Matt Willemsen<p>From bad to worse<br>How the avian flu must change before it can trigger a human pandemic<br>For that nightmare to unfold, however, the virus, a subtype known as H5N1, would have to undergo a major transformation, changing from a pathogen efficient at infecting cells in the guts of birds and spreading through feces-contaminated water into one adept at infecting human lung tissue and spreading through the air. So far, that has not happened.<br><a href="https://www.science.org/content/article/bad-worse-avian-flu-must-change-trigger-human-pandemic" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"><span class="invisible">https://www.</span><span class="ellipsis">science.org/content/article/ba</span><span class="invisible">d-worse-avian-flu-must-change-trigger-human-pandemic</span></a> <a href="https://fedibird.com/tags/AvianFlu" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>AvianFlu</span></a> <a href="https://fedibird.com/tags/mutate" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>mutate</span></a> <a href="https://fedibird.com/tags/pandemic" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>pandemic</span></a></p>