“Thijs Kuiken, an avian influenza researcher at Erasmus Medical Center, says the “very sparse” information released by the U.S. government has international implications, too. State and federal animal health authorities have “abundant information … that [has] not been made public, but would be informative for health professionals and scientists” in the United States and abroad, he says, “to be able to better assess the outbreak and take measures, both for animal health and for human health.” He notes that even the new sequences released by USDA do not include locations of the samples or the date they were taken. The release appears to include data from only 39 cows.”
I guess that is what you get when you cut funding to the CDC.
How do you think that would cause this problem? Seems like they have the data and just chose not to make it public.
Because if the funding has not been cut, there is a good chance we would have been ready. This is not the first time Bird Flu made an appearance, it is just with the low funding level more important issues came up, like covid. Not to mention, a lot of good researchers went into private companies due to threats to them from the orange clown.
Oh so you mean the general capabilities and readiness of the CDC, I thought you were talking specifically about them releasing data.
Yeah, agreed. Public health should be a standing high priority, especially after COVID-19.
Our unprecedented, huge global population of humans, and vector animals like cows, creates a similarly huge likelihood of dangerous pathogenic mutations.
Add modern global travel to that and we’re facing a frankly scary risk of a bad global pandemic. COVID-19 was more like a moderate global pandemic, really not bad compared to what we could see.
My milk, my choice!
