Word: wildfowl
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...epidemic--a slate wiper, as epidemiologists call it--would be a new kind of deadly flu to which humans have no resistance. And since the 1960s, their fears have been focused on the H5N1 virus, a bird pathogen that is generally harmless in its host species (ducks and other wildfowl) but extremely deadly when contracted by chickens. It was H5N1 that struck Hong Kong in 1997, where it went straight from chickens to humans. Authorities quickly killed 1.4 million birds, and although six people died, the disease never managed to mutate into a highly contagious form...