The original post: /r/askscience by /u/sciurumimus on 2025-02-18 05:45:11.

We hear a lot about how H5N1 could recombine with seasonal flu and become more human-to-human transmissible, but not very much about gene transfer in the other direction. But considering how severe the flu season is this year, as well as the amount of bird flu circulating in animals, is it possible that the flu viruses now circulating in humans already have genes derived from bird flu, but this is not being reported as “bird flu” because the recombined viruses are H1N1 or H3N2? How much genetic monitoring is done of seasonal flu viruses/has that monitoring been disrupted by the funding chaos?