Surveillance falters
A study of 31 European nations warned that COVID exposed a and urged standardised indicators and open data as the foundation for any future response. The EU’s freshly launched is a good step, but it cannot mask the gaps in day-to-day monitoring and response that still leave countries exposed.
Across the Atlantic, have left the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention scrambling. American scientists warn that federal reporting has slowed: the United States Department of Agriculture too little genetic data on the outbreak in cattle and other affected animals, released it late, and in formats researchers could not use. It left scientists unable to track how the virus was evolving or spreading across herds.
In , domestic surveillance capacity has equally faced strain, with reduced access to European disease intelligence and chronic vet shortages weakening early detection.
Once the signal dims within institutions, it dims for the public as well. And a weak warning rarely travels far.
A recent shows this clearly: most Americans don’t even register bird flu as a credible threat. What doesn’t help is that symptoms in humans can be so mild that they slide past notice. A in a dairy worker earlier this year looked like nothing more than conjunctivitis.
None of this means a new pandemic is imminent. Health authorities still say the chance of an efficient human-to-human outbreak . These viruses rarely make that leap. And we’re not helpless. We’re than we were before COVID: we have vaccine candidates, clearer protocols and agencies that learned painful lessons.
But low isn’t none. And if it were to occur, the consequences could be catastrophic. Most people have some immunity to the seasonal flu strains. We probably have to H5.
And influenza doesn’t restrict itself to the frail in the way COVID often did; past flu epidemics killed healthy adults in large numbers. Adding to the concern, health expertise itself , weakening the very authority that should turn signals into action.
If we avert our eyes from the bird flu threat because our systems have grown inattentive, underfunded and unprepared, we risk repeating that same pattern. And the next alarm will arrive too late for anyone to claim they didn’t see it coming.
