RFK and Sec of ag want to let bird flu run wild

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superrific

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www.nytimes.com

RFK Jr.’s Prescription for Bird Flu on Farms: Let It Spread

The health secretary has suggested allowing the virus to spread, so as to identify birds that may be immune. Such an experiment would be disastrous, scientists say.
www.nytimes.com www.nytimes.com

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the nation’s top health official, has an unorthodox idea for tackling the bird flu bedeviling U.S. poultry farms. Let the virus rip.

Instead of culling birds when the infection is discovered, farmers “should consider maybe the possibility of letting it run through the flock so that we can identify the birds, and preserve the birds, that are immune to it,” Mr. Kennedy said recently on Fox News.

He has repeated the idea in other interviews on the channel.

Mr. Kennedy does not have jurisdiction over farms. But Brooke Rollins, the agriculture secretary, also has voiced support for the notion.

“There are some farmers that are out there that are willing to really try this on a pilot as we build the safe perimeter around them to see if there is a way forward with immunity,” Ms. Rollins told Fox News last month.

These people are lunatics. Thanks, MAGA.
 
superrific said:
www.nytimes.com

RFK Jr.’s Prescription for Bird Flu on Farms: Let It Spread

The health secretary has suggested allowing the virus to spread, so as to identify birds that may be immune. Such an experiment would be disastrous, scientists say.
www.nytimes.com www.nytimes.com

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the nation’s top health official, has an unorthodox idea for tackling the bird flu bedeviling U.S. poultry farms. Let the virus rip.

Instead of culling birds when the infection is discovered, farmers “should consider maybe the possibility of letting it run through the flock so that we can identify the birds, and preserve the birds, that are immune to it,” Mr. Kennedy said recently on Fox News.

He has repeated the idea in other interviews on the channel.

Mr. Kennedy does not have jurisdiction over farms. But Brooke Rollins, the agriculture secretary, also has voiced support for the notion.

“There are some farmers that are out there that are willing to really try this on a pilot as we build the safe perimeter around them to see if there is a way forward with immunity,” Ms. Rollins told Fox News last month.

These people are lunatics. Thanks, MAGA.
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I don't even know how to respond.
 
nrsair said:
Yes, this limits the ability of the infection to jump to other species/humans.
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The fear of it jumping to humans is a fair point. Other than that, and maybe on a small scale and any situation where the birds are contained, the idea of trying to find birds that are immune is not an obviously terrible one.
 
Really, the only thing that could go wrong is that the survivors aren't immune to the next year's strain. However, since influenza is so stable,who cares?
 
ZenMode said:
The fear of it jumping to humans is a fair point. Other than that, and maybe on a small scale and any situation where the birds are contained, the idea of trying to find birds that are immune is not an obviously terrible one.
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The article addresses that:

“That’s a really terrible idea, for any one of a number of reasons,” said Dr. Gail Hansen, a former state veterinarian for Kansas.

Since January 2022, there have been more than 1,600 outbreaks reported on farms and backyard flocks, occurring in every state. More than 166 million birds have been affected. Every infection is another opportunity for the virus, called H5N1, to evolve into a more virulent form. Geneticists have been tracking its mutations closely; so far, the virus has not developed the ability to spread among people.

But if H5N1 were to be allowed to run through a flock of five million birds, “that’s literally five million chances for that virus to replicate or to mutate,” Dr. Hansen said.

[. . . ]

Mr. Kennedy has suggested that a subset of poultry might be naturally immune to bird flu. But chickens and turkeys lack the genes needed to resist the virus, experts said.

“The way we raise birds now, there’s not a lot of genetic variability,” Dr. Hansen said. “They’re all the same bird, basically.”

Public health regulations would forbid the very few birds that might survive an infection from being sold. In any event, those birds might only be protected against the current version of H5N1, not others that emerge as the virus continues to evolve.

“The biology and the immunology doesn’t work that way,” said Dr. Keith Poulsen, the director of the Wisconsin Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory.

Letting the virus spread unchecked would also likely lead to trade embargoes against poultry from the United States, he added: “There’s a huge economic loss immediately.”

In one interview with Fox News, Mr. Kennedy also suggested that the virus “doesn’t appear to hurt wild birds — they have some kind of immunity.”

[. . . ]

If farmers were instead to let the virus make its way across the farm, “these infections would cause very painful deaths in nearly 100 percent of the chickens and turkeys,” said Dr. David Swayne, a poultry veterinarian who worked at the U.S.D.A. for nearly 30 years.

Farmers who cull infected flocks must also clean the premises and pass audits before restocking. They are often eager to resolve the crisis quickly. Simply stepping back would have serious financial consequences.

The strategy “means longer quarantine, more downtime, more lost revenue and increased expenses,” said a U.S.D.A. scientist who was not authorized to speak to the media.
 
virii mutate

those who survive gen 1 may not live through gen 87.

of course we all know that
 
superrific said:
That's what they want to do away with. They want to see which chickens survive and then breed them. There are so many problems with that idea. Even Dr. Lynch would reject it.
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This is what you get when you abandon science and medical expertise and appoint quacks and internet conspiracy and social media "health influencer" nutcases to government positions. A big part of Trumpism is that it's a war against experts and qualifications and the professional classes, and this is one of the results. Why trust an actual licensed medical professional who has trained for years in the latest medical knowledge when you can just consult some self-proclaimed "expert" off the net? Ivermectin cures all, baby!
 
Hmmm..
The way we raise birds now, there’s not a lot of genetic variability,” Dr. Hansen said. “They’re all the same bird, basically.”
 
ZenMode said:
The fear of it jumping to humans is a fair point. Other than that, and maybe on a small scale and any situation where the birds are contained, the idea of trying to find birds that are immune is not an obviously terrible one.
Click to expand...
Not dying from an infection or getting infected does not equal genetic immunity.
 
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