America should have more aggressively intervened almost a year ago.

A variant of the virus caused disease in people in 1997, when there was a small but deadly outbreak in Hong Kong. Eighteen people had confirmed diagnoses, and six of them died. Since then, there have been sporadic cases around the world—but no large outbreaks.

The death in Louisiana — involving a person with underlying health conditions — is the first human case in the United States linked to exposure to backyard birds, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

With reports of the first human death from bird flu in the US, some Americans are feeling an uncomfortable flashback to the early days of Covid-19, when infectious disease experts were talking about a new virus that was sending people to the hospital with respiratory infections.

In its announcement this week of the first human death from bird flu in the United States, health officials in Louisiana were quick to note that the patient was over age 65 and “reported to have underlying medical conditions.

Any time a person catches H5N1, or bird flu, their infection is a chance for the virus to mutate in the wrong direction. When someone dies from the bird flu—as an elderly Louisiana man did on Jan. 6,

The bird flu virus circulating among cows, poultry and wild birds isn't yet a threat to the general public, but experts say if and when that will change is impossible to predict — and that if things do get bad,