News/Commentary

CDC taking bird flu outbreak ‘very seriously’, has vaccine candidates ‘ready to go’ as experts warn against eating runny yolks

April 5, 2024 | | Print Article

The CDC is taking a recent outbreak of the bird flu in America “very seriously.”

Unfortunately, thanks to the agency’s provably false fear-porn peddling during the COVID-19 pandemic, few others are.

The concern over the possibility of another epidemic was raised after a Texas farm worker “became the second American ever to be infected with the H5N1 strain this week after catching it from an infected cow — also the first time that bird flu has been found in cattle,” the Daily Mail reports.

“The CDC says the risk to humans from the H5N1 flu that is driving this outbreak is low,” NPR host Ari Shapiro told CDC Director Mandy Cohen on Wednesday. “Right now, it appears that the two cases in humans were from contact with sick animals. Do you have any reason to believe that humans could pass this on to each other?”

“So we have never seen a case of human-to-human spread of avian flu here in the United States, and the version of avian flu that we’re seeing in cattle and in this one human case is the same strain that we have seen previously in birds,” Cohen replied. “We’ve never seen that spread human to human.”

“That all being said,” she added, “as we’ve learned through COVID and our experiences, viruses change, and we need to stay ahead of it. That’s why we at CDC and the whole of U.S. government is taking this very seriously and monitoring the situation very closely.”

According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) website, the Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza (HPAI) has thus far been detected in livestock in six states, including Texas, New Mexico, Kansas, Idaho, Michigan, and Ohio.

“The ease with which this virus is jumping between species raises the risk of it evolving to better infect people, which prompted one expert to tell DailyMail.com it could pose a greater risk than Covid,” the Daily Mail reports.

“This is the first time we’ve seen avian flu or bird flu in cattle,” Cohen told NPR. “And as you know, cows are mammals. So this is a new group of animals that we are seeing this virus in. And that just means more opportunity for this virus to mutate and change, and that’s what we want to make sure we are continuing to stay ahead of.”

If reports are accurate, one would think the CDC would have a pretty firm grasp on the situation.

According to a February report from the Daily Mail, the U.S. government “is spending $1million of American taxpayer money to fund experiments on dangerous bird flu viruses in collaboration with Chinese scientists.”

“The research involves infecting ducks and geese with different strains of viruses to make them more infectious, and study the viruses’ potential to ‘jump into mammalian hosts,’ according to research documents,” the outlet reported nearly two months ago. “It is being funded through the US Department of Agriculture and collaborating studies will take place at sites in Georgia, Beijing and Edinburgh in Scotland.”

“Where have we seen this before?” Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) wrote Wednesday on X. “U.S. collaborates with China to make bird flu more contagious and transmissible to mammals. Bird flue now discovered in U.S. dairy cattle, transmitted to at least one human being.

“Knock it off already!”


According to Massie, the CDC has “no credibility.”

“Bureaucrats and corporations will probably use this to advance an agenda against raw milk, independent farmers, and backyard chickens,” he stated.

Never fear, according to Cohen, they’ve got vaccines “ready to go.”

“The good news is the United States has been preparing for avian flu outbreaks for more than 20 years,” Cohen said. “We’ve invested in our ability to test for this, to prevent it and to treat it. And we know that the strain we’re seeing right now is the same strain we have seen before. Tests will pick this up.”

“Our treatment, which is Tamiflu, which we have both doses in stockpile and around the country, works,” she said. “And we even have vaccine candidates that are ready to go. So it’s very different than what we experienced, for example, at the beginning of COVID, when we were seeing a brand-new, novel virus where we didn’t have tests, we didn’t have treatment and we didn’t have vaccine.”

Meanwhile, a “former FDA expert has urged people to cook their eggs thoroughly to kill off any lingering fragments of virus,” DailyMail.com reports.

“Transmission of bird flu to humans through the consumption of properly cooked poultry products, including eggs, is very low,” Dr Darin Detwiler, food safety expert at Northeastern University and former advisor to the FDA and USDA, told the outlet.

“The risk arises with improperly cooked eggs or poultry meat,” according to the doctor. “Using pasteurized eggs or ensuring eggs are fully cooked could provide an additional layer of safety, reducing the risk of potential exposure to the virus.”

 

Melissa Fine
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