CBS News Bird flu has been circling the globe for decades. So the discovery in 2024 that the deadly pathogen had jumped from a wild bird to a cow came as a shock to virus watchers. Now, in just over a year, the virus has ripped through America’s dairy herds and poultry flocks. It has jumped to other mammals – including humans. Seventy Americans have caught the virus, one has died. Long feared as a possible pandemic, doctors and veterinarians fighting the virus told us Biden’s government was slow to act; while the Trump administration has now laid off more than a hundred key scientists – all as the virus keeps spreading.
Dr. Kay Russo: At present, we’re given a stick, and they put a blindfold on us, and we’re sent into a gunfight and we’re losing. We are losing.