Bird flu didn’t turn into a pandemic, but it never went away, either

NBC News · Kaitlin Sullivan · 2026-11-05 22:28 UTC

Washington state reported a bird flu death this month in a person who had exposure to an infected dairy cow.

In the spring of 2024, it felt like the U.S. was on the cusp of a biological disaster. A strain of bird flu, long circulating in birds, had spilled over into a new host: dairy cows.

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