The first American has officially died from bird flu. He lived in Louisiana, but it has some in Central Illinois wondering if it’s headed here next. Douglas Kasper, an infectious disease doctor at OSF said people shouldn’t be too worried.

Any time a person catches H5N1, or bird flu, their infection is a chance for the virus to mutate in the wrong direction. When someone dies from the bird flu—as an elderly Louisiana man did on Jan. 6,

With reports of the first human death from bird flu in the US, some Americans are feeling an uncomfortable flashback to the early days of Covid-19, when infectious disease experts were talking about a new virus that was sending people to the hospital with respiratory infections.