Avian flu is no longer just about the birds

We don’t give a damn about avian flu in Florida. We abide by MAGA principles of public health.

A chorus of epidemiologists who’ve studied mutations in the H5N1 virus are warning that the latest variant of bird flu threatens more than birds. The disease has now afflicted and often killed an alarming array of mammals.

Florida’s human mammals seem unbothered. Perhaps they believe their mean-talking governor when he disses medical science as a corrupt subsidiary of the “biomedical security state” and “basically an arm of Big Pharma.”

Ron DeSantis won’t be worrying Floridians about some piddling bird disease.

Nor will state Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo, Florida’s most infamous quack. He’s not concerned about the deadly consequences if H5N1 influenza leaps from birds to cows to humans. Ladapo has also spent the last two years disparaging the medical establishment, rejecting basic public health protocols and characterizing the COVID vaccine as “the antichrist of all products” and a threat to humanity’s “connection to God.”

Neither the governor nor his surgeon general would be fazed by last week’s warning from the World Health Organization that the pathogen has the potential to wreak an “extraordinarily high” mortality rate in humans. Acknowledging the danger would be off-brand for DeSantis and Ladapo, who have fashioned public personas around their fierce disdain for vaccines, medical masks, lockdowns and expert advice from the WHO or the CDC.

If H5N1 or some other infectious disease evolves into a full-blown epidemic, Florida’s response will be muddled by MAGA ideology and mendacious rhetoric.

In a way, we’re already suffering the effects of H5N1. At least financially. Data updated Wednesday by the Centers for Disease Control indicated that the virus has afflicted 90,723,876 “wild aquatic birds, commercial poultry and backyard or hobbyist flocks” in 48 states. (Turkeys seem to be particularly vulnerable.) Which means we pay for the resulting shortages at the supermarket. (The Consumer Price Index indicates that the price of eggs rose 4.6% from February to March.)

But the avian flu outbreak has become much more worrisome than the price of eggs. Reports from South America warn that a supposed bird disease has decimated sea mammals along the coasts of Chile, Argentina, Peru and Brazil. Biologists estimate that the H5N1 influenza has killed 24,000 South American sea lions in less than a year.

The New York Times reported last week that the disease similarly devastated the region’s elephant seal population. The Society of Marine Mammalogy estimated that H5N1 killed 95% of the elephant seal pups (about 17,400) in a famous colony on Argentina’s Valdés Peninsula. “Pups of all ages, from newborns to the fully weaned, lay dead or dying at the high-tide line. Sick pups lay listless, foam oozing from their mouths and noses.”

Photos show rotting elephant seal carcasses littering the peninsula like war casualties. (I recommend that you refrain from Googling the depressing photos.) Any notion that the H5N1 virus affects only birds also died on that beach.

Too many other bird-to-mammal outbreaks have occurred to shrug off the virus. On March 25, the U.S. Department of Agriculture reported that “highly pathogenic avian influenza” had been detected in dairy cows in Texas and Kansas. Just one month later, the virus had spread to milk cows on 33 farms in eight states. Last week, inactive remnants of the virus were discovered in the milk of infected cows. (Apparently, if the milk is pasteurized, the danger to humans is negligible.)

The U.S. Department of Agriculture responded to the outbreak Wednesday with a directive barring the interstate transport of untested dairy cows. Two weeks earlier, the Florida Department of Agriculture had ordered that all cattle shipped into Florida must be tested for the pathogen.

Meanwhile, the H5N1 infections have been discovered in minks, foxes, dogs, cats, skunks, bears, porpoises and even squirrels.

People, so far, have been either lucky or immune. Only two farm workers from Texas and Colorado have been afflicted. Both recovered after suffering only mild symptoms.

But public health researchers worry that MAGA rhetoric demanding the mass deportation of undocumented immigrants might chase infectious farm workers into the shadows. At least 37% of Florida’s farm workers are undocumented. The livestock wranglers most likely to encounter diseased animals hail from the demographic least likely to report illnesses.

Researchers are sure that if bird flu evolves into people flu, Big Pharma, as DeSantis puts it, can quickly create an effective vaccine. Except, Florida’s governor and surgeon general and an army of MAGA fabulists have convinced their paranoid constituents that vaccines will cause their testicles to shrivel and their DNA to turn hinky.

A survey released in December by the Kaiser Family Foundation indicated that a quarter of Republicans had rejected the COVID vaccine. The 95,000 Floridians killed by COVID seem to have slipped from MAGA’s collective memory.

Up until last month, unsettling reports of H5N1 outbreaks were accompanied by assurances from epidemiologists that the bird pathogen probably wouldn’t spread to humans.

So many dead elephant seals later, they’re not so sure.