If you think Covid is bad (or even if you don't), if H5N1 starts passing from human to human, it could be worse. It's not just about the virus's effect on us, but on our food supply. Another four agricultural workers caught it where 800,000 chickens had to be euthanized.
Here are some highlights from Katherine Eban's recent article:
"They stumbled upon hellish scenes out of a horror movie: Feverish cows in respiratory distress producing trickles of milk. Dying cats. enough dead barn pigeons and blackbirds to suggest a mass poisoning. Living birds with twisted necks, their heads tilted skyward. . . . This should be a story of heroism, cooperation, and an all-hads effort to defeat a wily virus. . . . Instead, it is a story of intimidation and obfuscation. The vets who sounded the alarm have been silences. . . .
The interspecies nature of the outbreak makes combating it a unique challenge that requires a different response form that of Covid-19. We're focused on protecting human and animal health, as well as the food supply. Perhaps the biggest wild card has been the USDA's other mandate, to serve as the government's chief dairy lobbyist. . . . Looming over the USDA's reluctance to conduct a more transparent and proactive campaign against H5N1 in dairy cows are export agreements worth more than $24 billion each year. . . . Rather than moving forcefully to contain and eradicate the virus in dairy cows, critics say, the USDA has tried to control the narrative and spread the message that everything is just fine. . . . Dairy operators are essentially capital asset managers. It's so consolidated. For family farmers, there are only one or two buyers of your milk. If you don't go along with the playbook, your market access is cut off and you go bankrupt. And H5N! was not in the corporate playbook. Dairy farmers, afraid their cows would be quarantines or that they would not be able to sell their milk, simply opted not to test. Some forced veterinarians off their property. "Everyone is so scared shitless." . . . Meanwhile, the USDA was sitting on details about infected farms. . . .
Most cows that contract H5N1 eventually recover with treatment. The same cannot be said for chickens. . . . With poultry being treated as less important than dairy, the mental health issues that come with killing animals for disease control, the substantial economic impact--to just allow it to continue with no end in sight, that's an untenable situation. . . . It is unclear whether the virus, as it continues to spread and evolve, will ultimately pose a serious threat to human health. But if it does, thre could be a battle no less intense than the one still being fought over who should be held responsible for Covid-19. Looking back at the events of 2019, one thing almost everyone agrees on is that China should have been much more transparent about what it knew and when it knew it. . . . Now only have we not learned, we have regressed.
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