Why the biggest threat of bird flu is government disinformation

A new type of avian influenza is spreading rapidly.

It began in Asia in 2020, reached Canada in 2021 and the United States a year later, killing tens of millions of birds and tens of thousands of marine mammals.

Until now, avian influenza (which has a reported human mortality rate of 50%) has only been transmitted from animals to humans.

However, avian influenza DNA is found in 20% of all milk sold in the United States, so human-to-human transmission could occur if a mutation occurs.

Why the biggest threat of bird flu is government disinformation

Currently, avian influenza is not the only threat to global health.

Monkeypox has returned, ravaging the Democratic Republic of the Congo with a strain far more deadly than the one that hit in 2022.

Public health officials may be worried about these viruses, but Americans should be worried about our own health officials.

Because if health officials treat this outbreak the same way they treated the last one, the response to the new pandemic could be worse than the virus itself.

The problem starts with officials’ tendency to distort risk.

During the 2009 swine flu pandemic, for example, health officials predicted up to 120 million deaths. Governments stockpiled vaccines. But as quickly as the pandemic began, it ended again.

The vaccines had expired.

The death toll was due to mild seasonal flu.

When the new coronavirus emerged a decade later, things got even worse. The media bombarded America with images of devastation.

This dire distortion had the desired effect: In March 2020, the University of Southern California's Understanding Coronaviruses in America survey reported that the average American had a 25% risk of dying from COVID-19, comparable to the Ebola virus.

It doesn't matter that just a month earlier, NIAID Director Anthony Fauci and CDC Director Robert Redfield had written that the true mortality rate of COVID-19 was less than 1%.

But when then-President Donald Trump tried to correct the figure, describing it as "a fraction of 1%" in a March 2020 interview, he was accused of "spreading misinformation."

Months later, Americans still believed the COVID-19 mortality rate was 20%. Fauci's response: the public needed to be "more afraid."

Lockdowns and school closures soon followed, pitched as something every country had to do.

But not everyone agreed. In March 2020, nearly 1,000 experts, including future CDC Director Rochelle Walensky, warned about the uncertain benefits of lockdowns in an open letter to Mike Pence.

When a vaccine came on the market the following year, CDC Director Walensky said it would completely stop the virus from spreading and "end the pandemic," despite clear evidence to the contrary, things just got worse. Vaccine side effects were ignored. Masks were made mandatory, even though science knew they didn't work. The results have been shocking.

Lockdowns have likely caused millions of deaths and massive economic disruption. School closures have affected children's development. Vaccine mandates and misinformation have increased vaccine skepticism and undermined trust in public health.

The short-lived monkeypox pandemic in 2022 followed a similar pattern. Gay and bisexual men made up 96% of all cases, but health officials insisted that "anyone can get monkeypox" to avoid potential stigma. Ultimately, the CDC prioritized emotion over disease prevention, and the number of cases rose.

During the COVID-19 and monkeypox epidemics, politics were made first, then data was distorted to justify them.

A recent House of Representatives report said prominent scientists who questioned the approach were denounced and punished, while tech giants censored dissenting voices.

We are already seeing the media follow the same strategy with bird flu.

Fewer than 1% of infected cattle die from the disease. And according to scientific experts, the actual risk of death for people is almost certainly much lower than that grim 50% figure.

The CDC continues to act strangely, too. Earlier this month, they recommended N95 masks and goggles for dairy workers. But N95 masks are ineffective against seasonal influenza, whose viral structure is the same as bird flu.

Professor Michael Osterholm of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota points out that safety glasses are prone to fogging up, increasing the risk of injury to workers.

As for vaccines, the Ministry of Health recently assured journalists that stocks of bird flu vaccines are ready for immediate use.

However, the clinical trials carried out were for an older version of the vaccine, from the 2020 version. To bring science back into the system, we must first hold it accountable. Some progress has been made. NIH leaders face bipartisan criticism and disciplinary action over the origins of COVID-19.

Otherwise, those in charge of fighting the pandemic continue to receive praise, pensions and prestigious new jobs. The Biden Justice Department continues to block criminal investigations into COVID-19 mismanagement.

But change can only come so quickly if we are to combat avian flu, both the disease and the misinformation that accompanies it.

Earlier this month, the CDC found elevated levels of influenza A, a subtype of avian influenza, in US wastewater.

What goes unreported is that these levels are still lower than average.

Falsifying data just to get a story – sounds familiar?

Meanwhile, just last week, a second case of milk-borne avian influenza was reported in Michigan. It also reports that rapid progress is being made in developing an mRNA vaccine against avian influenza. Anticipating a potential windfall, shares of mRNA vaccine pioneer Moderna surged 50% in May alone. Again, does this sound familiar?