Original Article by Jamie White
A chorus of researchers and health experts are warning that the U.S. government’s failure to contain bird flu outbreaks among cattle could soon lead to an even worse pandemic than COVID-19.
“We are in a terrible situation and going into a worse situation. I don’t know if the bird flu will become a pandemic, but if it does, we are screwed,” says virologist Angela Rasmussen.
KFF Health News published a hysterical report last week citing numerous public health experts and government officials sounding the alarm about the likelihood that Americans may have to deal with another, even deadlier, pandemic if health agencies can’t properly address bird flu outbreaks occurring in cattle and poultry farms.
“To understand how the bird flu got out of hand, KFF Health News interviewed nearly 70 government officials, farmers and farmworkers, and researchers with expertise in virology, pandemics, veterinary medicine, and more,” the outlet reported.
It went on to claim that its investigation “revealed key problems, including deference to the farm industry, eroded public health budgets, neglect for the safety of agriculture workers, and the sluggish pace of federal interventions.”
“We are in a terrible situation and going into a worse situation,” said Angela Rasmussen, a virologist at the University of Saskatchewan in Canada. “I don’t know if the bird flu will become a pandemic, but if it does, we are screwed.”
The report claims that in addition to the taxpayer cost of reimbursing farmers for infected cattle and combating the bird flu, “the outbreak poses the threat of a pandemic” because the H5N1 virus could possibly mutate into a virus that enables human-to-human transmission.
“More than 60 people in the U.S. have been infected, mainly by cows or poultry, but cases could skyrocket if the virus evolves to spread efficiently from person to person. And the recent news of a person critically ill in Louisiana with the bird flu shows that the virus can be dangerous,” the outlet reported.
“Just a few mutations could allow the bird flu to spread between people. Because viruses mutate within human and animal bodies, each infection is like a pull of a slot machine lever.”
The report lays out plenty of criticisms of the government’s “sluggish” response to the bird flu outbreaks and deference to cattle farmers who don’t want to cooperate.
“You are surrounded by highly pathogenic viruses in the wild and in farm animals,” said Marion Koopmans, head of virology at Erasmus Medical Center in the Netherlands. “If three months from now we are at the start of the pandemic, it is nobody’s surprise.”
Tom Bollyky, director of the Global Health Program at the globalist Council on Foreign Relations, likewise said, “It’s disheartening to see so many of the same failures that emerged during the Covid-19 crisis reemerge.”
The report even criticized President-elect Donald Trump’s mass deportation plan, arguing it will increase the risk of turning the bird flu outbreaks into a full-blown pandemic because a large percentage of dairy workers are illegal aliens.
As President-elect Donald Trump comes into office in January, farmworkers may be even less protected. Trump’s pledge of mass deportations will have repercussions whether they happen or not, said Tania Pacheco-Werner, director of the Central Valley Health Policy Institute in California.
Many dairy and poultry workers are living in the U.S. without authorization or on temporary visas linked to their employers. Such precarity made people less willing to see doctors about covid symptoms or complain about unsafe working conditions in 2020. Pacheco-Werner said, “Mass deportation is an astronomical challenge for public health.”
The report claims the best way to prevent the bird flu outbreaks from becoming a full-fledged pandemic is to “curtail” their spread at the farms by promoting more testing, boosting taxpayer funds to assist farmers, and offering bird flu vaccines to vulnerable workers.
Though some elements of the report make sensible points, it seems the “bird flu pandemic” narrative is largely a media effort to gin up hysteria and set up Trump for another public health crisis as he’s set to be sworn into office in just a few weeks.
“President-elect Donald Trump is likely to struggle with the outbreak of bird flu, or H5N1, among livestock and wildlife in the United States, which experts are concerned could become a threat to humans should the spread of the virus not be contained,” The Washington Examiner said Monday.
They’ve set Trump up again for another NO WIN situation before he even gets out of the starting gate.
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