While cases are rising, with over 100 herds affected nationwide, scientists worry that not enough testing is being done to understand the outbreak’s full scope. Florida has yet to record a case in cows. Michigan has reported the most of any state, with infections logged in 25 herds.

A former director of the U.S Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is predicting that the next pandemic could come from the bird flu virus that is spreading rapidly among U.S. poultry and cattle.

But a lot of open questions remain, including if we have the capacity to stop it in time. Bird flu is far from being a new pathogen. Whispers of a “ fowl plague ” date back to the late 19th Century, while H5N1 specifically was first detected in 1996 in Chinese geese.