You'll know when human-to-human transmission starts the same way we knew at the end of 2019 when a "novel respiratory virus" started spreading: random comments on Hacker News.
Then 3 months later the media will start commenting on it.
And 3 months after that the CDC or whoever will acknowledge that it is not a silly fear/hoax.
Yeah that’s about what I figured based on the info I’ve been finding. But of course no one official wants to say that, so it’s just quotes like “we are monitoring dairy workers but it’s voluntary.” And a bunch of academic virologists saying “I’m concerned we should be doing more.”
The only preparations I’ve seen so far are 5 million H5N1 vaccines being made, and they seem to be pretty good about cataloging variants in case they’re needed for future vaccine production.
At a minimum I thought at least some dedicated officials would have an up-to-date detailed crash plan (which I will post here if I ever find it), even if they’re not actually putting resources to the problem.
Once this thing gets into pigs or some dairy worker contracts it and gets a seasonal flu strain at the same time, it sounds like we will be in big trouble. Former CDC director Rob Redfield is already saying he expects it to cross over and have significant mortality.
Then 3 months later the media will start commenting on it.
And 3 months after that the CDC or whoever will acknowledge that it is not a silly fear/hoax.