse and not better, we've largely regressed. You should be more worried, not less.

In particular - the anti-vaccination movement has gained significant social traction and, in some places, has been openly embraced or at least tolerated by the majority of politicians. Our ability to socially pressure good behavior is quite depleted.

"First published in Hindustan Times"

This is one of a very few English-language newspapers left now in Cambodia, and is kind of an unacknowledged government mouthpiece, yet they're getting this story from an Indian paper?

According to HT they got it from the Associated Press [0].

[0] https://www.hindustantimes.com/world-news/bird-flu-kills-11-...

Weird, not on topic but the quote you mentioned made me think of the poem "The Blind Men and the Elephant" [1]. I've only heard it (poem) before and never really knew what "Industan" or whatever place was being referenced until seeing "Hindustan" written here. Weird how spoken/written language dots can connect randomly after like decades

[1]: https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_poems_of_John_Godfrey_Sax...

David Wallace-Wells was just writing yesterday about the prospect of back-to-back pandemics, based on H5N1, at the New York Times:

<https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/22/opinion/bird-flu-pandemic...>

https://www.cdc.gov/flu/avianflu/spotlights/2022-2023/avian-...

"Van Oosterhout, a professor of evolutionary genetics ... warns that our highly bred livestock cannot keep pace with the evolution of parasites, such as viruses, due to the animals’ lack of genetic diversity.

As a result, livestock act as “mixing vessels” for the emergence of new infectious diseases that can then make the leap from animals to humans.

In combination with habitat destruction, the illegal wildlife trade, and mass migration of both animals and people, Prof. Van Oosterhout says this has created a “perfect storm” for the development of pandemics, such as COVID-19. He concludes that emerging infectious diseases are “possibly the greatest existential threat to humanity.”"

https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/excessive-animal-f...

https://www.independent.co.uk/climate-change/news/coronaviru...

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/ng-interactive/2020/...

https://sentientmedia.org/animal-agriculture/

We should stop eating meat. For most of the world it's not a necessity, but a personal choice. We "grow & harvest" 80 billion land animals every year.

It’s a necessity for all humans to eat meat. Whether you eat animal or lab meat is the choice.

Wut.

A lot of India would like to have a word with you.

I quickly googled but didn't see a good answer on this, how do Indian families do baby formula? I thought formula required animal product to be effective.

"Meat" and "animal product" are not the same.

Yes, a country well known for the nutritional constitution of its impoverished.

Right, i forgot. Meat is the cheap nutritional option.

This is just factually incorrect - I can't even think of anything I can really cite to highlight that we're able to derive all the nutrients we need from plants and that it gets even easier if nutritional supplements are brought into the picture.

I certainly enjoy meat and cook with it frequently - but it's a luxury and one that is hardly mechanically necessary to my survival (and, tbh, is generally a larger source of health issues than veganism).

Wrong - a plant diet without supplementation is effectively a health crisis.

It’s no luxury. We did not evolve our brains based on a “luxury”. Cooked meat is a necessity. You are worse for not having it in every and any case, and a plant based diet without supplementation is equivalent to running at a lower efficiency.

Please don't spread FUD and lies, please.

> Wrong - a plant diet without supplementation is effectively a health crisis

Supplementation is not a problem - we're supplementing the animals with B12 etc. anyway, so why not skip the middleman.

> Cooked meat is a necessity

It was, but it isn't anymore. Not in most of the world.

> You are worse for not having it

Not true - plant based diets are healthier. It's a fact.

> plant based diet without supplementation is equivalent to running at a lower efficiency

Nobody forces you to skip supplementation ... everywhere you look it's mentioned as a necessity. And many vegan products are fortified already.

Everything you get from animal products you can get from plants. Those animals did.

Plant based diets are purely worse for you - you can tell because you need to slam 11 different nutrient pills to keep going without your body failing.

You terminate earlier on these fad-diets than on your natural omnivorous diet - and what's more, if you did pure meat and no vegetables, you're actually 2x better off than on a purely plant diet.

