This is the best summary I could come up with:
Fall 2022 After months moving west across the United States and Canada, the virus spreads south into Mexico and Colombia, most likely by migrating birds carrying it down the Pacific Flyway.
Late 2023 The virus rounds Cape Horn and moves north into Argentina and Uruguay, killing sea lions and seals and eventually reaching southern Brazil.
At some point, it’s likely the virus evolved to spread directly among the marine mammals: In Argentina, the sea lion deaths did not coincide with the mass mortality of wild birds.
It is not hard to imagine how the virus might disperse in these animals: Elephant seals and sea lions both breed in colonies, crowding together on beaches where they fight, mate and bark at one another.
Scavenging animals, such as dogs, could also pick up the virus from an infected carcass and then spread it more broadly: “None of the wildlife exists in their little silos,” said Wendy Puryear, a virologist at Tufts University who studied the New England seal outbreaks.
“So now after 20 years of reassortment, you have a virus that actually does extraordinary well in a whole variety of avian and mammal species,” said Vincent Munster, a virologist at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases who has studied the mutations needed for H5N1 to adapt to people.
The original article contains 2,376 words, the summary contains 218 words. Saved 91%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!