In its announcement this week of the first human death from bird flu in the United States, health officials in Louisiana were quick to note that the patient was over age 65 and “reported to have underlying medical conditions.”
If the goal of that description was to calm the waters around the passing of the patient, whose case was first disclosed about three weeks ago, it failed. Instead, researchers who have closely followed the explosive spread of the avian virus are renewing their calls for both federal and local health officials to get in the game—before more damage is done.