I know you're here to troll, so I won't spend a lot of time on the reply.

> 11 different nutrient pills to keep going without your body failing

The only pill you should take (if there is no fortified food in your pantry) is B12. You don't need anything else. And B12 is from bacteria/algae, not from animals.

> terminate earlier on these fad-diets

https://www.livestrong.com/article/13730585-plant-based-diet...

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35719615/

and thousands others

> than on your natural omnivorous diet

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FNIoKmMq6cs - Anthropologist Debunks the Paleo Diet

No one’s trolling buddy - “if there’s no fortified food in your pantry”.

You literally have to supplement on the fad plant diets. Insanity that you’d recommend this to people.

The animals get a lot of supplements. And not only the B12, but a lot of other stuff too ... like tons of antibiotics (approximately 80% of all the antibiotics sold in the U.S. are for use in animal agriculture.). That's not insanity?

To see what minerals & vitamins we supplement, see https://www.hobbyfarms.com/livestock-nutrition-basics-vitami... (I'm no expert at this, this was the first page I've found).

Veganism is not a fad diet. It's an upgrade.

I'm not against taking supplements. But when you say it's an upgrade, how is it an upgrade if you need to take 50 supplements just to get relatively near meats baseline.

It's not an upgrade at all, it's an inferior diet to our naturally occuring omnivore diet, not just that, but eating these soft plants (of which 50%+ of the diet is composed) will royally fuck up children's development (jaw/stature/cognition etc.).

Do what nature commands of you, don't override it with shit the magic screen tells you to do. It's in your nature to be an omnivore, "upgrading" to cheap plants only is literally against the nature of man.

Lab meat or animal meat is the only choice people should need to worry about, if they so choose - and of those, animal meat is the superior choice.

> if you need to take 50 supplements

lie

> naturally occuring omnivore diet

we don't need to eat meat/dairy in 21st century to be healthy. natural is messy and cruel and stupid. we're (almost) beyond that

> eating these soft plants ... will royally fuck up children's development

lie ... well planned plant-based diet is enough (and healthier) for everybody, see my other comment

> do what nature commands of you ... the magic screen tells you to do

i (try to) do what what is best for me and others and for the environment. not what 20000+ years ago somebody did or "some screen" says

don't repeat what's always been done without thinking about it. we need to move forward, not to stay stagnant in the ways of the past. there are no more mammoths to eat to extinction. we don't need to continue with the destruction forever, just because we always did

> "upgrading" to cheap plants only is literally against the nature of man

kindness and love is what should be in our future, not cruelty, wars and crushed skulls

btw, cheap plants? where's that coming from? what's wrong with that?

we could stop destroying the earth and reforest grazing lands, storing carbon in new forests, increasing carbon sinks, stopping wild life extinction and poisoning of the earth and waters, if only we'd stop being selfish and switched to plant based

> Lab meat or animal meat is the only choice people should need to worry about

maybe, but it may take decades until we'll have that choice. we may f**k up the earth with animal agriculture long before that

> animal meat is the superior choice

because it has suffering and death and stress and endotoxins and antibiotics inside? because it needs 10-100x more land than plants, which have everything we need?

sure, believe what you want

Like talking to a wall.

Make your choices, suffer the consequences.

> Like talking to a wall.

I too welcome end of this debate, thank you for participating :)

If I may, try to back up your claims with sources next time. Maybe you'll have trouble finding any, but don't give up.

> Make your choices, suffer the consequences.

I'm trying to be the only one who suffers consequences of my choices. Choices of carnists make the world worse for everyone.

And my consequences after many years living a strict version of that "diet"? Never been healthier, thank you for asking ;)

TLDR: You're wrong and you know it. All carnists do. Deep down. I was one, I know.

