Not a Doctor

  • Are we ready for the next pandemic?

    The U.S. response to the bird flu and measles outbreaks are worrying signs that our pandemic preparedness has eroded. I’ve been covering bird flu for a while now. It wasn’t great under Biden. There was never enough testing to understand where outbreaks are happening and how they are spreading. Health leaders chose not to deploy…

    Melody Schreiber

  • It’s time to take action on bird flu

    When this version of H5N1 first landed in North America, borne on the wings of migratory birds blown off course from Europe in late 2021, Seema Lakdawala followed the developments closely, but she wasn’t overly worried about it leading to a pandemic in humans yet. Here’s what Lakdawala, an influenza virologist and co-director of the Center for…

    Melody Schreiber

  • Did bird flu really drive up egg prices?

    Bird flu is sweeping through egg-laying chickens in the United States at an unprecedented rate. So far in 2025, 30 million layers, as they’re known, have been culled, close to the 38 million killed throughout all of last year. That means nearly 10 percent of our annual number of egg-layers have been wiped out. But as I report…

    Melody Schreiber

  • Why experts think we’ll have another flu pandemic

    And how climate change and large-scale industrial agricultural amplify outbreaks. Scientists often debate where the next pandemic will come from and what virus will cause it, but they tend to agree on one thing: At some point, the world will see another flu pandemic, I reported recently for Sierra Magazine. “If you go back in…

    Melody Schreiber

  • What is bird flu, and why worry about it?

    The H5N1 outbreak in the United States is heating up. Here’s what you need to know. I’ve been writing about bird flu for some time now, but I realized I’ve never really talked about what it is, how people are getting sick, and why it’s a threat. The past few months brought a few worrying…

    Melody Schreiber

  • Bird flu hospitalizes two people and is now endemic in cows

    As the Trump administration struggles to find its footing on the outbreak, state collaboration will be key Two people, a woman from Wyoming and a man in Ohio, have been hospitalized with H5N1, the CDC said in a routine flu update on Friday. The woman is still in hospital, while the man has been released to…

    Melody Schreiber

  • Is bird flu evolving to make us sicker?

    How to think about bird flu severity and viral evolution.

    Melody Schreiber