The Trump campaign’s disingenuousness was on full display in late September when it cast J.D. Vance as a consumer advocate in a grocery store game of gotcha. The goal was to tie Vice President Kamala Harris to the “price of eggs,” which had become shorthand for the inflationary gut-punch voters felt every time they went through their local supermarket’s check-out aisle.
Vance, fresh off spreading a cynical lie about pet-eating immigrants, stepped into a stage-managed scene designed to lay the high price of eggs at Harris’s feet. There was just one problem … the campaign staffer responsible for “blocking and staging” the scene failed to notice a glaring issue with the backdrop. Vance made his sales pitch about Kamala’s $4.00 eggs in front of a display case featuring $2.99 eggs … a fact that’s highlighted in this *enhanced* photo from Boing Boing:
Even worse, the $4.00 tray of twenty-four eggs Vance held in his hand was actually a better deal than the $2.99 carton of a dozen eggs that caught the eye of his critics, who turned it into a viral moment … “moment” being the operative word because the story didn’t stick and the American people didn’t suddenly realize they were being manipulated yet again.
Instead, they just ignored, or never even saw, this momentary drop in the Trump campaign’s mendacity-filled bucket. Or they bought the sales pitch without ever noticing the discrepancy. It was one of many times Trump’s campaign skillfully exploited Americans’ anger and ignorance over “the price of eggs,” which have risen and fallen repeatedly over the last few years. They also won the argument because Harris made no effort to explain why the price of eggs had skyrocketed over the previous few years.
It may turn out to be a Pyrrhic victory.
That’s because the real reason for wild fluctuations in egg prices is, proverbially speaking, a chicken that’s coming home to roost in Trump’s nest of cuckoos.
The culprit is Avian Flu, a.k.a. Bird Flu, a.k.a. the H5N1 virus, and it’s been gaining steam since it first hit North and South Carolinian turkey farms in March of 2020. It’s spread to 48 states and led to often-inhumane “culls” of over 100 million farm-raised chickens and turkeys. And by the way, the losses from those mass culls are compensated by taxpayers. As the New York Times reported in back in April, “Big Ag” giants like Jennie-O Turkey Store and Tyson Foods have reaped tens of millions in government payouts after turning up the heat in tightly-packed barns until the trapped birds eventually die of heat stroke.
Since April, US farms have killed “at least 18.6 million birds,” but those culls were largely driven by a scramble to contain Avian Flu’s leap to dairy cows. Yes, dairy cows. You’d think it would be a big story for a nation struggling with the cost of groceries. But the story came and went quickly, and the media continued to cover the impact of “the price of eggs” on the race for the White House without ever explaining the inflationary impact Avian Flu has on the actual price of eggs. And the inflationary implications of Avian Flu’s spread to dairy cows never entered political conversation, even after taxpayers began compensating Avian flu-related losses for milk producers in June. Then Avian Flu quickly jumped again … this time from dairy cows to humans working in the dairy industry.
In fact, the CDC sounded the alarm on this emerging crisis two days after Vance and Trump won the White House thanks in part to “the price of eggs.” As Fortune reported :
A CDC study released Thursday … found that a significant percentage of H5N1 infections went undetected in dairy workers who worked on farms with cows that were confirmed positive for the virus last summer. Among 115 farm workers who underwent blood tests in Michigan and Colorado, eight had evidence of recent infection in the form of antibodies—but only half of them could recall having symptoms. “All eight had either been milking cows or cleaning the milking mechanisms, officials said.
Among other things, that result suggests that many more American farm workers could become or already have been infected with the virus without knowing it—all the more reason, the experts say, for federal and state health agencies to aggressively offer testing and enhanced personal protective equipment(PPE) to those with boots on the ground at U.S. dairy and poultry farms.
Much like the disease, alarm has been spreading among dairy farmers since “highly pathogenic avian influenza” was first found on dairy farms in Texas and Kansas on the 25th of March. That announcement came just one day after the virus showed up in “juvenile goats on a Minnesota farm.”