“Carnists” lmao

Get a therapist

I already have one. Meet my psychologist, Melanie Joy, Ph.D., Ed.M., a Harvard-educated psychologist, professor of psychology and sociology at the University of Massachusetts.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o0VrZPBskpg (Toward Rational, Authentic Food Choices | Melanie Joy | TEDxMünchen)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4GHy6Cfh4sk (What to Say to Vegans | Melanie Joy)

Her work speaks for itself. Ciao

There's about 500 million vegetarians in the world

What a shame

American Dietetic Association

"It is the position of the American Dietetic Association that appropriately planned vegetarian diets, including total vegetarian or vegan diets, are healthful, nutritionally adequate, and may provide health benefits in the prevention and treatment of certain diseases. Well-planned vegetarian diets are appropriate for individuals during all stages of the life cycle, including pregnancy, lactation, infancy, childhood, and adolescence, and for athletes."

NHS UK

"A vegetarian or vegan diet can be suitable for everyone, regardless of their age."

British Dietetic Association

"A plant-based diet is based on foods derived from plants, […] with few or no animal products. […] Well-planned plant-based diets can support healthy living at every age and life-stage"

World Health Organisation

"For adults, protein from two or more plant groups daily is like to be adequate. For children, however, and especially those aged 6-24 months, each meal should contain wherever possible two complementary sources of plant protein"

https://talkveganto.me/en/facts/suitable-for-all/

All part of the same organizations - all incorrect in their assumption. Cooked meat is necessary for healthy living.

I think you would actually achieve your goal of advancing vegetarianism more effectively, if you left off the whole last paragraph.

You had me very convinced in the first half, because i recognise the risks discussed by Van Oosterhout, but the second you pivoted, you lost me. And probably others.

And yeah, maybe that contrarian streak makes me an asshole, but I am sure that I am not the only contrarian on HN.

"A key way of preventing pandemics in the future is to reduce our meat consumption. That’s the view of Cock Van Oosterhout ... argues that reducing livestock is ‘imperative’ for public and planetary health, and suggests more money and research time be spent on developing meat alternatives."

https://www.transitionearth.co/2021/05/11/meat-reduction-key...

You may not want to hear and see things, but that doesn't make the problems go away. And reducing livestock and stopping eating meat is a logical position to take.

Also, https://i.redd.it/nk7dau6nmmja1.jpg

You keep (mostly) repeating yourself, so I think you missed my point.

I agree with Mr. Cock's points about industrial-scale, monoculture livestock being a fertile breeding ground for novel pathogens. Makes a lot of sense to me. Let's go, let's recognize it as an existential risk, let's do something about that.

>stopping eating meat is a logical position to take

Oh, I'm out.

No thanks.

There is certainly an accelerationism at work in your logic, as the professor merely suggests reducing meat consumption. Which you take to the mat, and think we should stop eating meat. Do you see the difference? Van Oosterhout comes across as an academic. You come across as a scold, and no one wants to listen to a scold. And this is from someone who eats meatless a couple days a week, and when I do eat meat, it tends to be a sensible portion size. I'm all in on the Beyond/Impossible stuff too. In other words, I'm pretty open minded generally to the idea of reducing meat consumption.

Scold or not (thank you), optimal amount of meat (animal products) we should eat is zero. You won't hear it from academics as plainly not because it's not true, but because of resistance of general population to the idea. There is a push for reduction now, and it will (surely) in the future morph into elimination.

There are many reasons for that. There are many sources discussing the problem. You may choose ignorance. Fine. Cognitive dissonance is a hell of a drug, so your position is a familiar to me (for I've been where you are).

If you'll take the red pill by studying the problem from all its sides, you'll think differently in the future.

You're not ready to face the facts now, I get it. But don't worry. You seem to be on the right path.

P.S. Scold? More like Don Quixote ;)

> We should stop eating meat. For most of the world it's not a necessity, but a personal choice.

The same applies to traveling. Let's start with that, as it will prevent pandemics even more probably.

https://flightfree.co.uk/post/is-it-better-to-be-vegan-or-gi...

This source seems to agree with you. However it calculates CO2 emmisions from animal agriculture at 15%, a figure which is (rightly) disputed and may be as high as 80%, if we'd allow for grazing lands to be reforested/rewilded.

