The true enemies of the people
As if we don’t already have enough to worry about. We have one hell of a problem, brothers and sisters, and believe it or not it’s not Trump’s fault. At least, not yet. But give him time because soon it will be.
I’m talking about the avian influenza A (H5N1) virus, affectionately known as bird flu. Yes, it’s driving up the price of eggs and the Trump “administration” has cut funding to combat it. But egg prices are the least of our worries.
Between January of 2003 and December of 2024 a total of 261 cases of human infection with avian influenza A virus have been reported from five countries. Of those cases 142 patients died. In other words, the mortality rate of that sample is greater than 50%.
If that statistic is translatable to human bird flu infection in general and it spreads worldwide, it will make the Covid-19 pandemic look like a walk in the park. We won’t be talking about millions of deaths, we will be talking about billions.
Bird flu is now infecting cows. Fortunately pasteurisation kills bird flu in milk, but not raw milk, and Trump’s cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F Kennedy Jr is an advocate for drinking raw milk. He’s also a vaccine denier. That combination could launch an H5N1 pandemic the likes of which the world has never seen.
The virus is jumping from mammal to mammal. Each time it does it evolves, and not in good ways. Virologist Dr Angela Rasmussen recently told 60 Minutes, “I’m scared about it myself. I don’t sleep very much these days.” The people working on the problem at the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) have been fired.
Meanwhile, vaccine denialism and mistrust of science in general is becoming its own pandemic on the internet. Having learned nothing from Covid, stupid people are doubling down on “the dangers of vaccines.” They take anecdotal instances of adverse reactions to vaccine side effects and claim they are the rule, not the tiny exception, while ignoring the overwhelming evidence that the vast majority of people who died from Covid were unvaccinated.
This is yet another example of why ignorance and conspiracy theories can be deadly. Trump and his pirate ship of thugs and thieves love uneducated people, Trump has said as much. The end result could be death on an industrial scale. When some contemptible ignoramus refuses to get vaccinated against dangerous viruses, he or she puts us all at risk. They are the true enemies of the people.
Robert Harrington is an American expat living in Britain. He is a portrait painter.