Over five years ago, on October 31, 2017, the very first episode of This Podcast Will Kill You premiered, an action-packed (and mildly disorganized) tour of the influenza virus and the 1918 flu pandemic. So much has happened since that episode’s release, both within the podcast and in the world of public health, not the least of which is a respiratory virus pandemic. Given this distance from the podcast’s beginning and the added perspective of experiencing a pandemic firsthand, we decided to circle back to where we started by revisiting influenza for our fifth season finale. In this episode, we provide a bird’s eye view of influenza viruses overall, from how they make you sick to the long history of influenza pandemics and where we stand with case numbers in recent years. Then we dig deeper by giving you a different kind of bird’s eye view: a close examination of highly pathogenic avian influenza, especially H5N1. How is this virus different from your standard seasonal influenza strain, where did it come from, and how worried do we need to be? Are we just a bunch of sitting ducks? Tune in to find out.
| History | Biology |
| Sipress, Alan. The Fatal strain: on the trail of Avian Flu and the coming pandemic. Penguin, 2009. | Flerlage, T., Boyd, D.F., Meliopoulos, V., Thomas, P.G. and Schultz-Cherry, S., 2021. Influenza virus and SARS-CoV-2: pathogenesis and host responses in the respiratory tract. Nature Reviews Microbiology, 19(7), pp.425-441. |
| Alexander, D. J., and I. H. Brown. “History of highly pathogenic avian influenza.” Revue scientifique et technique (International Office of Epizootics) 28.1 (2009): 19-38. | Hutchinson, E.C., 2018. Influenza virus. Trends in Microbiology, 26(9), pp.809-810. |
| Ghendon, Youri. “Introduction to pandemic influenza through history.” European journal of epidemiology 10.4 (1994): 451-453. | Taubenberger, J.K. and Morens, D.M., 2008. The pathology of influenza virus infections. Annual review of pathology, 3, p.499. |
| Guan, Yi, et al. “The emergence of pandemic influenza viruses.” Protein & cell 1.1 (2010): 9-13. | Kalil, A.C. and Thomas, P.G., 2019. Influenza virus-related critical illness: pathophysiology and epidemiology. Critical care, 23(1), pp.1-7. |
| Han, Fang, et al. “Narcolepsy onset is seasonal and increased following the 2009 H1N1 pandemic in China.” Annals of neurology 70.3 (2011): 410-417. | Lee, D.H., Criado, M.F. and Swayne, D.E., 2021. Pathobiological origins and evolutionary history of highly pathogenic avian influenza viruses. Cold Spring Harbor perspectives in medicine, 11(2), p.a038679. |
| Hannoun, Claude. “The evolving history of influenza viruses and influenza vaccines.” Expert review of vaccines 12.9 (2013): 1085-1094. | Nachbagauer, R. and Palese, P., 2020. Is a universal influenza virus vaccine possible?. Annual review of medicine, 71, pp.315-327. |
| Kelly, Heath, et al. “The age-specific cumulative incidence of infection with pandemic influenza H1N1 2009 was similar in various countries prior to vaccination.” PloS one 6.8 (2011): e21828. | Nachbagauer, Raffael, Jodi Feser, Abdollah Naficy, David I. Bernstein, Jeffrey Guptill, Emmanuel B. Walter, Franceso Berlanda-Scorza et al. “A chimeric hemagglutinin-based universal influenza virus vaccine approach induces broad and long-lasting immunity in a randomized, placebo-controlled phase I trial.” Nature medicine 27, no. 1 (2021): 106-114. |
| Lai, Shengjie, et al. “Global epidemiology of avian influenza A H5N1 virus infection in humans, 1997–2015: a systematic review of individual case data.” The Lancet Infectious Diseases 16.7 (2016): e108-e118. | “trial of potential universal flu vaccine opens up at NIH clinical center” NIH news release, June 28 2022. https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/trial-potential-universal-flu-vaccine-opens-nih-clinical-center |
