"Lower Your Expectations."

Well, here we go.

We could be witnessing our first major outbreak of bird flu at an egg farm in Colorado. Corporate news outlets are reporting three infections among poultry workers, but they're carefully omitting something important. According to local news, nearly 50 symptomatic workers were tested. Those tests are still pending. The CDC conveniently reported this late on Friday afternoon. As others have pointed out, that's called a news dump. It's on brand for public health now, doing everything they can to minimize.

Recently, an opinion piece in STAT News addresses the "growing sense of alarm among public health scientists that the H5N1 avian flu virus... is developing characteristics that allow it to infect mammals more efficiently." It criticizes the disastrous failures of public schools to respond to Covid but also dismisses protections like masks. I'm looking for any mention of clean air in this op-ed, and I don't see it. It's ironic that a column demanding a plan to prepare schools for bird flu can't even mention clean indoor air.

Alas, here we are.

An article in Nature from earlier this month confirmed that the H5N1 isolated from recent cattle outbreaks "bound to sialic acids expressed in human upper airways and inefficiently transmitted to exposed ferrets." In other words, the virus is actively learning how to spread in humans. For the last two years, we've watched this virus learn how to infect mammals with increasing efficiency and regularity. A preprint study found that H5N1 mutated to spread between seals in South America in 2023.

It was deadly.

The LA Times recently published a story about Mark McAfee, the president of the Raw Milk Institute. He knows a farmer who might've maybe sold bird flu milk to his customers, and he's trying to blame the FDA for ignoring his tip. Hey, we all know the CDC, FDA, and USDA aren't exactly doing their jobs over the last few years. But if you don't want to start pandemics, I don't know, maybe don't spend decades promoting raw milk?

We're getting a ridiculous number of red flags and warnings about the oncoming bird flu pandemic. It's coming at us exactly like the meteor in Adam McKay's "Don't Look Up," and politicians are responding exactly how the movie predicts. In fact, it's even worse than we imagined.

They're not talking about it at all.

Meanwhile...

A state rep in New Hampshire finally said what we've all been talking about, that Joe Biden might have Long Covid.

Why does it matter?

Because it changes the conversation. While the mainstream news has been framing the debate entirely around Biden's age and possible dementia, they've steered around Long Covid. If it's Long Covid, then the conversation isn't about Biden's age anymore. It's about his disastrous record on public health. As long as Democrats can keep the debate vaguely focused on his age, they can victim signal rather than grapple with their policy failures.

A major actuary group in Australia plans to roll out a new "post-Covid" baseline, incorporating Covid deaths from the last five years into their new estimates. It's drawing some criticism. The CDC, ONS, and other major health organizations have already done something similar, pushing up their estimated mortality predictions, but they weren't very forthcoming about it. Regardless of intent, one thing looks clear: Excess mortality data has been a major site of struggle between public health agencies who want to obscure Covid's true toll, and those of us who demand access to better tools and information.

Let's talk about food.

If there's one thing you wouldn't want to politicize, it's food production. Of course, that's exactly what politicians are doing. While the corporate news focuses almost entirely on Trump and Biden, senators and representatives have ground the 2024 U.S. Farm Bill to a halt. Supporters of the bill want climate-smart agriculture, and critics want to demolish it. These battles could delay the bill for another year, and that's not good for anyone. Failing to adapt to climate change increases the likelihood of crop failures in the future.

According to an article in Fortune, FEMA is now denying requests for disaster aid. They're also telling residents in some areas that their disasters weren't severe enough to warrant relief. A quote from the article: "Practice self-reliance. If you are waiting for the federal government to help, lower those expectations."

Oh, trust me, we already have.

We're barely halfway through the year, and the agency has, essentially, gone bankrupt. According to Scientific American, FEMA warned lawmakers that "the federal government likely will run out of money to cover disasters at the peak of hurricane season." Oh, great timing. They describe Congress as reluctant to give them more money.

From the article:

For five weeks, FEMA stopped approving new long-term rebuilding projects; cut off funding for projects that were underway; and spent money only on emergency disaster needs such as rescuing stranded people, opening shelters, and giving displaced households supplies and cash.

FEMA has a budget of $20 billion. Earlier this year, Biden asked Congress to give them an extra $9 billion.

They didn't.

This happens to be why some groups are so vocal in their criticism of Biden. He makes weak funding requests for things we actually need, like rebuilding our homes after disasters. And yet, he moves hell and earth to secure money for wars that further his own agenda. Meanwhile, a million people in the Houston area are still without power after Beryl's charge.

This is climate change. This is life at 1.5C.

It's not in the future.

It's now.

These stories continue to play a theme we're familiar with, but the music is getting louder and louder. We pay nearly a third of our income to a corrupt democracy that gives that money away to the rich via forgivable loans and military contracts, then they turn around and tell us to take care of ourselves, lecturing us on our sense of entitlement.

Well, I want my money back.

Don't you?