Just let the bird flu run its course, these crazy cats say

It may seem kinda nutty, professor, but RFK2 believes that just letting the flu ravage henhouses while we stand by and breathe it in may be the way to go.

Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins agrees.

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has said repeatedly that letting the disease work itself out in a poultry barn will somehow result in herd immunity. Ag Secretary Rollins suggested that a pilot program should be conducted to see if there were a farmer or two who would subject themselves and their animals to bird flu.

“There are some farmers that are out there that are willing to really try this on a pilot as we build the safe perimeter around them to see if there is a way forward with immunity,” Rollins said on Fox News.

“This is crazy.” That’s what Dr. Rocio Crespo, a poultry veterinarian at North Carolina State University, told Scientific American.

Crazy for all sorts of reasons that get dismissed. Science gets dismissed and defunded. What the hell? Let’s see what happens if we shut down medical research at Columbia or defund clinical cancer trials at Iowa City.

Just let it fester and mutate. It might just all work itself out.

We know how to quickly make vaccines but we are not, so as to not harm chicken exports. Rollins announced that wholesale egg prices dropped in half after shipping in liquid product from South Korea and Turkey. So the USDA is competing with US domestic liquid egg producers like Rembrandt Foods. And, retail prices have refused to retreat.

What a great manic experiment this all is, led by fools.

Fire the federal bird flu workers at the research centers in Ames, then try to rehire them. We have not been able to find out how many came back. Another 400,000 pullets get culled here in Buena Vista County not long after a turkey operation went down in Sac. This has been steady for three years running, but the people in charge think it might be just an ill spring breeze. Every goose honk could set the next mutation on the wing.

We are part of the experiment by proximity. Scout Park must be a cauldron from the goose poop. I avoid it now. It will be fascinating to see if you let it run rampant how many humans a super-flu can mow down.

Or how many more rural hospitals close for lack of Medicaid. So Trump and Kennedy and Musk get a tax cut.

People are showing up at the few town hall meetings and hollering at their congress sheeple at the sheer stupidity of it all. They booed Chuck Grassley in Hampton. That doesn’t mean that the headlines of dismay (“Musk briefed on China war plans”) will relent, because the Democrats do not appear capable of organizing a box lunch.

The veterinarians in Ames are perplexed by it all. My doctors are frightened.

War with China? Turning Canada into our enemy?

Musk’s goons taking control of our Social Security trust funds?

Denying people due process and deporting them to a prison in El Salvador before we even know their names?

Just let disease run rampant?

Rollins is throwing $100 million, at least, toward enhanced biosecurity. Vaccination could be deployed, she said, but not yet. Let’s just see what happens.

We know what happens in Buena Vista County. It’s been happening a full decade, since five million hens were culled in 2015 and hundreds of workers were laid off. It is not letting up. It will not blow over.

What we get from the government is a bunch of hoodoo voodoo wear a rooster replica on your head and pray mentality.

Tariffs will sell more soy to Asia. Firing veterans from the VA is necessary. You must sign up for Social Security at the office that does not exist in Storm Lake. Taiwan can win a war with China. Contemptuous as he is of the judiciary, Trump is immune. He can do as he will. He can ignore birthright citizenship. Just see what happens. It is going to be great. If you think that this is all deranged, you must be deranged.

Let the flu proceed. It all makes sense. If it doesn’t make sense, we can fix it after all the chickens hack their little brains out from the mutating virus. This bird flu outbreak has taken out 168 million head of poultry already. Let nature take its course and please wipe your shoes — that’s the government line.

We might find that there is no chicken in every pot when all the chickens die. RFK2 might be playing 3D chess at another level: Wipe out the confinements and you reorganize agriculture to its roots, a complete upside down shakeout. Crazy like a fox, or maybe just crazy.

Art Cullen is the editor of the Storm Lake Times Pilot in Northwest Iowa, where this column appeared. For more columns and editorials, please consider a subscription to the Times Pilot. Or, if you wish, you can make a tax-deductible gift to the Western Iowa Journalism Foundation to support independent community journalism in rural Iowa. Thanks.

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