The ongoing H5N1 avian influenza outbreak is an unprecedented event in its size, scope and duration (but it’s not getting much press anymore these days). As infections continue to occur is birds in large numbers over a vast geographic range, we worry about spillover events into other species.

There have now been many reports of

As canine flu causes another (and particularly impressive) round of outbreaks in the US, a lot of questions arise. A big one involves vaccination.

I won’t go over the whole “what is canine flu?” spiel in this post, but I’ll give a quick overview of why we care about it. It’s a highly

We’ve come a long way in terms of medical diagnostic technology in recent years. It’s now cheap and easy to identify a wide range of viruses and bacteria, including some we’ve never seen before. However, our ability to find pathogens has outpaced our ability to understand the role they may (or may not) play in

As SARS-CoV-2 reminded everyone, there are lots of undiscovered viruses out there, and some of them can cause disease in humans, animals, or both. It’s not very hard to find a new virus, actually. Figuring out what it means is often the challenge, because simply finding a virus in a sick person or animal doesn’t

While the whole story hasn’t been sorted out, it seems pretty clear that one or more animal species at the Wuhan Seafood Market (which sold much more than just aquatic animals and their products) was the source of the novel coronavirus.  Just like SARS.

Once again, this has raised concerns about markets where diverse live