With RFK about to be appointed, this might be the thing that takes the US from a superpower to a super duper lepper colony avoided by the rest of the world.
Nope. Whatever happens in the US, will happen everywhere. Shutdown always happens too late. RFK will just speed up the process, but basically we're all fucked.
Knowing conservative governance, they’ll offer government subsidized plane tickets to anyone who tests positive, because shipping them out means the US numbers will be lower.
What US numbers? Trump already said that when you don't test, you won't have numbers. Plus, people should just drink bleach to increase their immune system. The more people do that, the less people there are who can get it... Because they're dead from bleach poisoning.
What sucks is, the first 2 flus i remember spredding (swine flu + Ebola) i paniced and thought it would affect me. it didnt.
Then covid hit. I thought it wouldnt affect me. It did.
Now bird flu is going around, its not going affect me. It did/didnt? I dont know.....
There have been a couple hundred zoonotic cases of bird flu in humans, luckily not human-to-human transmissible, yet (as far as we know).
This would be a good moment for every country to be investing heavily in vaccines. A bird flu pandemic will most likely be far worse than COVID was, and the virus is all around us just waiting for the right mutation.
Instead, the USA has put RFK Jr, an extreme paranoid antivax fool, in charge of the Department of Health, and the Republicans are talking about banning most or all vaccines and forbidding health professionals from recommending vaccines. There is absolutely no logic or science behind this - it's based on irrational feelings. This could get a large chunk of the US population killed quite soon, worsen the pandemic for every other country around the world, and set back vaccine development and production for the whole world.
This could go down in history as one of the most self-destructive political decisions ever made. It will make other idiocies like Brexit and tariffs look like a walk in the park.
Would be interesting to see the US take a nosedive not seen before in history
I'm sure they'll find some scapegoat somewhere that they'll lynch and then everyone is happy and noone has to take responsibility for the millions of deaths
Just blame the gays, Jews, Muslims, Palestinians, Chinese, poor, homeless, mentally ill, whatever vulnerable group, easy peasy
I know lots of antivaxxers spread Covid while traveling and the avian pandemic will likely have just as much help if not more now. Capitalism giving those fat greasy dollars the ability to travel anywhere, so there go tourist destinations.
To be fair, RFK Jr has not been approved yet. He almost certainly will be, but so far he's just been nominated.
Good, good, more dead republicans.
More dead everyone, because they're planning to obstruct everyone's access to vaccines and hamper vaccine research and development.
And also travel and spread this shit everywhere.
If the US insists on being pandemic central, can we lock its borders down from the outside at least?
Blue states will be fine. We told Trump to fuck off last time and came out ahead of red states.
bird flu pandemic will most likely be far worse than COVID was, and the virus is all around us just waiting for the right mutation.
I keep hearing this but its unclear to me why we should expect this strain to be worse than say, the Swine Flu that hit several years before Covid? I know it caused a few deaths but was generally pretty forgettable and short lived in peoples awareness.
Because it spreads by birds, who migrate a lot and is less fatal to them. And when a human catches it, i ha a high death rate. Currently the species jump is rare and only for those in contact with birds, but that could change.
Then it’s a constantly spreading disease with a high death rate.
Not really rare. It wrecked sea lion populations in Peru, penguin populations in the arctic. It was found in different bears species, foxes or pumas and as far as I understood it was deadly for them too. Millions of birds in wildlife. And now cows, cats and chickens.
If pigs get it (I don't know if it happened already) it'll get very serious. That's how the "spanish" flu started in the USA.
https://wildlife.org/highly-pathogenic-bird-flu-an-unprecedented-threat-to-wildlife/
That article is a sobering read. I wasn't aware of the extent of the spread and thank you for sharing it.
If pigs get it […]. That's how the "spanish" flu started in the USA.
That is indeed a theory, hypothesized in a paper from 2005 and mentioned on the Wikipedia article about the Spanish flu:
[The hospital] also was home to a piggery and poultry was regularly brought in from surrounding villages to feed the camp. Oxford and his team postulated that a precursor virus, harbored in birds, mutated and then migrated to pigs kept near the front.
Because pigs are more readily infected with avian influenza viruses than are humans, they were suggested as the original recipients of the virus, passing the virus to humans sometime between 1913 and 1918.
[I fact-check as much as my time and preexisting knowledge allow. I post what I found to vouch for your comment and save other people time. I hope I don't come across in the wrong way.]
penguin populations in the arctic
There are no penguins in the Arctic and the article you linked to doesn't mention them. Where has bird flu infected penguins?
Not the person you asked, but they meant Antarctica.
I see. I find it sad and alarming that a disease, however infectious, would reach Antarctica and wreak such havoc, but then again, all ecosystems are ultimately linked and little ever stays local. Thank you for replying and linking a source.
OK but my lungs never recovered from swine flu. It wasn't as bad as it could've been, but it's not like it was no big deal.
And back then vaccines were apolitical
I'm hoping we get a vaccine that confers really good immunity to bird flu and its 50% mortality rate.
A good vaccine means the whole thing will just sort itself out.
These fuckers tried to kill my immunocompromised family member with COVID. Fuck em.
I love how bizarre this headline and pic combo would seem to anyone who hasn't paid enough attention to know the wider context 😄
"Gee, those are some mighty peculiar birds, I reckon!"
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