Apr 7 2024
Threads is giving Taiwanese users a safe space to talk about politics

This story first appeared in China Report, MIT Technology Review’s newsletter about technology in China. Sign up to receive it in your inbox every Tuesday.

Like most reporters, I have accounts on every social media platform you can think of. But for the longest time, I was not on Threads, the rival to X (formerly Twitter) released by Meta last year. The way it has to be tied to your Instagram account didn’t sit well with me, and as its popularity dwindled, I felt maybe it was not necessary to use it.

But I finally joined Threads last week after I discovered that the app has unexpectedly blown up among Taiwanese users. For months, Threads has been the most downloaded app in Taiwan, as users flock to the platform to talk about politics and more. I talked to academics and Taiwanese Threads users about why the Meta-owned platform got a redemption arc in Taiwan this year. You can read what I discovered here.

I first noticed the trend on Instagram, which occasionally shows you a few trending Threads posts to try to entice you to join. After seeing them a few times, I realized there was a pattern: most of these were written by Taiwanese people talking about Taiwan.

That was a rare experience for me, since I come from China and write primarily about China. Social media algorithms have always shown me accounts similar to mine. Although people from mainland China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan all write in Chinese, the characters we use and the expressions we choose are quite different, making it easy to spot your own people. And on most platforms that are truly global, the conversations in Chinese are mostly dominated by people in or from mainland China, since its population far outnumbers the rest. 

As I dug into the phenomenon, it soon turned out that Threads’ popularity has been surging at an unparalleled pace in Taiwan. Adam Mosseri, the head of Instagram, publicly acknowledged that Threads has been doing “exceptionally well in Taiwan, of all places.” Data from Sensor Tower, a market intelligence firm, shows that Threads has been the most downloaded social network app on iPhone and Android in Taiwan almost every single day of 2024. On the platform itself, Taiwanese users are also belatedly realizing their influence when they see that comments under popular accounts, like a K-pop group, come mostly from fellow Taiwanese users. 

But why did Threads succeed in Taiwan when it has failed in so many other places? My interviews with users and scholars revealed a few reasons.

First, Taiwanese people never really adopted Twitter. Only 1% to 5% of them regularly use the platform, now called X, estimates Austin Wang, a political science professor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. The mainstream population uses Facebook and Instagram, but still yearns for a platform for short text posts. The global launch of Threads basically gave these users a good reason to try out a Twitter-like product.

But more important, Taiwan’s presidential election earlier this year means there was a lot to talk, debate, and commiserate about. Starting in November, many supporters of Taiwan’s Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) “gathered to Threads and used it as a mobilization tool,” Wang says. “Even DPP presidential candidate Lai received more interaction on Threads than Instagram and Facebook.” 

It turns out that even though Meta has tried to position Threads as a less political version of X, what actually underpinned its success in Taiwan was still the universal desire to talk about politics.

“Taiwanese people gather on Threads because of the freedom to talk about politics [here],” Liu, a designer in Taipei who joined in January because of the elections, tells me. “For Threads to depoliticize would be shooting itself in the foot.” 

The fact that there are an exceptionally large number of Taiwanese users on Threads also makes it a better place to talk about internal politics, she says, because it won’t easily be overshadowed or hijacked by people outside Taiwan. The more established platforms like Facebook and X are rife with bots, disinformation campaigns, and controversial content moderation policies. On Threads there’s minimal interference with what the Taiwanese users are saying. That feels like a fresh breeze to Liu.

But I can’t help feeling that Threads’ popularity in Taiwan could easily go awry. Meta’s decision to keep Threads distanced from political content is one factor that could derail Taiwanese users’ experience; an influx of non-Taiwanese users, if the platform actually manages to become more successful and popular in other parts of the world, could also introduce heated disagreements and all the additional reasons why other platforms have deteriorated. 

These are some tough questions to answer for Meta, because users will simply flow to the next trendy, experimental platform if Threads doesn’t feel right anymore. Its success in Taiwan so far is a rare win for the company, but preserving that success and replicating it elsewhere will require a lot more work.

Do you believe Threads stands a chance of rivaling X (Twitter) in places other than Taiwan? Let me know your thoughts at zeyi@technologyreview.com.

