Capitalism vs. the bird flu

In today’s episode, we’re talking about bird flu and we’re cute decoder method. Lauren Refer recently wrote a piece Barge Joined me on the show about bird flu and how it becomes an eternal war, and we talked about the systems, structures and culture that controls bird flu.

You’ve probably heard of bird flu in the context of egg prices. Eggs are expensive now for bird flu and are difficult to find now We have started the old-fashioned supply and demand issuesThe virus kills almost any chicken it infects. Less chickens means fewer eggs, while less eggs means higher prices. I’ll hear Lauren say It’s a little more complicated than thatbut it’s a basic form.

However, avian flu is actually much more severe than egg supply. first Virus-related human death confirmed It happened in January. Now we are facing some unpleasant questions without a simple answer. It is just as new strains of avian influenza, collectively known as H5N1, may have spread from birds to dairy cows and other animals, and how fatal these new strains are, including both birds and mammalian humans.

If you’re like me, you’re beginning to feel unpleasantly familiar emotions, and you’re not wrong to feel them. Here are some real echoes of Covid-19 – and the Trump administration is not equipped to deal with Robert Kennedy Jr., the Department of Health and Human Services, to handle the rapidly changing pathogenic virus. Kennedy himself is an anti-vaccine activist who abandons and exercises junk science.

last week, Kennedy continued Fox News And one way to deal with the ongoing outbreak of avian flu was simply to spread and kill all the birds. This is a purely stupid idea for a variety of reasons discussed with Lauren. What certainly doesn’t help the problem is that it’s Kennedy on Thursday, a few days after Lauren and I talked about this episode. announcement Kennedy said it was a “painful time” for the department that involves “less” workforce cuts at HHS. As layoffs hit 10,000 employees.

If that’s not enough, the troublesome aftermath of the pandemic and the damage done to the full institutional trust will make even a reliable leader in public health services’ work difficult.

But like I said, I wanted to talk about this decoder There is one major difference between the framework and the Covid-19 that I wanted to promote here. Industrial agriculture in the US is a big business, and bird flu is a threat to its business. Millions of dead birds lose millions of income, and when the virus becomes more deadly to dairy cows, it’s even more money. If the government can’t get a response, can the industry see this issue and resolve it before it gets worse?

The answer you might expect is an overwhelming question mark, but as Lauren explained, different parts of the market react differently. And it looks like there’s still time right now. Scientists have yet to raise the kind of alarm we have begun to see for the months leading up to March 2020, and the months we changed Covid forever.

But one thing is very clear. Avian flu doesn’t just go away, even if you want how it worked. We need to live with it and learn how to manage it. And as long as we can take everyone to the same page, we may even be able to fight it.

If you would like to read more about what we talked about in this episode, please see the link below.

_{Any questions or comments about this episode? Hit us at decoder@theverge.com. We really read all the emails!}