On the other hand, there’s also been a great deal of industry resistance to calls for mandatory testing of its cash cows. Thus far, the federal response has been hamstrung both by the industry’s objections and by the inherent inertia generated by the USDA’s industry-friendly bureaucracy. This combination has, according to an alarming investigation published by Vanity Fair in late October, contributed to a “bungled bird flu response”:
The USDA’s inaction, critics say, is attributable to its dual—and sometimes conflicting—mandates. It is responsible for the health and safety of the nation’s food animals, but it’s also in charge of promoting and protecting America’s $174.2 billion agriculture trade. And sick cows, with documented cases of a virus never before seen in cattle herds, could be very bad for business.
It’s a classic case of the foxes’ friends being in charge of protecting the henhouse:
Rather than moving forcefully to contain and eradicate the virus in dairy cows, critics say, the USDA has tried to control the narrative and spread the message that everything is just fine, actually. In June, Eric Deeble of the USDA told scientific experts on a private phone call, “In the words of the secretary, ‘It’s just going to burn itself out,’” according to an attendee’s handwritten notes, which were obtained by Vanity Fair.
The “secretary” quoted by Deeble is the Democratic Party’s perennial go-to guy on all things agriculture, once and current Agriculture Secretary Thomas Vilsack. His notion that Avian Flu is “just going to burn itself out” is strangely reminiscent of then-President Trump’s repeatedly reassurances that COVID would simply “disappear.” But the strange symmetry doesn’t end there. Thanks in part to Avian Flu’s impact on “the price of eggs,” Vilsack’s days at the Department of Agriculture are now numbered and guess who’s waiting in the wings with orders to “go wild” on the nation’s food and health systems?
That’s right, folks … entering from stage-left is antivax crusader RFK Jr.!
So, let’s set the scene … the President who presided over a pandemic that didn’t disappear and ultimately led to his “Warp Speed” vaccine program … is about to throw a one-time critic of his pandemic response and the vaccines it spawned into the middle of yet another widespread pandemic … this time in the food system.
And not-for-nothing Avian Flu is now threatening become a pandemic in the health system that RFK Jr. promises to reshape in an as-yet determined role in Trump’s nascent administration. And if the irony isn’t already thick enough to cut with a knife, RFK Jr., who infamously claimed COVID was bioengineered to attack everyone who is not Chinese or Jewish … also suspects Avian Flu may have been bioengineered for profit. In an X post titled “Is a Bird Flu pandemic ‘inevitable’?”, RFK Jr. opined:
With so much money on the table, is it conceivable that someone might deliberately release a bioengineered bird flu? When this kind of gain-of-function research is going on, accidental or deliberate leaks are inevitable. Maybe that’s why former CDC Director Robert Redfield said that a bird flu pandemic is “not a matter of if, but when.” Does he know something we do not?
In fact, there is a distinct possibility that Redfield indeed knows something … it’s called epidemiology:
“Once the virus gains the ability to attach to the human receptor and then go human to human, that’s when you’re going to have the pandemic.”
It’s a looming possibility explained by Scientific American at the end of October in an article titled: “Bird Flu Is One Step Closer to Mixing with Seasonal Flu Virus and Becoming a Pandemic.” The tagline just below the headline ominously read: “Humans and pigs could both serve as mixing vessels for a bird flu–seasonal flu hybrid, posing a risk of wider spread.” I say “ominously” because the first Avian Flu-infected pig was just found in a backyard farm in Oregon.
And just in case RFK Jr. thinks the jump to pigs is another nefarious turn in a twisted plot, he’s either lost the plot or simply hasn’t been following the story. The CliffsNotes version? Avian Flu is damn good at jumping to mammals. It’s quickly expanded beyond industrialized agriculture’s massive, disease-prone flocks to infect wild, migratory birds that have carried the highly-adaptable virus around the world. Along the way, Avian Flu has infected and/or killed seals, dolphins, ferrets, mink, tigers and, as we now know, it has leapt into the “mixing vessel” also known as pigs.
