Pandemic II: Avian Bugaloo

The horribly depressing first work week of the doofus administration started off badly and just kept going, capped off with yesterday's confirmation by half of the Senate (and the vice-president who thinks women without children shouldn't be allowed to vote) of an incompetent, alcoholic neo-Nazi as Secretary of Defense. This leaves us in the unenviable position of wondering: in a crisis, are we better off or worse off if the SecDef is drunk off of his ass? Perhaps the best option is if he's passed out? It's tough to say.

Yet, the thing I'm even more upset about is that our new president—petty, vindictive, stupid excuse for a human being that he is—silenced all public health agencies.

(Aside: This all has had me thinking a lot about my mom in recent days. Mom was a professor of public health and, unbeknownst to me while she was alive, a seriously big deal in those circles. She would be utterly appalled by what's happening now, and in an odd way it has me missing her in a manner I really hadn't been since she died, given how all that went down.)

We all expected him to withdraw the U.S. from the World Health Organization, that wasn't a surprise despite how incredibly dumb it was. What wasn't expected—but maybe should have been, given what we know of the guy?—was his putting an immediate halt to all communication from outfits like the CDC and the FDA and the NIH.

People who don't follow the news probably don't know this, but POTUS47’s department of Health and Human Services ordered a stop to publication of anything from these agencies. The Center for Disease Control and Prevention is prevented from communicating with the public. The National Institute of Health cannot publish reports. The Food and Drug Administration can't tell us anything about our food and pharmaceuticals. NIH is the largest funder of medical research in the world, and its meetings were canceled and research was stopped across the board.

The administration insists this is merely a "short pause," but what is going unstated is, why? Why pause/halt/stop at all? Is it because, oh, I don't know, maybe POTUS47 and company don't like it when the public knows things and want to install a propaganda apparatus to public health communication? The exception in the "pause" order is for communications that are approved by "a presidential appointee." I fully expect that to be the new overall rule in some form or another.

Recall what happened when the COVID-19 pandemic first hit. As POTUS45, the idiot-in-chief pleaded to "slow the testing down," saying that we shouldn't test because if you test, "you're going to find more cases." Then there was a tweet: "Cases are going up in the U.S. because we are testing far more than any other country, and ever expanding. With smaller testing we would show fewer cases!" He didn't like that the world could see how the virus was spreading here. He didn't like that Americans could see how the virus was spreading here. (There's another possibility, unlikely but you can't dismiss it because of how stupid 45/47 is, that he doesn't understand that the tests didn't cause COVID cases. Again, the tweet said, "cases are going up in the U.S. because we are testing." There is a non-zero chance that he didn't understand that the cases existed whether they were tested for or not.)

Further, he was infuriated that his nonsensical happy talk about how COVID would just "go away" and that injecting bleach was a viable treatment option was contradicted and condemned by actual experts in public health, doctors of many stripes, and people with even a rudimentary level of education and/or experience. His vendetta against Anthony Fauci was such that President Biden felt the need to preemptively pardon Fauci to protect him against potential action against him by the conspiracy mob of MAGAts, and all Dr. Fauci did was try to tell the public the truth about what was known regarding COVID-19. To 45/47, that was unacceptable.

Dr. Chrystal Starbird (great name, she's like a comic-book hero; she ought to be a member of Alpha Flight) of the NIH commented of the communications halt, "I don't think the people who just made that decision fully understand what that may mean in terms of implications for really important and critical research." Starbird is undoubtedly correct, but the more chilling thing is that it isn't just that they don't understand, they don't care. Which, given the timing of it all, should scare the bejeesus out of all of us.

 Firstly, we're just five years from the onset of a global pandemic that had enormous consequences. One would think the new administration would not want a repeat of that.

Secondly, we're already looking at a possible new problem, namely H5N1 and H7N9, or "bird flu." Are you among the people complaining about eggs being $9 a dozen now? Well, it's because of bird flu—chickens and other poultry are, you know, birds, and the infected ones are killed to mitigate further spread and thus there are far fewer hens to lay eggs. The outbreak is quite serious, and the prevalence of it has caused it to spread to other species. It's now in cattle, potentially infecting beef and milk. From poultry, eggs, beef, and/or milk—or from the secretions of the birds and cattle themselves—it has infected other mammals, including two of the most important ones (subjectively speaking), cats and humans.

Infected cats got it from raw milk (probably intended for people, not cats, but either way, WTF, people? Raw milk?!). CDC data (now outdated, of course) noted 67 cases of human infection, 63 from poultry and dairy farms and four with unknown points of infection.

But without research and monitoring and, you know, communication with the public, this will get worse. Right now the human (and pet) infection rate is small and the largest symptom people notice is the price of eggs. By doing nothing, the infection rate will rise, species jump will continue, mutations will likely occur, more food will become dangerous, and then we're off to the races. (Oh, and eggs will be even more expensive. Good job, people who voted because of grocery bills.)

So what better time to cut the legs out from under the CDC, FDA, NIH, and any other public health operation?

Even when the "pause" is lifted—with a newly installed unofficial Secretary of Propaganda clearing any messaging?—POTUS47 has nominated the worst possible people to head up HHS and the NIH. Robert F. Kennedy Jr., up for Secretary of HHS, is not just an anti-vaccine crusader, he's also a proponent of raw milk. What a combo right now! He's also completely unqualified, but that's nothing out of the ordinary for a POTUS47 nominee. Jay Bhattacharya, nominee for Director of the NIH, said attempts to mitigate the COVID pandemic were misguided and the best approach was to let people get infected and thus create "herd immunity." Actual public health experts and medical professionals called Bhattacharya's views reprehensible, irresponsible, unscientific, and, at the most generous, "fringe." Said one expert from the University of Saskatchewan, "Bhattacharya belongs nowhere near the NIH, much less in the director's office. [He] would be absolutely disastrous for the health and well-being of the American public and actually the world."

Which nominee is worse, Kennedy or Bhattacharya? You know what, it doesn't matter, they're both utterly horrible and would be devastating to the globe if put in those jobs. Is the "pause" on communications until one or both of them is confirmed by the Senate? So they can order only irresponsible, unscientific, and fringe messaging to the public?

Kathleen Sebelius, HHS secretary under President Obama, had this to say: "You can't pick and choose when an infectious disease is going to break out. And in fact, [Kennedy]'s clearly not reading the news because we are, I think, a year or so away from a major outbreak of avian flu in humans. We've seen avian flu jump from birds to farm animals and from farm animals to farm workers. That's just a step away from a major outbreak of avian flu, which right now has no vaccine. Do I want people to stop researching what could be an effective counter to an avian flu outbreak? Absolutely not. Because it's coming."

This is just week one. Strap in, folks.