At 5,700 square kilometers, Qinghai Lake is the largest in China, the depository for 23 rivers and streams. The Lake serves as a crossroads for bird migration routes across Asia. Hundreds of thousands of birds from many species——geese and gulls, cormorants and sandpipers——rest here during their mass annual migrations.
    In the spring of 2012, tens of thousands of their corpses littered the Lake’s Bird Islands. They were dying from the flu.
    More than 15 years earlier, the H5N1 virus had begun as a plague of wild birds in Asia. Chickens raised in Hong Kong became infected from the droppings of waterfowl, the natural reservoir of the virus. Suddenly, an extremely rare event occurred——the virus jumped species and directly infected humans. To eradicate the virus from the region, Hong Kong culled 1.5 million chickens.
    The wild birds continued their migration, spreading disease throughout Southeast Asia. Mutating rapidly, H5N1 began to infect mammals such as cats, dogs, ferrets and martens. In poultry, bird flu, previously rare, became an annual event. And in countries the birds crossed, people began to get sick.
    As the virus evolved, it got better at killing. But while it was good at killing humans, it hadn’t yet gotten good at spreading. Then, in Thailand, an 11-year-old girl infected her mother and aunt, the first case of human-to-human transmission of the virus. At this point, however, transmission required very close contact. Meanwhile, wild birds and poultry carried H5N1 into Europe, the Middle East and Africa.
    As the disease claimed more lives, the World Health Organization (WHO) monitored its progression with growing alarm. Eventually, they knew, the virus could evolve into a form that would be easily transmissible between people.
    The WHO’s scientists warned the world that a pandemic—from the Greek pan demos, an epidemic upon all people——could arrive within the next five to 10 years. It could happen as suddenly as a terrorist attack and be as costly, disruptive and deadly as a major war.
    It was not a matter of if, but when.

Visit Qinghai Lake

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©2008 Future Shock Books, a division of ZING Communications, Inc.