Learning Nothing

Once again, the public health establishment, with an assist from the USDA, is completely fumbling tracking of a new deadly disease, in this case, Avian flu, which, in case I have not mentioned it, currently has a mortality rate of about 50% among humans.

They aren't tracking it, because it's voluntary for farmers, because the Department of Agriculture is more interested in protecting farmers, particularly the large corporate megafarms, than it is in protecting the population from the next catastrophic pandemic:

Reliance on individual dairy farmers to help track the spread of avian flu is leaving the federal government without the data necessary to understand — and slow — the virus’ spread in the U.S.

The biggest challenge for the federal response, agriculture and public health officials told POLITICO, is that the more the virus spreads among dairy cows, the more opportunity it has to mutate and become easier to jump to additional humans. The number of documented infected dairy herds in recent weeks has risen rapidly — and several other states have confirmed initial infections in cows.

But many dairy farmers are declining to test their cows, leaving the nation vulnerable to a situation in which federal officials won’t have adequate warning if the virus evolves and poses a greater risk of infection to people. 

“The longer this is prevalent in animal farms and livestock operations across the state, the greater the opportunity is for future mutations in animals or human risks in different ways going forward,” said Tim Boring, who heads the Department of Agriculture and Rural Development in Michigan, a state with two confirmed human cases to date as it deals with a major bird flu outbreak among poultry and now dairy herds.

The federal response is largely focusing on voluntary efforts by farmers to help track and contain the outbreak. But many farms still have not signed up for USDA efforts to boost surveillance and testing for the virus. To date, 94 herds across 12 states have tested positive for bird flu, but the testing has covered a mere fraction of the nation’s nine million dairy cattle. Only about 45 exposed and symptomatic humans have been tested for avian flu, CDC Principal Deputy Director Nirav Shah said in a Thursday briefing with reporters.

Mark Lyons, a senior USDA animal health official, said federal officials are “still working closely to understand the breadth” of the bird flu outbreak in the nation’s dairy herds.

No they are not working closely to understand the breadth of the outbreak, they are doing their best to avoid a situation where farmers will be forced to cull herds because of the infection.

The solution is simple, mandate testing, develop criteria for culling herds, and provide restitution to the farmers who lose their herds in this way.

Of course, they will never do that.  That would be communism.