Are We Ready for the Next Pandemic?

It’s better to prepare for a crisis that never arrives than to scramble after one that does.

In early 2020, as COVID-19 spread across the globe, Australia found itself scrambling. Protective equipment was in short supply, national stockpiles had dwindled, and the vaccine rollout lagged behind much of the developed world. Lockdowns became the default strategy—not because they were ideal, but because there weren’t better options in place. When the dust settled, state and federal governments pledged to learn from their mistakes.

Right now, a new threat is emerging: avian influenza, or bird flu. Unlike COVID-19, this virus isn’t a complete mystery. Scientists have been monitoring it for decades. In recent years, it has spread widely among birds and even jumped to mammals, raising concerns that a strain could evolve to spread easily between humans.

The good news is that Australia has taken some steps to prepare, investing in antiviral stockpiles, pandemic flu vaccines, and biosecurity measures. The bad news is that preparedness is not a one-time effort. Are these steps enough? What else should be done?

This article explains what bird flu is, why it matters, and what Australia is doing to stay ahead of a potential outbreak while also highlighting some gaps that could leave the country scrambling once again.

What’s Bird Flu?

Influenza comes in three varieties: A, B, and C. A is the real troublemaker—it’s the one that causes pandemics. That’s because Influenza A viruses love to mutate, constantly reshuffling their genetic material into new, potentially nasty strains.

Influenza viruses are named after two key proteins on their surface: Hemagglutinin (H) and Neuraminidase (N). These proteins are called antigens; they produce an immune response when they enter a living body. There are 18 types of H and 11 types of N, and different combinations create an alphabet soup of flu strains. Seasonal flu, the kind that ruins your winter, is usually H1N1 or H3N2. The one currently worrying scientists is H5N1.

So far, H5N1 has not been detected in Australian birds or poultry, but other bird flu strains, including H7N3, H7N9, and H7N8, have made local appearances. These viruses are what scientists call “highly pathogenic,” which is a polite way of saying they are deadly to birds. That’s bad news for poultry farms—and potentially bad news for us if the virus mutates to spread more easily to humans.

Could Bird Flu Become a Pandemic?

Flu viruses are notoriously good at evolving, and they have two main tricks up their sleeve when it comes to becoming more dangerous. The first is mutation. Small genetic changes build up over time. If H5N1 mutates in just the right way, it could bind more effectively to human cells, making it better at spreading between people.

The second is “reassortment,” which happens when two flu viruses infect the same host and swap genes. If H5N1 infects someone who has also contracted the common winter flu, it could create a new hybrid virus that spreads like the flu but has bird flu’s lethality. This is how past flu pandemics, such as the 2009 Swine Flu, emerged.

Right now, H5N1 struggles to infect humans and doesn’t spread efficiently between people. But the more mammals and people it infects, the more chances it has to become more infectious.

How Serious is Bird Flu?

For birds, H5N1 is a catastrophe. The highly pathogenic strain recently detected in Australian poultry farms can wipe out entire flocks in 24 to 48 hours. And it’s not just the infected birds that are culled—entire farms may have to be sacrificed to prevent further spread.

For humans, the situation is more complicated. According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), nearly 1,000 human cases of H5N1 have been reported in the past two years, with about half resulting in death. That sounds terrifying, but the real fatality rate is likely much lower. The only cases counted by the WHO are the most severe—people sick enough to go to the hospital. Milder cases almost certainly go undetected, meaning the virus isn’t the 50 percent killer it appears to be.

So far, Australia has only reported one human case of H5N1, in 2024, from a person infected overseas. The person made a full recovery.

Is Australia Doing Enough?

Australia has taken a first step with a $95 million federal anti-bird flu package announced in October 2024. The plan includes funding for early detection efforts, antiviral stockpiles, pandemic flu vaccines, and biosecurity measures to prevent bird-to-human transmission.

By contrast, California has taken a far more aggressive approach. In December 2024, after detecting cases in farm workers and livestock, the state declared a state of emergency. Authorities distributed protective gear, expanded testing, and ramped up monitoring programs. Some experts viewed this as a necessary precaution, while others saw it as an overreaction to a virus that has not yet proven capable of human-to-human spread.

Regardless of the approach, one critical gap remains: tracking human infections. Most surveillance focuses on birds and animals, but no one knows how many humans have been exposed. This is where antibody testing comes in. Antibodies are proteins your immune system produces after an infection. By testing for H5N1 antibodies in blood samples, scientists can estimate how many people have already been infected—even if they never showed symptoms.

Large-scale antibody testing is tricky. It requires broad population sampling, and cooperation from farm workers and agricultural industries may be difficult to secure.

Wastewater testing, widely used during COVID-19, can detect viral presence in communities, but it doesn’t tell us who has been infected, how sick they were, or which strain of flu is responsible. Antibody testing is essential for knowing the real human infection rate.

What should we not do? COVID-19 changed how governments respond to pandemics, and not always for the better. The last thing Australia should do is repeat the same mistakes. Lockdowns, mass business closures, and blanket restrictions may have been our only choice in early COVID-19, but they caused huge social and economic damage.

If H5N1 remains poorly transmissible between humans, shutting down society makes no sense. If it does evolve to spread more easily but becomes less deadly, it should be treated more like a severe seasonal flu than a civilisation-ending catastrophe.

The key lesson from COVID-19 is that public health responses should match the actual threat, not the worst-case scenario in a headline.

Right now, the risk of an H5N1 pandemic in the next five years is low—but not zero.

H5N1 doesn’t spread well between humans, it hasn’t mutated significantly or reassorted with human flu strains, and there is no clear evidence that it is evolving toward human-to-human transmission. However, H5N1 is infecting more mammals, increasing its chance to evolve. If it eventually spreads more easily between people, the severity of a pandemic would depend on how much, or how little, the virus weakens in the process. Historically, flu viruses that become more transmissible tend to become less deadly—but there’s no guarantee. Even a flu with a one or two percent fatality rate could cause global disruption.

Let’s sum up the present situation. H5N1 has not yet reached Australia, and being an island helps. That buys time. Plans are being made, but Australia needs to do more now, not later. Expanding human surveillance, investing in large-scale antibody testing, and ensuring a proportionate response will determine whether the country stays ahead of the curve or finds itself playing catch-up once again. The lesson from COVID-19 is clear. It’s better to prepare for a crisis that never arrives than to scramble after one that does. This time, Australia has a chance to get it right

A shorter version of this article appeared in The Spectator.