Now read the rest of China Report

Catch up with China

1. Morris Chang, who founded the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company at the age of 55, is an outlier in today’s tech industry, where startup founders usually start in their 20s. (Wall Street Journal $)

2. A group of Chinese researchers used the technology behind hypersonic missiles to make high-speed trains safer. (South China Morning Post $)

3. The US government is considering cutting the so-called de minimis exemption from import duties, which makes it cheap for Temu and Shein to send packages to the US. But lots of US companies also benefit from the exemption now. (The Information $)

4. The Chinese commerce minister will visit Europe soon to plead his country’s case amid the European Commission’s investigation into Chinese electric vehicles. (Reuters $)

5. After three years of unsuccessful competition with WhatsApp, ByteDance’s messaging app designed for the African market finally shut down last month. (Rest of World)

6. The rapid progress of AI makes it seem less necessary to learn a foreign language. But there are still things AI loses in translation. (The Atlantic $)

7. This is the incredible story of a Chinese man who takes his piano to play outdoors at places of public grief: in front of the covid quarantine barriers in Wuhan, at the epicenter of an earthquake, on a river that submerged villages. And he plays the same song—the only song he knows, composed by the Japanese composer Ryuichi Sakamoto. (NPR)

Lost in translation

With Netflix’s March release of The Three Body Problem, a series adapted from the global hit sci-fi novel by Chinese author Liu Cixin, Western audiences are also learning about a movie-like real-life drama behind the adaptation. In 2021, the Chinese publication Caixin first investigated the mysterious death of Lin Qi, a successful businessman who bought the movie rights to the book. In 2017, he hired Xu Yao, a prominent attorney, to work on legal affairs and government relations.

In December 2020, Lin died after he was poisoned by a mysterious mix of toxins. According to Caixin, Xu is a fan of the TV series Breaking Bad and had his own plant in Shanghai where he made poisons. He would order hundreds of different toxins through the dark web, mix them, and use them on pets to experiment. A week before Lin’s death, Xu gave him a bottle of pills that were supposedly prebiotics, but he had replaced them with poison. 

Xu was arrested soon after Lin died, and he was sentenced to death on March 22 this year.

One more thing

Taobao, China’s leading e-commerce platform, announced it’s experimenting with delivering packages by rockets. Yes, rockets. Made by a Chinese startup, Taobao’s pilot rockets will be able to deliver something as big as a car or a truck, and the rockets can be reused for the next delivery. To be honest, I still can’t believe this wasn’t an April Fool’s joke.

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Apr 7 2024
How to reopen a nuclear power plant

A shut-down nuclear power plant in Michigan could get a second life thanks to a $1.52 billion loan from the US Department of Energy. If successful, it will be the first time a shuttered nuclear power plant reopens in the US.  

Palisades Power Plant shut down on May 20, 2022, after 50 years of generating low-carbon electricity. But the plant’s new owner thinks economic conditions have improved in the past few years and plans to reopen by the end of 2025.

A successful restart would be a major milestone for the US nuclear fleet, and the reactor’s 800 megawatts of capacity could help inch the country closer to climate goals. But reopening isn’t as simple as flipping on a light switch—there are technical, administrative, and regulatory hurdles ahead before Palisades can start operating again. Here’s what it takes to reopen a nuclear power plant.

Step 1: Stay ready

One of the major reasons Palisades has any shot of restarting is that the site’s new owner has been planning on this for years. “Technically, the stars had all aligned for the plant to stay operating,” says Patrick White, research director at the Nuclear Innovation Alliance, a nonprofit think tank.

Holtec International supplies equipment for nuclear reactors and waste and provides services like decommissioning nuclear plants. Holtec originally purchased Palisades with the intention of shutting it down, taking apart the facilities, and cleaning up the site. The company has decommissioned other recently shuttered nuclear plants, including Indian Point Energy Center in New York. 

Changing economic conditions have made continued operation too expensive to justify for many nuclear power plants, especially smaller ones. Those with a single, relatively small reactor, like Palisades, have been the most vulnerable.  

Once a nuclear power plant shuts down, it can quickly become difficult to start it back up. As with a car left out in the yard, White says, “you expect some degradation.” Maintenance and testing of critical support systems might slow down or stop. Backup diesel generators, for example, would need to be checked and tested regularly while a reactor is online, but they likely wouldn’t be treated the same way after a plant’s shutdown, White says.

Holtec took possession of Palisades in 2022 after the reactor shut down and the fuel was removed. Even then, there were already calls to keep the plant’s low-carbon power on the grid, says Nick Culp, senior manager for government affairs and communications at Holtec.

