Four years after the start of the pandemic, hospitalizations for COVID are at an all-time low.

But there are new variants. And now Bird Flu is in the headlines.

It's been found in at least 36 dairy herds across nine states, but so far this year there's only been one confirmed human case.

So how concern should we be about all of this?

Caitlin Jettola writes the popular newsletter,

your local epidemiologist,

and she was just named one of Time magazine's

100 most influential people in health.

So Caitlin, how concern should we be about bird flu?

Yeah, you know, what's clear is that this is continuing to spread among cows and other

animals, but the risk to the general public is very low.

And this really means there's nothing we can do

other than don't touch dead birds or animals, don't drink raw milk,

and maybe even call your congressman for better

biosecurity support. But this is definitely not March of 2020 and it's

definitely not even January of 2020.

But of course the situation can change and usually without breaks it can change very quickly.

I think that alarm bells for the general public should really start going off if we start seeing human to human

spread.

Right now it's really an all hands-on-deck response for public health to prevent another

pandemic and staying laser focused on protecting the small

group of Americans that are at higher risk and that is dairy and poultry workers

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