Areas of current flu research

Before 2004, all previous highly pathogenic avian flu virus strains circulated only among domesticated poultry and by culling all of them in the area, the strains were made extinct. Previous HPAI strains only existed in domesticated birds. A wild bird's LPAI would mutate in a domestic flock into an HPAI strain, all domestic birds in the area would be killed, and the HPAI strain would no longer have any hosts and thus would no longer exist. This current HPAI H5N1 strain has turned out to be different. In October 2004 researchers discovered H5N1 is far more dangerous than previously believed because waterfowl, especially ducks, were directly spreading the highly pathogenic strain of H5N1. From this point on, avian flu experts increasingly referred to containment as a strategy that can delay but not prevent a future avian flu pandemic. Nonetheless, there is still hope it will mutate into some low pathogenic strain over time and no longer exist in its current high pathogenic set of strains. But as time as gone on, the hope has come to look less and less likely. The result is that billions of dollars every year are going to be needed in expenditures that would not be required if it did go away. Poultry farming is especially hard hit. How to best spend pandemic mitigation funds and poultry farming protection funds is a question that to be answered requires billions in flu research and new flu vaccine manufacturing factories.
Since it is not going away as was hoped, more data is needed to figure out how best to cope. So governments are funding a variety of studies from cell culture of flu viruses to H5N1 vaccination effectiveness to adjuvants to wild bird migration patterns to wild bird avian flu subtype distribution to poultry flu vaccination etc. The information being gathered is increasing the world's ability to keep H5N1 contained, limiting its speed and extent of mutation, and buying time for new flu vaccine manufacturing methods and factories to come on line so that when the next flu pandemic happens the death toll can be minimized.