There are many studies/opinions on the subject, and we imho don't have a complete picture yet. The numbers differ greatly, and there are powerful players distorting the debate (big ag, oil sector).

But what we do know is that that we have to do many things to reduce our footprint. Doing just A and ignoring B is not an optimal strategy. We should be prepared to do as much as possible to reduce our impact. Or be ready to face the consequences.

I was actually talking about the risk of spreading viruses globally, not CO2 (although that is another important point as well of course).

Of course, I've misread, mea culpa.

But ... as zombie movies show attempts to stop pandemics are usually futile. Maybe it's better to prevent them.

Not traveling prevents pandemics. It doesn't prevent new diseases from emerging, but it prevents them from becoming pandemic.

But we can't really stop traveling, can we? What about transport and shipping?

Even a full quarantine when there is a new disease is not always feasible. If you're lucky and the disease parameters will allow for quarantine to be possible, there will always be someone who'll ignore all the regulations and with coughing and a fewer will evade all checkpoints and baricades and travel by fishing ship or a helicopter or sewage tunnels or by foot through the jungle somewhere he isn't supposed to go, and spend a day in a full cinema there.

I would recommend some catastrophic movies again.

We can stop traveling for leisure, this would go a long way already.

When we closed the borders where I live during the first COVID outbreak, cases went almost down to zero.

To quote the comment I was replying to:

> For most of the world it's not a necessity, but a personal choice.

This applies to traveling as well.

But of course, people don’t want to change habits.

Well, here we go again

This sort of thing happens all the time, and on average no global pandemic comes of it. What are the odds this will be the same?

Really tempting the gods here.

The current situation for H5N1 is different than it has been in the past.

* https://www.science.org/content/article/incredibly-concernin..., "H5N1 appears to have spread through a densely packed mammalian population and gained at least one mutation that favors mammal-to-mammal spread"

* https://www.npr.org/2022/12/02/1140076426/what-we-know-about... "Unlike the 2014-15 outbreak, this one is being driven by wild birds, not by farm-to-farm transmission"

That said the risk is still low and the best thing to do is read experts: https://www.cdc.gov/flu/avianflu/spotlights/2022-2023/avian-... "The current public health threat to people from H5N1 virus is low. The current H5N1 outbreak in poultry and birds continues to be mostly an animal health issue. However, people should avoid direct and close contact with sick or dead wild birds, poultry, and wild animals. People should not consume uncooked or undercooked poultry or poultry products, including raw eggs."

This probably won't develop into a global pandemic - but the odds of global pandemics is constantly increasing as we continue expanding factory farming and shrinking natural reserves.

That's sort of the key tune of climate change: everything awful gets more frequent, but it's still probabilistic.

It does not appear to be highly transmissible between mammals. If it mutates, this could change.

Don't worry, surely there are some virologists in some lab mapping right now exactly what mutations would make it very transmissible between mammals. So that we are ready and prepared, of course.

Up until a few months ago, it wasn't transmissible between mammals at all: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Influenza_A_virus_subtype_H5N1... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mammals_that_can_get_H...

Not again...

Unlike COVID this seems to be a well known influenza variant so not sure there is much to be worried about here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Influenza_A_virus_subtype_H5N1

File this one under comments that may not age well.

the very article you linked says, in the Overview section:

around 60% of humans known to have been infected with the Asian strain of HPAI A(H5N1) have died from it, and H5N1 may mutate or reassort into a strain capable of efficient human-to-human transmission.

Yea - one upside of extremely deadly diseases is that they have problems hitting pandemic levels due to how quickly hosts die off - the "best performing" diseases are rarely fatal but often come with serious long term effects so the host can spread it around a fair amount before their system gets it under control.

There's no guarantee of that pattern though because transmissibility and lethality are not always tightly coupled. E.g. there's no reason a pathogen can't have traits favouring heavy presymptomatic transmission but also progress to death rapidly at some point.