The company quickly pivoted and decided to try to keep the plant open, so records and maintenance work largely continued. “It looks like it shut down yesterday,” Culp says.

Because of the continued investment of time and resources, starting the plant back up will be more akin to restarting after a regular refueling or maintenance outage than starting a fully defunct plant. After maintenance is finished and fresh fuel loaded in, the Palisades reactor could restart and provide enough electricity for roughly 800,000 homes.

Step 2: Line up money and permission

Support has poured in for Palisades, with the state of Michigan setting aside $300 million in funding for the plant’s restart in the last two years. And now, the Department of Energy has issued a conditional loan commitment for $1.52 billion.

Holtec will need to meet certain technical and legal conditions to get the loan money, which will eventually be repaid with interest. (Holtec and the DOE Loan Programs Office declined to give more information about the loan’s conditions or timeline.)

The state funding and federal loan will help support the fixes and upgrades needed for the plant’s equipment and continue paying the approximately 200 workers who have stayed on since its shutdown. The plant employed about 700 people while it was operating, and the company is now working on rehiring additional workers to help with the restart, Culp says.  

One of the major remaining steps in a possible Palisades restart is getting authorization from regulators, as no plant in the US has restarted operations after shutting down. “We’re breaking new ground here,” says Jacopo Buongiorno, a professor of nuclear engineering at MIT. 

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission oversees nuclear power plants in the US, but the agency doesn’t have a specific regulatory framework for restarting operations at a nuclear power plant that has shut down and entered decommissioning, White says. The NRC created a panel that will oversee reopening efforts.

Palisades effectively gave up the legal right to operate when it shut down and took the fuel out of the reactor. Holtec will need to submit detailed plans to the NRC with information about how it plans to reopen and operate the plant safely. Holtec formally began the process of reauthorizing operations with the NRC in October 2023 and plans to submit the rest of its materials this year.

Step 3: Profit?

If regulators sign off, the plan is to have Palisades up and running again by the end of 2025. The fuel supply is already lined up, and the company has long-term buyers committed for the plant’s full power output, Culp says.

If all goes well, the plant could be generating power until at least 2051, 80 years after it originally began operations.

Expanded support for low-carbon electricity sources, and nuclear in particular, have helped make it possible to extend the life of older plants across the US. “This restart of a nuclear plant represents a sea change in support for clean firm power,” says Julie Kozeracki, a senior advisor for the US Department of Energy’s Loan Programs Office.

As of last year, a majority of Americans (57%) support more nuclear power in the country, up from 43% in 2016, according to a poll from the Pew Research Center. There’s growing funding available for the technology as well, including billions of dollars in tax credits for nuclear and other low-carbon energy included in the Inflation Reduction Act. 

Growing support and funding, alongside rising electricity prices, contribute to making existing nuclear plants much more valuable than they were just a few years ago, says MIT’s Buongiorno. “Everything has changed,” he adds.   

But even a successful Palisades restart wouldn’t mean that we’ll see a wave of other shuttered nuclear plants reopening around the US. “This is a really rare case where you had someone doing a lot of forward thinking,” White says. For other plants that are nearing decommissioning, it would be cheaper, simpler, and more efficient to extend their operations rather than allowing them to shut down in the first place. 

Update: This story has been updated with additional details regarding how the NRC may reauthorize Palisades Nuclear Plant.

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Apr 7 2024
Why the lifetime of nuclear plants is getting longer

This article is from The Spark, MIT Technology Review’s weekly climate newsletter. To receive it in your inbox every Wednesday, sign up here.

Aging can be scary. As you get older, you might not be able to do everything you used to, and it can be hard to keep up with the changing times. Just ask nuclear reactors.

The average age of reactors in nuclear power plants around the world is creeping up. In the US, which has more operating reactors than any other country, the average reactor is 42 years old, as of 2023. Nearly 90% of reactors in Europe have been around for 30 years or more. 

Older reactors, especially smaller ones, have been shut down in droves due to economic pressures, particularly in areas with other inexpensive sources of electricity, like cheap natural gas. But there could still be a lot of life left in older nuclear reactors. 

The new owner of a plant in Michigan that was shut down in 2022 is now working to reopen it, as I reported in my latest story. If the restart is successful, the plant could operate for a total of 80 years. Others are seeing 20-year extensions to their reactors’ licenses. Extending the lifetime of existing nuclear plants could help cut emissions and is generally cheaper than building new ones. So just how long can we expect nuclear power plants to last? 

