The International Bird Flu Summit held October 2-3, 2024 at the Hilton Hotel in Fairfax, Virginia, was a two-day conference focusing on the bird flu and vaccination and related topics. The conference featured hands-on workshops and training sessions on surveillance techniques, lab diagnostics & outbreak response planning. Organizers state the goal of the series of sessions is to facilitate and address the urgent issues surrounding the developing avian influenza situation. They contend it is critical that the biomedical community involved in a countermeasure response “come together to discuss preparedness, response strategies, and the future implications of this evolving situation” in light of the emergence of a highly virulent strain of bird flu that affects both humans and cattle.
The Summit’s primary commercial sponsor is Ginkgo Biosecurity—a major biosecurity group headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts that works closely with governments, institutions, and companies all over the world.
John Leake, of the McCullough Foundation, attended the event. He states, “The timing of the Summit is auspicious. Like COVID-19, which arrived in the United States during the election year of 2020, the introductory speaker emphasized that the first case of human-to-human transmission of H5N1 was just detected in Missouri, less than two months before the 2024 presidential election.”
There is also speculation that a new pandemic scare might shut down voting locations. “we are concerned that an emerging infectious disease—fabricated, exaggerated, or real—could disrupt normal voting procedures,” Locke said.
” I get the impression that the participants sincerely believe that H5N1 is rapidly evolving to achieve high infectiousness and virulence among humans,” said Locke. “Most strike me as people of average intelligence and education and lacking Machiavellian guile. They are acquainted with orthodox representations of H5N1 and do not question these representations. At the same time, they too seem to sense that the purported threat of an evolutionary jump from birds to humans still seems remote.”
Members of industry, governmental and regulatory agencies, and scientists from around the world presented their work at the summit. Locke said, “I have a hunch that if the Pandemic Flu Industry is going to realize the commercial opportunities provided by a spillover of H5N1 into humans, it’s going to need lab assistance to amplify human-to-human transmission and virulence.”