Bird flu is causing egg prices to soar, costing restaurants more, especially those that focus on brunch. Some restaurant owners say they are already raising prices.

Photos of bare grocery refrigerator cases and tales of egg prices gone wild have been rampant on social media this winter. The scenes aren’t manufactured drama. The U.S. Department of Agriculture noted last week that some grocery stores have been limiting the number of cartons customers can buy and hanging signs announcing shortages where cartons of eggs would normally be stacked.

With reports of the first human death from bird flu in the US, some Americans are feeling an uncomfortable flashback to the early days of Covid-19, when infectious disease experts were talking about a new virus that was sending people to the hospital with respiratory infections.

Bird Flu Is One Step Closer to Mixing with Seasonal Flu Virus and Becoming a Pandemic Wastewater in several Californian cities, including San Francisco and Los Angeles, recently tested positive for bird flu. But understanding disease risk and exposure to humans isn’t so straightforward

A variant of the virus caused disease in people in 1997, when there was a small but deadly outbreak in Hong Kong. Eighteen people had confirmed diagnoses, and six of them died. Since then, there have been sporadic cases around the world—but no large outbreaks.