In the US, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) licenses nuclear reactors for 40-year operating lifespans. But plants can certainly operate longer than that, and many do. 

The 40-year timeline wasn’t designed to put an endpoint on a plant’s life, says Patrick White, research director at the Nuclear Innovation Alliance, a nonprofit think tank. Rather, it was meant to ensure that plants would be able to operate long enough to make back the money invested in building them, he says. 

The NRC has granted 20-year license extensions to much of the existing US nuclear fleet, allowing them to operate for 60 years. Now some operators are applying for an additional extension. A handful of reactors have already been approved to operate for a total of 80 years, including two units at Turkey Point in Florida. Getting those extensions has been bumpy, though. The NRC has since partially walked back some of its approvals and is requiring several of the previously approved sites to go through additional environmental reviews using more recent data. 

And while the oldest operating reactors in the world today are only 54, there’s already early research investigating extending lifetimes to 100 years, White says. 

The reality is that a nuclear power plant has very few truly life-limiting components. Equipment like pumps, valves, and heat exchangers in the water cooling system and support infrastructure can all be maintained, repaired, or replaced. They might even get upgraded as technology improves to help a plant generate electricity more efficiently. 

Two main components determine a plant’s lifetime: the reactor pressure vessel and the containment structure, says Jacopo Buongiorno, a professor of nuclear engineering at MIT. 

  • The reactor pressure vessel is the heart of a nuclear power plant, containing the reactor core as well as the associated cooling system. The structure must keep the reactor core at a high temperature and pressure without leaking. 
  • The containment structure is a shell around the nuclear reactor. It is designed to be airtight and to keep any radioactive material contained in an emergency. 

Both components are crucial to the safe operation of a nuclear power plant and are generally too expensive or too difficult to replace. So as regulators examine applications for extending plant lifetimes, they are the most concerned about the condition and lifespan of those components, Buongiorno says. 

Researchers are searching for new ways to tackle issues that have threatened to take some plants offline, like the corrosion that chewed through reactor components in one Ohio plant, causing it to be closed for two years. New ways of monitoring the materials inside nuclear power plants, as well as new materials that resist degradation, could help reactors operate more safely, for longer. 

Extending the lifetime of nuclear plants could help the world meet clean energy and climate goals. 

In some places, shutting down nuclear power plants can result in more carbon pollution as fossil fuels are brought in to fill the gap. When New York shut down its Indian Point nuclear plant in 2021, natural gas use spiked and greenhouse gas emissions rose. 

Germany shut down the last of its nuclear reactors in 2023, and the country’s emissions have fallen to a record low, though some experts say most of that drop has more to do with an economic slowdown than increasing use of renewables like wind and solar. 

Extending the global nuclear fleet’s lifetime by 10 years would add 26,000 terawatt-hours of low carbon electricity to the grid over the coming decades, according to a report from the International Atomic Energy Agency. That adds up to roughly a year’s worth of current global electricity demand. That could help cut emissions while the world expands low-carbon power capacity. 

So when it comes to cleaning up the power grid, there’s value in respecting your elders, including nuclear reactors. 

Now read the rest of The Spark

Related reading

A nuclear power plant in Michigan could be the first reactor in the US to reenter operation after shutting down, as I wrote in my latest story. 

Germany shut down the last of its nuclear reactors in 2023 after years of controversy in the country. Read more in our newsletter from last April.  

The next generation of nuclear reactors is getting more advanced. Kairos Power is working on cooling its reactors with salt instead of pressurized water, as I reported in January. 

Another thing

A total solar eclipse will sweep across the US on Monday, April 8. Yes, it will affect solar power, especially in states like Texas that have installed a lot of solar capacity since the 2017 eclipse. No, it probably won’t be a big issue for utilities, which are able to plan far in advance for the short dip in solar capacity. Read more in this story from Business Insider. 

