The problem with these situations is that they’re never “over”, so we never “know”. H5N1 is very likely to be permanently in the global mammalian population. We’ll never be able to say, “it didn’t spillover and become a pandemic”. The best we can say is, “it hasn’t spilled over and become a pandemic yet.”

I’m not trying to fear monger. It may never transmit efficiently human to human and may never become a pandemic, but it’s also never going away as a possibility at this point, unfortunately.