There's still room for a pandemic to be at least 10 times worse virulence than COVID while still managing to be highly transmissible since that is what happened with 1918. And instead of predominantly killing the elderly it went after 30 year olds and babies as well.

It's well-known, insofar as people have been worried about it going pandemic for a long time. Definitely not the first outbreak or even the first deaths so there's no particular reason to think this time is the time it goes pandemic, but it's not exactly comforting.

https://www.statnews.com/2023/02/08/tracking-the-bird-flu-ex...

The main thing to worry about is if this starts spreading, the combination of 1) lockdowns being politically unfeasible and 2) lack of a mass produced vaccine

The Overton window on the feasibility of lockdowns would get a bit of a shift if it becomes a pandemic with a 60% (or even a substantially lower) fatality rate.

Yea. I’m more interested in the manufacturing capacity of high quality masks, that seems like a low cost high payoff investment from a global health standpoint.

I'm more interested in just shutting down air travel every winter or just period. It's much easier and actually works. Sure we have to go back to a period around 60 years ago but the alternative is going back 100 years in civilization.

That's if you could get a sizeable chunk of the population to accept the data. Unfortunately, as we've seen with covid there are all sorts of "the guberment is lying to us!" type conspiracy theories out there and it could take a while before the truth sinks in - from seeing friends, family and neighbors experiencing serious illness and/or mortality. But when it gets to that point it's kind of too late.

I think we're in a vulnerable space right now where in some ways the divisions that were exposed and heightened by the covid pandemic leave us less able to deal with another serious pandemic in the near term. Add in pandemic fatigue and it's even worse.

Covid was a "perfect" conspiracy disease because the symptoms were so different person-to-person.

A 50%+ lethal disease won't leave many survivors to say "it wasn't that bad, everyone overreacted!". The initial wave of conspiracy-minded folks won't have a great time to say the least.

A 5 to 10% lethal disease would be horrific enough.

It's not a conspiracy theory when they actually do lie; take Dr. Fauci for example:

"When polls said only about half of all Americans would take a vaccine, I was saying herd immunity would take 70 to 75 percent. Then, when newer surveys said 60 percent or more would take it, I thought, “I can nudge this up a bit,” so I went to 80, 85." [0]

Lots of talk of "just so we can flatten the curve" turned into "so noone ever gets infected again". The role of NIH/NIAD in funding gain-of-function research. etc. etc.

There's no denying that plenty of people didn't believe things that the government said were actually true. The problem, of course, is that it is hard to tell which statements are lies and which statements are true.

[0] https://slate.com/technology/2021/07/noble-lies-covid-fauci-...

There is a growing chunk of the population that has now begun beating the drum of "COVID never happened - nobody died and there was no flu." It is extremely easy to underestimate just how ignorant some people can be.

I've come to the conclusion that reducing beliefs like that is not a matter of education. I mean the message is out there loud and clear, it's not that if only people heard it louder and more often that they would change their minds.

No, I think at this point, the best way to reduce the number of people who believe the government lies to them is to reduce the amount of lies that the government tells them.

> 2) lack of a mass produced vaccine

But this would be a flu vaccine. We've been making flu vaccines for a long time now. Why couldn't they just put H5N1 in next fall's flu vaccine?

If this is indeed human to human transmission, humankind will look very different next fall.

If we look at historic flu trends we're going to be getting to the end of this year's flu season in the northern hemisphere in the next month or so. Usually starts ramping up in November (this last year it was a bit earlier) and goes through February, sometimes into March, but much less in Spring, Summer.

It's complicated, first there is not just one H5N1 virus, there is a family of them.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H5N1_vaccine

The constant evolution of new strains is the norm for seasonal flus though, for which we update vaccines in a matter of months (without any emergency use authorisation to cut through red tape)

Pandemic flu doesn't have to be seasonal and we don't produce enough to actually vaccinate everyone who would want it, and even in a pandemic situation it would be a challenge to ramp up production.