Keeping up with climate  

Tesla’s EV sales slipped in the first quarter compared to last year. The automaker still outsold Chinese EV giant BYD, which briefly held the crown for EV sales in late 2023. (New York Times)

A startup is making cleaner steel in a commercial prototype. Electra wants to help tackle the 7% of global emissions that come from producing the material. (Bloomberg)

Burying plant waste can help remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. But there are problems with biomass burial, a growing trend in carbon removal. (Canary Media)

Shareholders are voting on whether recycling labels on Kraft Heinz products are deceptive. It’s part of a growing pushback against companies overselling the recyclability of their packaging. (Inside Climate News)

→ Think your plastic is being recycled? Think again. (MIT Technology Review)

Soil in Australia is shaping up to be a major climate problem. While soil is often pitched as a way to soak up carbon emissions, agriculture practices and changing weather conditions are turning things around. (The Guardian)

Two climate journalists attempted to ditch natural gas in their home. But electrification turned into quite the saga, illustrating some of the problems with efforts to decarbonize buildings. (Grist)

Solar panels are getting so cheap, some homes in Europe are sticking them on fences. With costs having more to do with installation than the cost of solar panels, we could see them going up in increasingly quirky places. (Financial Times)

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Apr 7 2024
How to safely watch and photograph the total solar eclipse

On April 8, the moon will pass directly between Earth and the sun, creating a total solar eclipse across much of the United States, Mexico, and Canada. 

Although total solar eclipses occur somewhere in the world every 18 months or so, this one is unusual because tens of millions of people in North America will likely witness it, from Mazatlán in Mexico to Newfoundland in Canada.

“It’s a huge communal experience,” says Meg Thacher, a senior lab instructor in the astronomy department at Smith College in Massachusetts. “A total solar eclipse is the Super Bowl of astronomy.” Here’s how to safely watch—and photograph—the natural phenomenon.

Fail to prepare, prepare to fail

It pays to have a plan of action for the day. 

Before you decide on a spot to watch the eclipse, whether it’s in your own backyard, in a national park, or at a viewing party, it’s worth checking the weather forecast to see how likely clouds are to spoil the show. Currently the majority of the eclipse’s path of totality—areas where onlookers will see a full eclipse, as opposed to a partial one—is forecast to have some degree of cloud cover.

However, even if visibility turns out to be poor, you still have options. NASA and the National Science Foundation are broadcasting livestreams, and many eclipse viewing parties will broadcast unobstructed views as part of their festivities. The American Astronomical Society has a state-by-state list to help you find your nearest event.

Safety first

You need proper eye protection to look at the eclipse, because the sun’s light can cause long-term damage to your vision. Be sure to purchase either specially made eclipse glasses or handheld solar viewers. Glasses might be the best option if you plan to take photos, as they’ll keep your hands free. Eclipse glasses are thousands of times darker than regular sunglasses and contain a polymer designed to filter out harmful light. 

You should also make sure any cameras, binoculars, or telescopes through which you plan to look at the sun have been fitted with a solar filter. You don’t need to double up and wear eclipse glasses if you already have a solar filter, though.

Once the moon fully obscures the sun, it’s safe to remove your eye protection for the duration of the totality, which is projected to last around four minutes during this eclipse.

A proper camera is your best bet …

Photographing an eclipse is pretty simple, says Randall Benton, a professional photographer who has been capturing them since 1979. Although cameras have changed vastly since then, the fundamentals remain the same. (If you plan to use your phone to take photos, skip to the next section.)

He recommends fixing a DSLR or mirrorless camera (equipped with a solar filter to protect both your eyes and the camera itself) to a tripod. A short exposure, which is designed to capture movement, is more likely to capture the details of the sun’s corona—the plasma surrounding it. A longer exposure, which keeps certain elements of pictures in focus while blurring others, is likely to stretch the corona further out. The exposure you choose will depend on the kind of shot you’d like to capture.

Before the eclipse begins, take the time to focus the camera exactly where you want the sun and moon to appear in your shot, and turn off any autofocus function. While some mounts come with an automated tracking feature that will follow the eclipse’s progression, others will require you to move your camera yourself, so make sure you’re familiar with the mount you’ve got to prevent the eclipse from drifting out of your frame.

Then, “when there’s just a sliver of sun left and it’s a few seconds away from disappearing, take the filter off the camera lens,” Benton says. “At the very last moment, there’s a phenomenon called the diamond ring effect, when the last speck of visible sunlight resembles a ring—that’s a great dramatic photo. Once the sunlight reappears, it’s time to put the filter back on.” 

… but smartphones work too

Despite the rapid advances in smartphone cameras over the past decade or so, they can’t really rival DSLR or mirrorless cameras when it comes to capturing an eclipse. 

Their short lenses means the sun will appear very small, which doesn’t tend to produce great photographs. That said, you can still capture the best photo possible by cutting out the plastic lens from a pair of spare eclipse glasses, taping it over your phone’s camera lens (or lenses), and securing the device in a tripod (or propping it up against a cup).

