President Donald Trump may have campaigned to lower grocery prices, but even if egg prices are in a small national crisis, he is driving a bird that is driving the American egg shortage We spent some quiet time with the flu. Trump has not outlined plans to contain the virus, and he has not spoken publicly about the avian flu since the CDC announced that the virus had infected dairy workers last April. Last week, the CDC, which has stopped most of its communication with the public since Trump took office, posted data online suggesting that humans can spread the virus to cats. Agent Information was deleted quickly.
Avian flu is now spreading to herds of cattle around the country, leading to euthanasia. Tens of millions of poultrydozens of people have become ill and killed one in the US. The virus is not known to spread among humans, preventing the outbreak from exploding into the next pandemic. But silence raises questions: how well is Trump’s administration prepared if a widespread bird outbreak unfolds? The administration plans to nominate Gerald Parker as head of the White House’s pandemic response and response policy, created by Congress in 2022 and accused of organizing responses for various institutions to deal with infectious diseases. It’s there. (I contacted both Parker and the White House. Neither answered.)
If the president names him the post, the appointment may be the most controversial of any of Trump’s health-related picks. Parker is an expert on the interaction between human and animal health who served the federal government for about ten years. However, facing the threat of avian flu or other pandemics in this administration must be coordinated among groups of people who are not interested in using most tools that can limit the spread of infection.
David Weldon, the CDC-leading Trump election, has vehemently opposed vaccine safety and the administration’s candidate Jay Bhattacharya, who heads the National Institutes of Health, to oppose covid closures. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is an anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist who is likely to be set up as head of the Department of Health and Human Services in the coming days, and funds Anthony Fauci and Bill Gates attempts to make birds. It implies that it is offering. The past threats of influenza viruses that can infect humans, and the influenza pandemic, have inflated their own importance and are being humiliated by federal health authorities to fill the pockets of pharmaceutical companies that produce influenza vaccines. I did.
Many of Trump’s health appointees are united in their view that the United States has overreacted to Covid. They and many Americans were mean to measure masking, lockdowns, vaccination mandate, or didn’t have to deal with Covid. Facing another major outbreak, the Trump administration almost certainly starts from that stance.
Either way, Trump is likely to face a certain public health crisis of the term. Most presidents do that. Barack Obama, for example, dealt with multiple major public health crises, each in his own way. Zika never changed into a pandemic, but it still produced more than 300 American children born from lifelong birth defects. Ebola only killed two people in the US in 2014, but if the virus was allowed, its death rate could reach 90%, and spreading freely across the US was devastating. In 2009 and 2010, swine flu caused more than 12,000 deaths in the United States. Approximately 10% of the victims were under the age of 18. It can cause a White House headache, even if you don’t already have avian flu. Avian flu continues to draw out financial havoc for farmers, which is being fooled by consumers, especially in the form of higher prices for eggs.
Step-by-step, the US continues to approach the reality that avian full virus spreads among people. Last week, the USDA reported that cattle are currently contracting for a variant of the virus that caused the recent fatal incident in the United States. In other words, humans are more likely to catch tension than they are now. Many recent human cases have been in dairy farm workers. As seasonal influenza cases also increase, it is also possible that avian full viruses will acquire mutations to allow free spread among humans. For both viruses Infects the same cells at the same timethey can exchange genetic material and may give avian full virus new capacity for transmission.
Parker clearly understands this danger. Last year he spoke USA TODAY About the possibility that the virus may mutate and alter the outlook for the current outbreak. He also said, “Federal, state and private sector leaders need to plan the challenges we may face if H5N1 makes a leap of destiny and becomes a human pathogen.” I wrote it. How much the Trump administration can afford, Parker, or anyone running a pandemic preparation office, protecting the US from disaster is another matter.
Many public health experts have come to regret certain actions as they look back on the coronavirus pandemic. However, if avian flu gets worse, many of the same tools could be the best available option for limiting casualties. Parker has expressed support in the worst part of the pandemic for masking, social distancing and vaccination, saying in 2020 he doesn’t like lockdowns, but his social media posts at the time , suggesting he understood. To stop the spread of illness, community-level social distancing and isolation may be necessary. The Trump administration’s eagerness to use such tools at all could depend on Parker’s ability to persuade his colleagues to deploy them.
The White House Pandemic Response Office was established to play air traffic control for the CDC, the NIH and other agencies that play a role in the outbreak. But having a title like work at the White House and Pandemic Preparation Superintendent doesn’t guarantee that Parker can beat the crew of skeptics of the pandemic reaction, where he is tasked with adjusting. And his job becomes even more difficult after Trump snipes for office purposes. time In April, “It sounds good politically, but I think it’s a very expensive solution to something that doesn’t work.”
Trump appears to be thinking better about disbanding the entire office, but his director cannot succeed in fulfilling his purpose without the support of the president. The only thing that can persuade a group of pandemic skeptics is to worry about making difficult outbreaks of infectiousness even more difficult. Parker has a certain sense of the enormity of the work he undertakes. In 2023, he tweeted, “Pandemic preparation and global health security must be a priority for the President and Congress to make a difference.” In 2025, or the years that follow, he may see firsthand what happens when the country’s leaders are not bothered.