Trump Administration Just *Determined* To Be Unprepared For Bird Flu Pandemic
They cancelled a $700 million contract with Moderna to produce a vaccine.
Please know that I am as sick of writing about Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s Health and Human Services shenanigans as you may be of reading about them. Alas, his actions are not without consequence and there is pretty much no one to check him, so we all have to pay attention to his bullshit, for the sake of our own health. How unfortunate for us!
On Thursday, Kennedy’s HHS announced it would be rescinding nearly $600 million in funding (on top of $175 million last year) for an MRNA vaccine for the bird flu, which could very well cause another pandemic in the not-so-far-off future. Why? Because very stupid people, like Kennedy, think that there is something sinister or unsafe about MRNA vaccines. Do they have evidence to prove this? They do not. It’s mostly just vibes, conspiracy theories, and misinformation, which are apparently the cornerstones of the Make America Healthy Again agenda. There are only three. It’s in the shape of a pyramid, since the next thing you know, he’ll be recommending people treat their water with magic pyramids instead of fluoride.
“After a rigorous review, we concluded that continued investment in Moderna’s H5N1 mRNA vaccine was not scientifically or ethically justifiable,” HHS spokesman Andrew Nixon said, failing to explain what that involved, or why developing a vaccine for a virus with a 50 percent fatality rate in humans before there’s another pandemic is something they don’t want.
MRNA vaccines are ideal for a pandemic situation, because they are easy to produce quickly and adjust to protect people from new versions of a virus, which is important, because flu viruses change and evolve quickly. That is why, even though right now the H5N1 bird flu doesn’t easily spread to humans, it very well could in the future — and why our stockpile of a few million doses of an older vaccine might not be all that effective.
“When the next flu pandemic occurs, there is not going to be enough vaccine for everyone who wants it unless we invest to broaden the types of flu vaccines being made and the number of companies that make them,” said Jennifer Nuzzo, director of the Pandemic Center at the Brown University School of Public Health, to The New York Times. This seems obvious. Sadly, we cannot do that, because we have to coddle morons and what they personally believe about MRNA vaccines.
Thankfully, Moderna says it is going to try to look for other ways to continue developing the vaccine.
Tempting fate even further, Kennedy and Dr. Oz are campaigning to save the ostriches on a Canadian farm that recently experienced an outbreak of bird flu. Canada, a country that famously cares whether people live or die, wants to euthanize all of the ostriches on the farm so they don’t spread the virus further. It’s sad, of course, but it could be a whole lot sadder if they cause a contagion.
Kennedy, Oz, and the owners of the ostrich farm say they think the ostriches should be studied, on the grounds that they may now have “natural immunity” to the virus, which is generally not how flu viruses work. However, actual scientists say there is little value to studying them, as similar tests have already been done and they would not learn anything new from them.
Why are they doing this? I suspect it’s because they are preparing to downplay a future avian flu pandemic so that they can do things the way internet kooks would like to see them done — no vaccines, no masks, no lockdowns and pretending it’s no worse than a cold, despite the dead bodies piling up. I could be wrong, but I think they want to be able to use the ostriches as proof that the virus is not that deadly.
It’s not just bird flu they’re being reckless with. The CDC and FDA will no longer recommend updated yearly COVID vaccines for healthy people under the age of 65. That’s not just a casual suggestion with no consequences — it means that healthy people under the age of 65 will have to scramble to find doctors to give them updated vaccines and, probably, pay a lot of money because private insurers may no longer cover them.
It feels important to mention that COVID-19 is still killing about 300 people a month (900 from Florida so far this year). While this is obviously a lot lower than the numbers at the height of the pandemic, it’s still not good. Especially since there’s a new variant going around.
The goal, it seems, is to normalize doing absolutely nothing medically and letting the chips fall where they may. This is what many on the Right desperately want to see happen in a pandemic for some reason. It’s a sentiment that has been compounded by a determination to repeatedly proclaim that they were right all along — that “everyone” now agrees that masking did nothing, that vaccines did nothing (and were dangerous), that the lockdowns and social distancing were a bad idea, and that it was never any worse than the flu or a bad cold.
I hate to say it, but even if we do get a bird flu vaccine, and even if we had a normal, sane person in charge of Health and Human Services … because of these people, we’d still be fucked.
PREVIOUSLY ON WONKETTE!
Another good reason to get out of NYC. Too many people to try to avoid when the inevitable happens. Covid was a horror movie here, don't want to live through a reboot of that film.
In early 2020 my next door neighbor, a healthy construction contractor with two big trucks, a small crew and some newish equipment, let me know masks, vaccines and all that stuff don't work and he would "take his chances."
Of course he got sick and ended up in an ICU.
He survived and came home where his extended family stepped in to keep him in his home and fed. His construction equipment and trucks had to be sold. His crew had moved on. His company was gone. I sold him a car for a rock bottom price so he could commute to and from medical appointments. He ended up on Medicaid. His credit was shot and capitalism declared him an un-person.
Fast forward to today and he has a smaller used truck and does odd jobs and handyman stuff. I have hired him once in awhile.
He voted for Donnie. He still thinks Medicaid is bad.
This time I will tell him that he should look into used Tesla products being unloaded by tree hugging liberals for rock bottom prices.
I am done with him.