Don’t try to hold the phone, and use your phone’s shutter delay to decrease vibrations, says Gordon Telepun, an amateur enthusiast who has been photographing eclipses since 2001 and has advised NASA on how to capture them. “During totality, take the [eclipse glasses] filter off and take wide-angle shots of the corona in the sky and the landscape,” he says. “Automatic mode will work fine.”

Something smartphones are great at capturing is video of the moment the moon glides over the sun, says Benton: “That transition from daylight to nighttime is dramatic, and smartphones can handle that pretty well.”

Don’t be afraid to get creative

During the eclipse, there are plenty of other things to photograph besides the sun and moon. Foliage will create a natural version of a pinhole viewer, casting thousands of crescent images of the sun dancing around in the shade as the light streams through the trees. 

Another natural phenomena is shadow bands—flickering gray ripples that appear on light-colored surfaces like sheets or the sides of houses within a few minutes of totality. “It’s almost like a stroboscopic effect,” Benton says, referring to the visual effect that makes objects appear as though they are moving more slowly than they actually are. “Videos of that could be interesting.” 

“Take pictures of the faces of the people around you, too,” he adds. “Twenty years from now, your photo of the eclipse is going to be pretty much the same as anyone else’s. These other pictures are going to be a little more powerful in reminding you what your day was like.”

Take a moment to look around

Finally, when you’re looking up at the moon covering the sun during totality, let yourself enjoy the moment free from your technology. The next eclipse the US can expect to experience on this scale is in August 2044—so try hard to stay present.

“During totality, if you’re really concentrating on getting your photo, at some point let go of everything. Turn around—take a look with your eyes,” says Benton. “Whatever you’re seeing in the viewfinder or on the screen, it isn’t the same thing as seeing it with your own eyes. And it will change your life.”

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Apr 7 2024
New bird flu infections: Here’s what you need to know

This article first appeared in The Checkup, MIT Technology Review’s weekly biotech newsletter. To receive it in your inbox every Thursday, and read articles like this first, sign up here. 

A dairy worker in Texas tested positive for avian influenza this week. This new human case of bird flu—the second ever reported in the United States—isn’t cause for panic. The individual’s illness was mild—an eye infection—and they are already recovering. There’s still no evidence that the virus is spreading person to person. The person who became infected in Texas likely picked the virus up from infected cows or poultry on the farm where he works.

But the rash of recent infections among livestock is unsettling. Last month, goats in Minnesota tested positive. And avian influenza has now been confirmed in dairy cows in Texas, Michigan, Kansas, New Mexico, and Idaho. In some of those cases, the virus appears to have spread between cows. This week, let’s take a look at what we know about this new outbreak and what people are doing to prepare for further spread.  

The strain of flu infecting dairy cows—H5N1—is a highly pathogenic avian influenza. Scientists have been watching these viruses closely since the 1990s because of their potential to spark a pandemic. In 1997, avian influenza sickened humans for the first time. Eighteen people in Hong Kong became infected, and six died. 

Small spillovers into mammals aren’t uncommon for these viruses, especially in recent years. Avian influenza has been reported in mink, skunks, raccoons, coyotes, seals, sea lions, and bears, to name a few. But having the virus in domesticated mammals that come into frequent contact with humans is new territory. “Exactly what happens when an avian flu virus replicates in a cow and potentially transmits from cow to cow, we actually don’t have any idea at all,” says Richard Webby, a virologist at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital who studies avian influenza.

Here’s the good news: even though the virus is infecting dairy cows (and now one dairy worker), “this is still very much a bird virus,” Webby says. Genetic sequencing by the USDA and the Centers for Disease Control suggests that these new infections are caused by a strain of flu that’s nearly identical to the virus circulating in wild birds. Few of the changes they did identify would allow it to spread more easily in mammals.

The spread of bird flu in cows is worrisome, but not as worrisome as it would be if the infections were happening in pigs, which are an ideal mixing vessel for flu virus. Pigs are susceptible to swine flu, avian influenza, and human influenza. That’s how swine flu emerged back in 2009—multiple viruses infecting pigs swapped genes, eventually giving rise to a virus capable of human transmission. 

Mammalian infections with bird flu have mostly been one-offs, Webby says. A mammal gets infected by eating a dead bird or ingesting bird droppings, but the infection doesn’t spread. One notable exception occurred in 2022, when H5N1 popped up on a mink farm in Spain and quickly jumped from barn to barn. Scientists also suspect that in rare cases, the virus has spread among family members. 