Humans, too, can serve as “mixing vessels,” which is why the CDC is tracking Avian Flu in dairy workers. The “mixing vessel” is where differing flu viruses can engage in “reassortment.” As Scientific American explained:
A flu virus’s genetic material is made up of eight RNA segments. When multiple viruses infect the same cell and replicate, they can swap these segments, producing one of 256 possible combinations. This reassortment can create a virus that contains features of both parent viruses, which could make it more transmissible and virulent. The process is thought to have produced the 2009 H1N1 swine flu from a mix of U.S. and European strains of pig flu virus, launching a (thankfully mild) pandemic.
Could such reassortment occur if a person were infected with both the H5N1 bird flu virus and seasonal influenza at the same time, leading to an H5N1 version that would be more transmissible in people? That’s certainly possible, experts say. But reassortment alone cannot create a virus capable of launching a human pandemic, says Richard Webby, an infectious disease researcher at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis, Tenn. The virus would also need to accrue certain specific mutations.
“To get from where we are now to a pandemic virus, reassortment alone—in my mind, at least—is not going to get us there,” says Webby, who directs the World Health Organization Collaborating Center for Studies on the Ecology of Influenza in Animals and Birds. “It’s going to take reassortment, followed by some critical mutations in [one specific] gene.” So far none of the key mutations necessary for the virus to spread efficiently among humans has been detected in any of the genetically sequenced human cases.
If H5N1 does develop those mutations, reassortment could help move the virus from an infected human’s eye (the site of most known farm worker infections) to their respiratory tract, Webby says. If it occurred at all, such mixing would most likely happen in a human host, he says. Although cows can get infected with human flu viruses, it’s less likely that those viruses would replicate in the cows’ udders, which is where H5N1 seems to replicate best.
Historically, pigs have been viewed as the ideal mixing vessels for pandemic pathogens because they are susceptible to both human and avian influenzas. Spillovers of human seasonal viruses into pigs happen fairly regularly, says Amy Baker, a research veterinary medical officer at the USDA. Baker and her colleagues have shown that the 2.3.4.4b strain of H5N1 that is currently circulating in wild birds and dairy cows can replicate in pigs.
And now it’s shown up in pigs. But even without reassortment in pigs or humans, Scientific American notes, flu viruses are pretty damn good at the whole evolution thing:
Influenza viruses … constantly mutate in a process known as genetic drift, which is why you need a new flu shot every year. If there are enough mutations of the right kind, the virus undergoes a quantum leap known as genetic shift, which can make it capable of unleashing a pandemic.
And that’s the science Robert Redfield probably had in mind when he warned about the possibility of a future pandemic. But those epidemiological explanations don’t fit into RFK Jr.’s titillating tale of bioengineered mayhem. The same goes for his criticism of Trump’s handling of COVID as recently as last May. Drawn by the allure of power over the food and health systems, RFK Jr. seems to have either forgiven or simply forgotten his piercing opposition to Trump. RFK Jr.’s critics, on the other hand, have neither forgiven nor forgotten his disproven claim that vaccines cause autism.
That has public health officials and the healthcare profession pondering the impact the former brain worm-host could have if he takes the reins of the Department of Health and Human Services, or in an as-yet-to-be-determined ‘czar’ position that empowers him to do God-knows-what. He’s responded with reassurances that he’s “not antivax” and that has no plans to “take your vaccines away.” And although he claims he’s not antivax, he sometimes follows it up with the claim “no vaccine is safe and effective.”
Apparently, he’s never heard of polio. No doubt, he’s probably never seen it, either. But the quite obvious reason for polio’s scarcity somehow eludes him. However, he did get to see the impact of not vaccinating against measles in Samoa. The island nation experienced a deadly outbreak after he was invited ostensibly to celebrate Samoan independence. He took the opportunity to spread his word and, accord to reporting by The New Republic, Mother Jones and The Telegraph, his antivax advocacy helped spread of the disease among Samoa’s tiny population. Per The New Republic:
In June 2019, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. visited Samoa with his anti-vaccine organization, Children’s Health Defense, meeting with local anti-vaxxers and government officials at a time when the country’s measles vaccine was under attack. Prominent anti-vax voices, including CHD, blamed the vaccine for two infant deaths the prior year, even after the true reason was discovered. Amid the swirling misinformation, vaccine rates plummeted from 60–70 percent to 31 percent.
