Almost from the beginning of the spread of H5N1 bird flu among farms and ranches in the U.S. earlier this year, experts and researchers warned that a critical lag in the blood testing of exposed workers might lead to an underestimation of the virus’s potential transmission to humans.
Those warnings have proved prophetic. And the federal Centers for Disease Prevention and Control (CDC) now finds itself not only trying to blunt the spread of the virus, but also playing catch-up with testing methods that have been largely resisted among America’s farmers.
