Bird Flu
RFK, Jr. Wants to Let Bird Flu Spread on Poultry Farms. Why Experts Are Concerned– www.scientificamerican.com
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Excerpt:
With H5N1 avian influenza spreading in poultry flocks, Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., is pushing a new plan: let the virus rip.
Kennedy recently told Fox News that by letting the highly pathogenic bird flu spread through flocks, farmers could “identify the birds, and preserve the birds, that are immune to it.”
What the Experts Say
Even with avian diseases that are slower-acting than highly pathogenic bird flu, scientists have struggled to find a key to genetic resistance. Huaijun Zhou, a professor of animal science at the University of California, Davis, worked on a project on Newcastle disease, another viral illness that is also nearly always fatal in poultry but that some infected birds can survive for weeks. “We didn’t find any magic bullet,” Zhou says….
Kennedy’s remarks belie a lack of knowledge about the way poultry breeding works, Koci says. The chickens that provide meat and eggs are not in the breeding population: they’re the product of parent generations that are bred to maximize disease resistance and meat or egg production. Wiping out the working offspring of these breeders wouldn’t do anything to alter the next generations of chickens coming down the line.
The H5N1 bird flu is still raging across America, leading the destruction of 148 million birds since 2022. As a result, the price of eggs has continued to go up, and now companies like Costco, Kroger, and Whole Foods are now putting restrictions on how many eggs each customer can buy. The question remains to some whether the bird flu is more hype and the chicken slaughtering is sabotage.
Grocery Chains Ration Eggs After Mass Chicken Slaughter For Bird Flu – PJ Media– pjmedia.com
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Excerpt:The Democrats have been running the “what about egg prices?” line of attack against Trump hot and heavy lately, making the argument that egg prices are still astronomical and growing despite Trump promising to bring them down and having a full three weeks to reverse five years of economic sabotage by his predecessor.
What they conveniently leave out of the egg price narrative is that the Public Health™ authorities have been busy slaughtering poultry by the hundreds of millions for at least three years now.
Via CBS News (emphasis added):
Whether it’s ducks or chickens, since the current strain of bird flu, H5N1, reached the United States in 2022, over 148 million birds have been ordered euthanized.
“It’s a staggering number, there is no doubt,” said Jodie Guest, a professor of epidemiology with Emory University’s Rollins School of Public Health in Atlanta. “But it is, and always has been a policy across administrations, with the USDA, that this is how they handle infections like this among poultry. And as we’ve seen bird flu move [across] species, it becomes even more important to try to contain that infection in the flocks that it’s in, so that we don’t continue to see spread.”
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California Gov. Gavin Newsom Declares State of Emergency over Bird Flu– legalinsurrection.com
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Excerpt:
Americans throughout the nation can rejoice that President/President-elect Donald J. Trump tapped Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, a Stanford physician and economist whose challenged the disastrous covid lockdown policies, to be the director of the National Institutes of Health.
Let’s hope Bhattacharya’s formal appointment processes goes smoothly and quickly, because California Gov. Gavin Newsom has “proactively” revving up a state response to the bird flu outbreak in California.
Gov. Gavin Newsom declared a state of emergency as the H5N1 bird flu virus moves from the Central valley to Southern California herds and federal officials confirmed flu in a Louisiana patient hospitalized with severe illness. This is the first case of severe illness caused by bird flu in the U.S., and is considered a concerning development as the virus continues to spread throughout the nation via migrating birds.
The declaration will allow for a more streamlined approach among state and local agencies to tackle the virus, providing “flexibility around staffing, contracting, and other rules to support California’s evolving response,” according to a statement issued Wednesday morning.
“Building on California’s testing and monitoring system — the largest in the nation — we are committed to further protecting public health, supporting our agriculture industry, and ensuring that Californians have access to accurate, up-to-date information,” said Newsom in a statement. “While the risk to the public remains low, we will continue to take all necessary steps to prevent the spread of this virus.”
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Excerpt:
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has confirmed the first case of severe bird flu in the United States. Which is a bigger deal than ever, because of the incompetent and inexperienced boobs El Cheato has nominated to run the nation’s Department of Health and Human Services. If this mutates another step and makes the leap to human-to-human transmission, can they handle it? Via ABC News:
The federal health agency said Wednesday that the patient has been hospitalized in Louisiana. State health officials said the patient is over the age of 65 with underlying medical conditions.
The patient is experiencing severe respiratory illness related to bird flu infection and is currently in critical condition, a spokesperson from the Louisiana Department of Health told ABC News.
Genomic data showed the Louisiana patient was infected with a version of the virus recently found to be spreading in wild birds and poultry in the U.S., as well as found in some human cases in Canada and Washington state, according to the CDC.