"Should an outbreak of pandemic influenza occur today, the doses available for global populations within this time frame would be well short of the need, given the state of preparedness and the level of existing capacity. Our estimate is that in a “best-case” scenario, only 1.2 billion courses (2.4 billion doses) could be produced from current capacity within six months, and current stockpiles are limited."

https://www.path.org/resources/influenza-vaccine-strategies-...

We've had MERS and swine flu and C19 since that was published (2007), I imagine capacity may have improved since. And ultimately (cynically) that's just a function of the fact that maintaining a stockpile (or the capacity to quickly produce a world's supply) is not a goal of any individual country, anyone living in a country that is 1. Rich or 2. Houses pharma companies or their manufacturing facilities will probably be covered.

This report does say that things have improved since then:

https://api.healthsecuritynet.org/get/file/9789241515634-eng...

> lockdowns being politically unfeasible

I bet 50% mortality will really focus the mind of the anti-lockdowners.

Religious beliefs become stronger in the light of contradicting evidence. There will be a "god of the gaps" approach with conspiracies as well.

That is unfortunately unlikely - the best conspiracy theorists view any criticism of their viewpoint as further proof that their assertions are correct and will constantly spin BS to make sure their initial beliefs remain intact.

As I had said at the outbreak of COVID the tough math governments deal with during a pandemic is that there are only so many law enforcement assets and if they are exercised en masse they'll become ineffective due to transmission causing holes in the work force. You really want everyone to remain indoors voluntarily and for law enforcement to have no job to do - that's the ideal scenario since it preserves the strength of government organizations for any other incidents that may arise.

Society functions on using soft power to compel people to act in a way that's viewed as rational by society - anti-lockdowners don't respond to soft power to get them off the street you generally need to actually exercise hard power and isolate them - but a compounding issue is that we've created an environment in the internet where all these conspiracy theorists can attract cult followings and increase the amount of non-compliant folks which exceeds the capacity of law enforcement.

This problem isn't going to go away on a whim.

With a 50% mortality rate, this is quite self correcting. People who refuse to be lockdown will die.

A whole bunch of anti-vaxxers have died from COVID but their irresponsibility lead to countless others suffering needlessly. While it's my hope that everyone gets to enjoy a long life I'm more concerned about the responsible people being harmed by those folks' irresponsibility.

But the more people refusing and the longer the wave goes, the more incidental deaths there will be from people with other medical issues that have access to care restricted.

Quite the opposite. 50% of people who refuse to lockdown that contract it will die, the other 50% will function as efficient spreaders. Let's not forget how many of these sociopaths came out of the woodwork during covid.

Yes, but there's an astonishing amount of them...

50% mortality rate is almost certainly way too high and missing subclinical cases in the denominator.

Same thing happened with COVID early where the CFR was reported to be 17% in the initial cases out of China.

In terms of vaccine I'd be more worried about even poorer uptake than the COVID vaccines among vulnerable populations this time around than I would with supply. The regulatory and manufacturing infrastructure exists to produce a lot of flu vaccines and update the antigens in a matter of months, so I reckon we would be ok on supply within a year. Although the ramp up might depend on who is in office I suppose and how offensive the idea is to their base.

And if people still go to work.

Your point about COVID, aka SARS-CoV-2 being not well known is incorrect. Zoonotic coronoviruses were a major concern, and COVID's relative, SARS-CoV-1 killed almost 1,000 people and was a major health incident in 2002-2004. MERS-CoV killed another 1,000 people 10 years later. COVID came from a well known and family of viruses of high concern and still caused enormous damage.

Not sure what you're talking about. The class of viruses SARS-CoV-2 belonged to was known, but that specific virus was "unknown" in the sense that it had never been seen outside the lab that developed it.

It killed millions. You're right that H5N1 has the potential to be worse.

There's nothing about it being "known" that makes it that much better.

Might make it worse since the "it is just the flu" people will literally be able to point to the fact that it is an influenza strain that was already known as for the reason why they don't need to worry about it.

Agreed. That dismissal would be crazy. We've known about bird flu, because we've been watching it, dreading the day when it might mutate and cross over to humans.

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