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by 1attice 601 days ago
Oddly, back in my prehistory (2005 to be precise,) I did a PhD-level internship at a hospital preparing for a possible H5N1 outbreak. This was based on the then-recent experience of what is now known as SARS-CoV-1.

The information we had at the time indicated that H5N1 could result in multiple organ failure. It's been literally two decades (!) and I couldn't tell you the specifics, but yes, H5N1 was deemed to be possibly 'special' in some way.

I'd link you to some resources about this, but your googling's as good as mine, and my information is indeed twenty years out of date.

All the same, as tempting as it is to reasssure oneself with rules of thumb, it's even better to reassure (or perhaps unsettle) oneself with genuine facts, and there's no shortage of these regarding H5N1. I know with certainty that we've been worried about it for decades :)