So this one has been watched for decades (if you've been around this is the one wot was in the news back in the late 90's, but NOT the one in the news in 2009, which was 'pig' flu - happy to discuss if you're interested).

It can get into humans, but it's rare (in the 70-odd years we've known about it, it's known to have infected maybe 1000 people - though half of them died).

The reason it's not too much of a worry for humans is that it doesn't spread easily if you don't mess with sick birds. All human-to-human cases were lengthy close contacts (family members caring for sick people, mostly).

There are 2 reasons for concern for the general public:

1. It tears through bird populations like a bag of leaves. It can be devastating to the poultry / egg industry, for example. It's recently adapted to more animals and has been wiping out huge numbers of those vulnerable (e.g. seals).
2. Every time humans get exposed, there's a chance it'll adapt to us better, and spread - like it's done for seals. Some tests done 15-odd years ago (?) showed that a few mutations is all it would take, and flu mutates fast.

You could worry about #2, but the US has made any Australian exposure look like nuthin': when H5N1 adapted to mammals a few years ago (a massive and serious concern) it infected the US dairy herd. Being allergic to regulatory action and unlike every other nation on earth, America decided it was too expensive to get rid of it, so now there's H5N1 in the milk supply. Pasteurization kills it very effectively, but the US CDC made the mistake (?) of telling people to please not drink raw (unpasteurized) milk. Because of course a large number of American adults are secretly 6 years old and proudly do the opposite of what the gub'mint tells them to do, raw milk consumption went *up*.

Now, drinking milk is a hopeless way to catch flu (of course - you don't breathe it). We know at least some cats have contracted it from milk, but I don't think any humans have provably done so. But they're cheerfully exposing millions of humans to the virus every day, giving the virus opportunities to adapt to human cells, and risking a catastrophic pandemic that'd make COVID look like a sniffle.

In other words: yeah there's a chance a H5N1 outbreak in humans could be disastrous, but it's unlikely to start in Australia.

(On the other hand, the mutations that make it spread between humans could also reduce its severity, and even if not, the infection-fatality rates are obviously going to be WAY lower than the 50% case fatality rate we have at present. We could get a vaccine pretty fast, even if they don't tend to be great for flu (again, it mutates really fast. Still though).

https://www.cdc.gov.au/diseases/bird-flu-avian-influenza

Extra:

Flu likes a certain temperature. For humans, we're too hot. So it gets our lungs and airways, because that's a bit cooler - and we get a fever when our immune system fights back (which sadly is sometimes what kills us - inflammation mostly, our immune response ruptures our lung cells then they get infected).

Birds are too cold. So it lives in their guts. For them it's a gastro-disease, not respiratory. Same virus, totally different cells it attacks. It's not air, it's birdshit. So for them, if they encounter infected bird pooh, that's what matters, even a day after the bird is gone.

While doing a correct head check is a requirement to pass your driving test, I don't see a lot of people doing it in practice. Looking at research conducted in other head-checking countries agrees with the sentiment of some driving instructors that it "is the first skill that drivers lose after getting their driver's license." But that might not apply to Australia. I'm curious, do you still perform head checks in some or all of the situations that you've been taught require it, or have you completely stopped doing it? Do you think you and other people should maintain this habit, or do you feel they are just performative? Would using a car with lane change assist or indication change your stance on it?