| Lee, Dong-Hun, Miria Ferreira Criado, and David E. Swayne. “Pathobiological origins and evolutionary history of highly pathogenic avian influenza viruses.” Cold Spring Harbor perspectives in medicine 11.2 (2021): a038679. | Salomon, R. and Webster, R.G., 2009. The influenza virus enigma. Cell, 136(3), pp.402-410. |
| Li, Yao-Tsun, et al. “Avian influenza viruses in humans: lessons from past outbreaks.” British Medical Bulletin 132.1 (2019): 81-95. | Bird Flu Current Situation Summary: CDC, 2022. https://www.cdc.gov/flu/avianflu/avian-flu-summary.htm |
| Ma, Wenjun, Robert E. Kahn, and Juergen A. Richt. “The pig as a mixing vessel for influenza viruses: human and veterinary implications.” Journal of molecular and genetic medicine: an international journal of biomedical research 3.1 (2009): 158. | “With Fall Migration, Bird Flu Flies Back Into Town” Emily Anthes, NYT Oct 11, 2022 https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/11/health/avian-flu-birds-migration.html |
| Mohamed, Wessam, Kimihito Ito, and Ryosuke Omori. “Estimating transmission potential of H5N1 viruses among humans in Egypt using phylogeny, genetic distance and sampling time interval.” Frontiers in microbiology 10 (2019): 2765. | High Pathogenicity Avian Influenza Situation Report, WOAH, Jun-Aug 2022. https://www.woah.org/en/disease/avian-influenza/#ui-id-2 |
| Pappas, Georgios, Ismene J. Kiriaze, and Matthew E. Falagas. “Insights into infectious disease in the era of Hippocrates.” International journal of infectious diseases 12.4 (2008): 347-350. | Below find more deep-dive reads I didn’t get into in the episode: |
| Potter, Christopher W. “A history of influenza.” Journal of applied microbiology 91.4 (2001): 572-579. | Zhao, Y., Richardson, B., Takle, E., Chai, L., Schmitt, D. and Xin, H., 2019. Airborne transmission may have played a role in the spread of 2015 highly pathogenic avian influenza outbreaks in the United States. Scientific reports, 9(1), pp.1-10. |
| Shi, Mang, et al. “The evolutionary history of vertebrate RNA viruses.” Nature 556.7700 (2018): 197-202. | Asadi, S., Gaaloul ben Hnia, N., Barre, R.S., Wexler, A.S., Ristenpart, W.D. and Bouvier, N.M., 2020. Influenza A virus is transmissible via aerosolized fomites. Nature communications, 11(1), pp.1-9. |
| Simonsen, Lone, et al. “Global mortality estimates for the 2009 Influenza Pandemic from the GLaMOR project: a modeling study.” PLoS medicine 10.11 (2013): e1001558. | Zhao, J., Eisenberg, J.E., Spicknall, I.H., Li, S. and Koopman, J.S., 2012. Model analysis of fomite mediated influenza transmission. PloS one, 7(12), p.e51984. |
| Smith, Gavin JD, et al. “Dating the emergence of pandemic influenza viruses.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 106.28 (2009): 11709-11712. | Mukherjee, D.V., Cohen, B., Bovino, M.E., Desai, S., Whittier, S. and Larson, E.L., 2012. Survival of influenza virus on hands and fomites in community and laboratory settings. American journal of infection control, 40(7), pp.590-594. |
| Sonnberg, Stephanie, Richard J. Webby, and Robert G. Webster. “Natural history of highly pathogenic avian influenza H5N1.” Virus research 178.1 (2013): 63-77. | |
| Wille, Michelle, and Edward C. Holmes. “The ecology and evolution of influenza viruses.” Cold Spring Harbor perspectives in medicine 10.7 (2020): a038489. | |
| Avian Flu Timeline, CDC |
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