It's hard to imagine losing a loved one, a wife, a husband, a child.

For many, it's their biggest fear.

Amarissa Jones, host of The Vanished.

A podcast that tells the stories of often overlooked and unsolved missing persons cases,

in an effort to uncover the truth.

Follow The Vanished on Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcasts.

H5N1 is an interloper, an unrefined newcomer,

all fury without the seasoning of age.

In human cells, it has discovered a fresh target,

and it pursues its prey deep into the body,

penetrating much farther than ordinary flu.

This novel virus advances on the lungs themselves,

attacking the branches of the bronchial tree and the myriad little buds on their tips called alveoli,

where the life-sustaining task of exchanging carbon dioxide for oxygen occurs.

The pathogen infects the coating of mucous that protects the membranes of the lungs.

This newcomer penetrates into the tissue itself.

It spreads farther, often infecting both lungs at nearly the same time.

As the pathogen relentlessly erodes the cells of the deep lung,

you find yourself increasingly short of breath.

Your cough is often bloody, and you may bleed from your nose and even gums.

The human body, which has never encountered anything like it,

has no ready arsenal of antibodies to choke off the process.

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