Cow-to-cow transmission hasn’t been confirmed, but the fact that some cows became infected after the arrival of cows from affected herds suggests that it may be occurring. That transmission may not be via coughs and sneezes—the traditional way flu gets passed on. It could be indirect. “So an infected cow drinks from a trough of water and the next cow comes along and drinks from that same trough,” Webby says.

How can we curb the spread among animals? That’s an ongoing debate. Vaccination is an option, at least for poultry. That’s common practice in China, Mexico, and a handful of other countries. Immunization doesn’t prevent infection, but it does reduce symptoms. That might curb the impact on flocks, but some experts are concerned that vaccinated flocks might allow the virus to spread undetected. Vaccination also would likely affect trade. Countries don’t want to import birds that might be infected. France decided to begin vaccinating ducks last year, and the USDA promptly announced it would restrict poultry imports from France and its trading partners. In the US, the current practice is to cull infected flocks. But there are signs that vaccination isn’t off the table. Last year the USDA began testing four vaccine candidates against the particular strain of H5N1 driving the current outbreak that has affected poultry across the globe. 

As a longer-term solution, researchers have also been working on creating genetically engineered animals that are resistant to bird flu. Last year, researchers created such chickens by using CRISPR to alter a single gene. 

For cattle, the current options to curb transmission are limited. Culling cattle would be a much harder sell because they’re so much more valuable than chickens. And cow vaccines for avian influenza don’t yet exist, although they would be relatively easy to produce. 

Bird flu has been on public health officials’ radar for more than two decades, and it has yet to make a jump into humans. “I do think that this particular virus has some fairly high hurdles to overcome to become a human-transmissible virus,” Webby says. But just because it hasn’t happened doesn’t mean it won’t: “We can be a little bit reassured that it’s not easy, but not assured that it can’t do it at all.”

Luckily, even if the virus suddenly acquired the ability to spread in humans, it would be vastly easier to develop a vaccine than it was to create one for covid-19. A vaccine already exists against H5N1. Doses of that shot are sitting in the country’s national stockpile. “This is one case we’re a little luckier because it’s a pathogen that we know. We know what this is and what we have in the freezer, so to speak. We have a little bit of a leg up on at least getting started,” Paul Marks, the FDA’s top vaccine regulator, told a reporter at the World Vaccine Congress this week. 

It’s not clear how well those doses would work against the current strain of H5N1. But many companies are already working on improved vaccines. Moderna plans to test an mRNA vaccine against the H5N1 strain causing the current outbreak. mRNA technology has a major advantage over traditional production methods for influenza vaccines, which grow the virus in eggs. In the event of a bird flu pandemic, eggs could be in short supply. Even if enough eggs were available, it could take half a year to develop a vaccine. mRNA technology, however, could shorten that timeline dramatically. 

That’s good news. With avian influenza surging across the globe, there are more opportunities than ever before for the virus to hit on a combination of genes that gives it the ability to easily infect humans. 

Now read the rest of The Checkup

Read more from MIT Technology Review’s archive

In a previous issue of The Checkup, Jessica Hamzelou explained what it would take for bird flu to jump to humans and why we don’t need to panic. Not yet, anyway. 

Google Earth can help scientists visualize the movement of H5N1 and perhaps even improve our ability to predict where outbreaks might occur. Rachel Ross had the story. 

Dig deep into the archives and you’ll find that Tech Review has been asking if bird flu will jump to humans for nearly two decades. Emily Singer reported on efforts to answer this question in 2006.

From around the web

Perfusing donated organs with circulating blood after they’re removed from the body helps keep them viable for transplant and makes it possible to transplant donor organs that might previously have been rejected. The process is “changing every aspect of the organ transplant process, from the way surgeons operate, to the types of patients who can donate organs, to the outcomes for recipients.” (NYT)

The country’s largest egg producer detected bird flu in its flocks and culled nearly 2 million birds. (Washington Post)

AI-assisted drug discovery is all the rage. Now some companies are hoping AI can improve the likelihood of success in clinical trials: they’re training algorithms to identify subjects most likely to respond to a treatment or even using AI to create surrogate study participants. (Stat)

The FDA has cleared the first prescription digital therapy for depression. The treatment, which is intended to be paired with medication, is an app that provides cognitive-emotional training and cognitive behavioral therapy lessons. (CNN)

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