From the New York Times, this is The Daily.

I'm Rachel Abrams.

Today, an outbreak of bird flu has been tearing through the nation's dairy farms and infecting more and more people.

And now there are troubling signs that the United States might be closer to another pandemic,

even as President Trump dismantles the country's public health system.

My colleague Apurva Mandivili explains how the virus has changed

and why our government might be ill-equipped to respond.

Thank you. why our government might be ill-equipped to respond. It's Thursday, February 13.

Apurva, hello.

Hello.

So the last time we talked about bird flu on the show, which was last April, our colleague

Emily Anthe's was raising a modest amount of concern about the virus.

She said it had been spreading pretty quickly and intensely in birds, and also it

had started to show up in other animals. But at that point, it was not that much of a concern

for people, but it could be soon. So since then, we've been checking in with you periodically just

to ask, should we be worried now? And you've told us at various points, no, not yet, but this week you told us yes,

which was a little alarming. So what is going on?

So Emily covers animals, and when you talk to her, the virus was really mainly a threat to

animals and to wild birds. It was in birds all over the country. But since then,

you know, it really started infecting a lot of different kinds of animals, actually in a way that

I've heard experts say they've never seen a virus do before. And then it also became quite clear

that it is capable of jumping into people and causing problems in people.

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