from The Epoch Times:
Dr. Robert Redfield, former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), has issued a grim prediction that the next major pandemic will be caused by the bird flu.
TRUTH LIVES on at https://sgtreport.tv/
U.S. officials recently confirmed that the highly pathogenic avian influenza virus had been detected in a cow herd in Wyoming, the 12th state to report an infection.
The former CDC director said the bird flu, when it enters humans, has a “significant” mortality.
“Probably somewhere between 25 and 50 percent mortality, so it’s going to be quite complicated,” Dr. Redfield said.
Dr. Redfield said that as the bird flu has spread to more than two dozen mammals in the United States, the virus has been adapting and learning how to change its use of receptors, with the risk of making a jump to humans growing by the day.
“So it’s going through a lot of changes. And as it picks up some of these new receptors, it can get closer and closer to humans,” he said.
“Once the virus gains the ability to attach to the human receptor, and then go human to human, that’s when you’re going to have the pandemic. And as I said, I think it’s just a matter of time.”
While Dr. Redfield said it’s impossible to predict with accuracy when the bird flu might start going human to human, he said the recent development of dairy cattle contracting the virus is alarming because cows are often in close proximity to pigs, and pigs have tended to be the last stepping stone for viruses before the jump to humans.
Dr. Redfield added that the natural evolution of the virus to where it becomes highly infectious to humans is less of a concern to him than the possibility that it will increase its virulence under lab conditions—through gain-of-function research.
The “recipe” for making bird flu highly infectious to humans is already well established, Dr. Redfield said, recalling that gain-of-function research on the avian influenza virus was carried out in 2012, against his recommendations.
