In the past few years, there have been many health scares of a new flu virus spreading through the world, causing a pandemic of unseen proportions since the early 1900s. Many of these scares have been from fears that humans may catch a strain of flu from animals that the human population in general has never seen or fought before. With the media narrative often driving the point home of a pandemic a few days away, the population becomes scared quickly. But are these fears really true, or just blown out of proportion?
The truth behind catching influenza, or the flu, from animals is that it is indeed possible, and has been proven scientifically. However, the fears of catching the flu from animals is overblown for most of the population. Flu pandemics have also occurred in the past due to transmission of the flu from pigs and avian animals, usually domesticated like chicken. Precautions and warnings are set out in order to avoid a repeat of such pandemics, but actual transmission from an animal to a human mainly occur in workers that have frequent interaction with swine or domesticated avian animals. The chances of catching the flu from an animal are small due to structure of the virus, so such an occurrence would only be likely in those in the meat produce industry. Thus, the average person would be at virtually no risk of catching the flu from animals. The opposite effect, transmitting the flu from a human to an animal, is theoretically possible but the chances are small. In short, most people do not have to actually worry about catching the flu from an animal, and vice versa.
