There are about 100 cases of bird flu each year, usually in farmers who care for birds, or people who eat sick chickens. A couple years ago, when this was threatening Asia, Indonesia banned those living in cities from raising chickens. (most were for cock fights, not for eggs as in the west).
There is a vaccine for it and they inoculate fighting roosters, but for chickens raised for eggs or meat, usually if your henhouse gets infected, it is cheaper to just kill them all and start over.
One reason that President Obama banned gain of function research was because some US lab did gain of function research in the USA.
That is the backstory of why the experts had to farm out the gain of function research to overseas labs.
Yep i recall that- the left wing media were hyping it something fierce- giving off numbers of dead that they thought woudl happen- saying most chicken and poultry farms needed to be destroyed to try to prevent the spread- etc- got people all nervous, and ..... nothing- it fizzled out with not that many getting the flu- and like you said- mostly poultry handlers got it-
Kill joy. /s
There just has to be a crisis somewhere under that pile of dead chickens.