Headlines proclaiming that bird flu in cows has impacted the milk supply – and that cows are then spreading the disease to laying hens – are a disturbing contribution to the cacophony of looming doomsday threats to humanity. Americans already spooked by the government takeover of speech, travel, assembly, and bodily autonomy during the COVID-19 pandemic are understandably unnerved by new zoonotic threats. The “real science” suggests risks to human health are minimal; the “real propaganda” seeks to foment fear to advance ideological goals more dystopian than the bird-cow-chicken virus.
Bird Flu in Cows and Eggs
Federal officials are monitoring milk-producing cows after the USDA determined that the bird flu (officially the H5N1 virus) is spreading between dairy cows within the same herd, to other herds when cows are transported, and from cows to egg-laying poultry. It is not clear where the new cow-jumping virus arose, though US officials believe it was contracted from wild birds.
The virus has been discovered in approximately 20% of pasteurized milk on grocery store shelves, but it is generally considered that pasteurization prevents the transmission of live infectious viruses and that the tests are merely detecting lingering dead virus particles. The USDA states “there are no concerns about the safety of the commercial milk supply,” but both the CDC and FDA warn against consuming raw milk or related products. Officials are closely following the spread among cows, as wide and sustained spread provides the virus opportunities to acquire mutations that make it more transmissible to humans.
Alarmist Globalists?
The only recorded human cases have been among dairy workers, and there is no evidence of human-to-human transmission. Yet some biased “stakeholders” have fanned the flames of fear in order to increase the regulatory powers of an increasingly Orwellian federal government. In one typical clarion call to action, Jaime M. Yassif, Ph.D. claimed:
“....many of us in the biosecurity and pandemic preparedness community believe that leaders in capitals around the globe should be working to get ahead of this new public health threat in case the H5N1 flu virus gains the ability to spread among humans.
“While we face uncertainty about what will happen next, many scientists say stepped-up government action is warranted because of the risk that bird flu could turn into a pandemic. Many researchers believe that Covid-19 may have started in a similar way — spreading from animals to humans by first gaining the ability to spread among mammals that came into contact with humans, and then evolving to transmit directly between humans.”
This is not a very scientific assessment; ‘’many of us believe,” “many scientists say,” “many researchers believe,” and “may have started in a similar way” are all speculative. Such phraseology does not assert consensus within a “community” that cannot determine whether COVID-19 “gained” its ability to spread between humans in a gain-of-function laboratory or in the animal-to-human trajectory speculated here. Americans certainly do face uncertainty about what happens next – they still have no certainty about what happened during the pandemic!
Dubious Credentials
Dr. Yassif’s dubious credentials taint her call to arms for Big Pharma and ever-bigger government. She hails from the Nuclear Threat Initiative, formed by Ted Turner and Sam Nunn to advocate against nuclear weapons, yet she is here advocating for increased biological research. Prior to this, Yassif served at the left-leaning Open Philanthropy Project, created by Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz and his wife, which gives to numerous left-of-center organizations concerned with criminal justice policy.
The Open Philanthropy Project is also keen on animal welfare, according to its website, seeking to “expand the global farm animal welfare movement” and “the development of alternatives to animal products to reduce the demand for factory-farmed products.” They are “especially focused on work that can reduce the taste and cost barriers to wider adoption of these products.”
It is hard to discern what Yassif’s true mission is – nuclear nonproliferation, animal welfare, or biosecurity. Such lofty goals are blended together in many globalist NGOs. Attacks on cows and farmers in the name of climate change have swept through Europe and arrived in America. Yassif was a policy advisor at the US Department of Defense, where she “helped lay the groundwork” for the WHO and Global Health Security Agenda. She now counsels an expansion of Big Brother with advice that is arguably creepier than bird flu virus in cows’ milk:
“In the short term, governments should act now to deploy the capacities at their disposal to guard against the uncontrolled spread of the H5N1 bird flu virus if it evolves to spread between people. This includes funding research on vaccines that are likely to be effective against the virus, stepping up surveillance of livestock and humans and wider emergency response planning.
“Moving forward, it will be critical for human and animal health sectors — including the CDC and the US Department of Agriculture — to work together on bio-surveillance, including by developing a shared approach to monitoring human and animal populations and by exchanging data, to keep tabs on how the virus is evolving.”
Keeping an Eye on Surveillance
Attentive Americans are keeping tabs on voices like Yassif’s. Arguing for ever more China-like surveillance systems to track all humans and farm animals for a disease that does not yet exist, Yassif is practically advertising the provisions of the new pandemic treaty, which proposes to collect and monitor animal diseases in an interconnected global “sector” of disease-sharing laboratories. In the name of security from as-yet-nonexistent pathogens, Yassif calls for compromises of privacy and constitutional liberties. Perhaps “misinformation” about cows and bird flu must also be prohibited prophylactically – “just in case” a new disease pops up and “just in case” someone dares suggest it did not jump from bird to cow, or cow to human, but from lab to human. Such scientific questions are verboten, as the world witnessed during the pandemic Yassif cites as positive justification for expanded powers.
Flu vaccines do not have the greatest record of efficacy. The CDC notes: “When flu vaccines are not well matched to some viruses spreading in the community, vaccination may provide little or no protection against illness caused by those viruses.” However, should cows become a vector for transmission, humanity already has vaccines for H5N1 bird flu: “....a trio of H5N1 vaccines for humans has already been developed and approved in the U.S. ….While there hasn’t been an outbreak among people to put them to the test, human-to-human transmission would “drive the need” for H5N1 vaccines….”
The Biden administration has steadily increased regulatory burdens on small farmers through EPA, SEC, and USDA rule changes. Now a disease crops up that undermines local (raw milk) food production and is being leveraged by global disease “experts” to expand surveillance of humans and animals to design and manufacture “just-in-case” vaccines and to increase globalist regulatory powers. What could possibly go wrong?
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