Bird flu is spreading among mammals. How worried should we be?

(Sydney Morning Herald) In Spain, bird flu appears to have spread from mink to mink for the first time. This is a troubling situation that warrants close attention. “These are exactly the kind of situations we’re really worried about,” Associate Professor Paul Horwood tells me. Dr Michelle Wille says she and “many of my colleagues globally are very concerned”. Virus risk is a numbers game. Human viruses tend to come from animals. Animals have been around for a lot longer than humans, so they have many more viruses than we do. The closer we get to animals – by farming and land-clearing – the more we risk a new virus jumping into humans and causing a pandemic.