That, in turn, contributed to an ensuing measles outbreak and the deaths of 83 Samoans, including many children. In fact, it was mostly children. By the way, 83 deaths from an outbreak takes on much greater significance when it occurs in a population of approximately 220,000 people.
As Mother Jones noted, “the Samoan government implemented an emergency compulsory anti-measles vaccination program to contain the spread.” Unbowed by the deaths or the efficacy of vaccinations in curtailing the outbreak, RFK Jr. doubled-downed by praising a Samoan “vaccination foe” as a “hero” in “a little-noticed blog post” he penned in “early 2021.”
He’s now poised to bring that defiant attitude about vaccines to a government that is currently “loading up on Bird Flu vaccine” in preparation for what may or may emerge from the alarming jump H5N1 seems to be making from cows to humans. As WIRED recently reported at the start of October:
[T]he federal government … announced $72 million in funding to three vaccine manufacturers to expand the production of bird flu vaccines for humans, in the event that they are needed…”
And that money is flowing to some of the culprits on RFK Jr’s list of usual suspects…
The US government has a stockpile of approved H5N1 vaccines, but today’s awards, which will go to CSL Seqirus, GSK, and Sanofi, will double that number.
But the symmetry doesn’t end there…
Moderna, Pfizer, and GSK are also working on mRNA vaccines for bird flu, but those need to go through human testing and be approved by the US Food and Drug Administration before they could be used.
That’s the same FDA an ebullient RFK Jr. told NBC News he plans on culling like an infected turkey … and those are the same companies he criticized for rolling out unsafe vaccines during the COVID pandemic. More to the point, those are the same suspects he identified in his ponderous X post about Avian Flu:
24 different pharmaceutical companies are racing to develop a bird flu vaccine—for cows! How many more are working on a bird flu vaccine for humans?
Moderna’s stock price has gone up 40% since bird flu moved into cows. The company is worth over $20 billion dollars more than it was 3 months ago. The market knows that our government plans to use mRNA vaccines for emerging infections, regardless of whether the public wants them.
They are already testing mRNA bird flu vaccines in cows.
None of this is to say that Big Pharma is a shining example of altruism, or that their COVID vaccines didn’t over-promise or, arguably, under-deliver. It’s also undeniable that the pandemic generated a ton of revenue for vaccine makers. What’s not in question is the collision course being set by Avian Flu’s spread and Trump’s incoming administration.
The unavoidable fact is that Avian Flu is popping up in dairy workers in Michigan and Colorado, and in poultry farm workers in California and Washington. If it doesn’t simply “disappear" between now and Inauguration Day, Trump could face another pandemic. This time he won’t need to engage “Warp Speed” to get to a vaccine … he’ll just have to say the word to launch a vaccination program. As Kaiser Health News reported last July:
Although the vaccine targets a different bird flu strain than the H5N1 virus now circulating in cows, studies show it triggers an immune response against both varieties. It’s considered safe because it uses the same egg-based vaccine technology deployed every year in seasonal flu vaccines.
For these reasons, the United States, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and about a dozen other countries are stockpiling millions of doses. Finland expects to offer them to people who work on fur farms this month as a precaution because its mink and fox farms were hit by the bird flu last year.
There’s that symmetry again, this time in the form of an “egg-based vaccine.” And just to add a little sauce to the goose (before it has to be culled), Canada just experienced its first human case of Avian Flu. The CBC reported that the hospitalized teenager likely “contracted the illness from exposure to an animal or the environment, although there's a ‘very real possibility’ that the source will never be found.”
Welcome back to the world of “contact tracing”!
Well, we aren’t there … yet.
Should Avian Flu continue to adapt and mutate or undergo “reassortment,” RFK Jr. might find himself in the middle of a Trump Administration grappling with a pandemic for the second time. This possibility would likely come as news to millions of American voters who were at least partially motivated to vote for Trump—and by extension, RFK Jr.—by the price of eggs. And if it does start spreading between humans, the eggs Vance held in that photo op could end up on his boss’s face. It’ll certainly cost more than four bucks.