In December, 2021, a few weeks after the Omicron variant emerged to spark a new, punishing phase of the covid-19 pandemic, Jim Lester’s birds got sick. Lester, who owns an exhibition farm in Newfoundland, Canada, learned that the culprit wasn’t the novel coronavirus but the first known outbreak in North America of a highly pathogenic strain of bird flu, called H5N1.
Should We Be Worried About Bird Flu?
