Summary
A study reviewing 1,500 research papers found that 90% of pregnant women who contract bird flu (H5N1) die, with 87% of their unborn babies also dying.
Most surviving babies are born prematurely.
While human cases are rare and usually result from direct contact with infected birds, the findings highlight the vulnerability of pregnant women, who often face exclusion from vaccine trials and public health programs.
Experts stress the need for pandemic preparedness and ethical studies on vaccine safety in pregnant women as H5N1 continues to spread globally.
There are two potential issues with the study mentioned. Small sample size and most cases with pregnant women were in developing countries. My guess is that death rates among pregnant women are probably higher than normal, but not as severe as 87%. That number will probably come down as more cases are recorded.
Sure, but imagine it’s only 20 percent. That’s still disastrous. On the other hand, I am sure in 3 generations the survivors will have excellent immunity against the bird flu.
Agreed, the message to pregnant women is stay far away from this. Even if the number drops drastically, it is higher than anyone would want it to be.
The issue of the developing nations is not as valid as one might think - if one looks up the case reports mentioned in the study(P.50&ff) some of them have been treated with the full scale of modern critical care, in one case including ECMO and treatment also often included the current antiviral protocols according to the current guidelines at the times of the infection. (Which often actually were not recommended at the times during pregnancy due to the high likelihood of fetal developed damage.
While of course it can be argued that the accessibility of care might have been worse in these countries and treatment might have been started later (some case reports are inconclusive on that) the same is often the case in US case reports for the very same reasons.
The small number of patients included is also a bit of an issue, but there are simply not many reports available - the author did even include chinese-only reports in her study, so it’s not for a lack of trying. This is sadly often a problem in emerging diseases, as they provide very low case numbers in the beginning or over their whole lifetime.
Additionally the scientists in the PRC since COVID are far more cautious what they publish, if they publish at all. And sadly most of the high quality papers on bird flu before COVID came from there.
Shitty situation and highly concerning.
90% in a small sample size isn’t going to magicslly become 10% in the general population, and even if it did 10% is still a very high death rate.
I fully agree with you, the number will still be terrible. But it will probably be lower than 90