As humans, we tend to focus only on outbreaks (like this COVID-19) and their effects on people. We then forget about other diseases and how other animals may be affected. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations gathered data that looked into animal disease outbreaks from 2015 to 2017 and investigated the number of animals at risk, the cases, and the deaths from a particular disease. The focus of the visualization on the left is on the Avian Influenza, better known as the bird flu, and how chickens have been affected.
From the data, there is a direct correlation between the number of cases of the bird flu found in domesticated chickens and the amount of deaths from it. For example, on June 6th 2016, there was an average of 86,000 cases of bird flu in chickens and then 86,000 recorded chicken deaths from it. The same can be said on July 31st 2017 when there were 80 cases and 80 deaths. Most of the other data points follow this same pattern, with only a few outliers mixed in. To further prove this point, the graph that depicts the amount of cases vs. the number of chickens at risk looks almost equivalent to the graph that shows number of deaths vs. chickens at risk. It can be concluded from the data that chickens that get the bird flu will most likely die from it.
But how likely is it for a chicken to get the bird flu? According to the data, the number of chickens at risk of contracting the bird flu is consistently greater than the number of chickens that actually contract it. A prime example of this can be found on August 6th 2015, where there were 41,476 chickens at risk of getting the flu but only 946 confirmed cases.
So why does this matter? This data shows the seriousness of the Avian Influenza. Although there are often far more chickens at risk of getting it than there are actual cases, the fact that chickens that contract it are most likely going to die means we need to work to prevent the bird flu as much as possible. We rely heavily on chickens for their eggs and for their meat for our own consumption. If this disease spreads, it will wipe out large populations of chickens, which will impact our food supply and our economy. If we aren't careful, we also run the risk of the bird flu spreading to humans.