The Bird-Flu Tipping Point
If and when it happens, we might not know until it’s too late.
Top U.S. health official Robert F. Kennedy Jr. recently mused about a novel way to contain bird flu, which is to let it “run through the flock so that we can identify the birds, and preserve the birds, that are immune to it.” Just to be clear, this could involve millions of birds dying slower, more horrible deaths. Just to be more clear, this would not be the recommendation of most scientists, because it would only give the H5N1 virus that causes bird flu more opportunities to evolve, which it’s already doing at what experts see as an alarming rate. So far, the outbreak has caused one human death in the United States and several others overseas.
There was a moment last year when bird flu was detected in a small number of cattle herds and could have been contained more easily, but the U.S. government basically missed that moment. Now birds, cows, and the rest of us could be at the mercy of government officials who are suspicious of mainstream science.
