921 - Is Bird Flu Gone for Good?

Public Health On Call

The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health

Novelcoronavirus, Health, Publichealth, Covid, Globalhealth, Coronavirus, News, Health & Fitness, Education, Medicine, Covid19, Science

4.8 • 620 Ratings

🗓️ 21 July 2025

⏱️ 15 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

About this episode:

In early July, the CDC deactivated the United States’ H5N1 emergency response, citing lowered rates of infection among animals and humans. But fewer cases might not indicate an end to the years-long emergency. In this episode: Dr. Erin Sorrell of the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security details the timeline of the virus, its impacts on American farmers, and how to prepare for the return of migratory birds later this year.

Guest:

Dr. Erin Sorrell, PhD, MSc, is an associate professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health Department of Environmental Health and Engineering and senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security.

Host:

Stephanie Desmon, MA, is a former journalist, author, and the director of public relations and communications for the Johns Hopkins Center for Communication Programs.

Show links and related content:

As bird flu evolves, keeping it out of farm flocks is getting harder—ScienceNews
RFK's proposal to let bird flu spread through poultry could set us up for a pandemic, experts warn—Live Science
Bird Flu Is Escalating—Public Health On Call (January 2025)

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0:00.0	Welcome to Public Health On Call, a podcast from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health,
0:06.0	where we bring evidence, experience, and perspective to make sense of today's leading health challenges.
0:16.4	If you have questions or ideas for us, please send an email to public health question at jhhhu.edu.
0:23.9	That's public health question at jhhu.edu for future podcast episodes.
0:31.9	Hi listeners, it's Lindsay Smith Rogers. Today, an update on the bird flu that has been spreading across dairy and poultry
0:38.4	farms in the United States. Dr. Aaron Sorrell of the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security
0:43.2	talks to Stephanie Desmond about what's happening on the ground now and what needs to be done to
0:48.0	prepare for the fall when infected migratory birds return. She also discusses an unusual and she says dangerous suggestion for how to
0:57.1	eliminate infected birds. Let's listen. Erin Sorrell, thanks so much for joining me on public health on call.
1:03.2	Thank you for having me. So I wanted to talk to you today about bird flu. And I know we've heard a lot
1:09.4	about it in recent months and years now.
1:12.4	Can you talk to me about what the landscape is? How many cases are there? Where does it sort of rank
1:17.6	with previous outbreaks? Absolutely. So this is an outbreak of H5 influenza. It's a highly
1:24.0	pathogenic strain of flu. And it is not uncommon for H5 to cause infections in
1:31.4	birds. It's carried by wild birds and it goes through migratory roots. What's different about
1:37.6	this outbreak is really the prevalence in the amount of species that this virus has been able to
1:43.3	infect and really the duration of the
1:46.0	outbreak. So this virus really came on the scene in 2022 and really hasn't gone away. It spread
1:54.2	into both domestic poultry, into a variety of wild bird species. It has disrupted marine mammals, wild mammals,
2:05.4	and now we have had various outbreaks in dairy cattle, which is something that previous to
2:11.4	2024 was really unexpected. So compared to other outbreaks, this is the duration in the species range is quite astonishing.
2:21.2	This has been a public health emergency of some kind for a while. Is that right? Or how is it characterized?
	...

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