Bird Flu Spreads as Musk’s DOGE Cuts Public Health Funding

According to the latest data from the USDA, since 2022, bird flu outbreaks have led to the loss of more than 162 million birds in all 50 states and Puerto Rico, including 20 million birds in the last 30 days.

Public health officials continue to maintain that the current risk to humans remains low. While there have been no reported cases of human-to-human transmission, there have been 70 confirmed cases nationally, the majority resulting from farmworkers exposed to the virus from dairy cattle. In January, Louisiana reported the first bird flu death in the U.S., which was linked to the D1.1 genotype.

These developments are taking place amid the background of the Biden administration’s bungled response and the Trump administration’s mass layoffs and funding cuts targeting the agencies handling the federal response to infectious diseases.

On her first day in office on February 14 as Secretary of Agriculture, Brooke Rollins claimed to have held “several” briefings on bird flu. “Avian flu is a massive issue right now,” Rollins said on Fox and Friends that Saturday. She added that USDA will be “rolling out more tools in the toolkit” for the federal bird flu response this week.

Yet, in cooperation with billionaire Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), Rollins’s USDA moved immediately to cut USDA contracts, including 25% of the personnel at the National Animal Health Laboratory Network, which coordinates 58 laboratories across the nation responding to the spread of the bird flu and other animal disease outbreaks like African swine fever or foot-and-mouth disease.

(On February 18, the USDA said that it had “accidentally” fired “several” agency employees working on the federal government’s response to the bird flu, and was trying to reverse the firings.)

Massive layoffs also followed Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s approval as Secretary of the Department of Health and Human services. An estimated 700 staff members at the Food and Drug Administration, 1,200 employees at the National Institutes of Health and about 700 employees at the CDC, are reported to have been eliminated, including positions designed to protect lab safety and recruit top talent.

Barn Raiser caught up with Michael Osterholm, an epidemiologist and director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy (CIDRAP) at the University of Minnesota, to learn about the latest developments and the need for public health officials to stand up for scientific integrity.

How has the situation with H5N1 virus evolved since we last talked in May 2024?

A lot is happening. First of all, several different situations are unfolding at the same time.

The situation with the virus in dairy cattle, was until recently a very specific genotype, the B3.13. That particular genotype was a challenge in that it continued to spread in dairy cattle, particularly in California. But we hadn’t seen it outside of dairy cattle; we were not picking it up in wild birds or in other mammals. And at that point, the thought was, “Well, it’ll burn itself out in the dairy cattle.” That hasn’t happened yet.

We continue to see transmission. Now almost 75% of the herds in California have been infected. Is this a continued risk to humans in terms of transmission to humans who work with these dairy cattle? Yes.

Is it possible that this could evolve into a pandemic strain of the virus, meaning through the process of reassortment or mutation? Yes. But at this point, it hasn’t presented itself as such.

In the past two weeks, which you noted, a new spillover containing a second variant, the D1.1 genotype, has been detected in dairy cattle in Nevada. This is the genotype that’s been prominent in wild birds, migratory waterfowl specifically, that has caused basically almost all of the outbreaks in poultry, and has now introduced itself into cattle.

We don’t know what’s going to happen with it at this point. But each time one of these spillovers occur from one animal species to another, and that spillover starts to cause infections in the second animal species, it increases the potential likelihood of seeing a reassorted virus that could be really dangerous.

The thing that’s most amazing, though, is what’s happening right now with waterfowl.

There are an estimated 40 million ducks and geese in North America. And we are seeing widespread infection there. This is in birds across all of the continent, from the West Coast to the East Coast, from the northern states to the southern states. The idea of the migratory bird associated with seasonal migration patterns has changed when it comes to waterfowl. We now have so many warm bodies of water that humans have made, from heating plants and electric generation plants to sewage lagoons for large metropolitan areas or even small communities.

The same is true for dairy operations, which have large lagoons for cattle where the water stays open throughout the winter. Here I am in Minnesota, where we’re expecting to see 10-to-15 degrees below zero weather this week, and we have all kinds of ducks and geese still here. That’s a big challenge right now.

It’s been remarkable, over 100 commercial poultry units have gone down in the last six weeks. And this is largely coming from viruses from migratory waterfowl that are getting into barns and then causing these huge outbreaks. Every time you have the virus replicate in any animal, there are more chances for mutations, there are more chances for reassortment.

Right now, we don’t know where we’re at. When California declares itself in a state of emergency over this issue, that’s real. But the emergency was about trying to move resources into the agriculture area; it was more like a FEMA-signed document. That’s different than human risk.

But it’s kind of like walking across the Great Plains until you get to the Grand Canyon, and that last step you take, oh my, is that a doozy. It’s flat till you get there, and then, well, it’s a few miles straight down. That’s what would happen potentially with another pandemic. We could see low risk, low risk, low risk, then suddenly high risk and very high risk.

We just don’t know where we’re at on that journey.

As this crisis has developed, there’s been a considerable disconnect between farmers and government agencies in rolling out things like testing and monitoring. Are there any successful examples or ways that disconnect has been bridged?

I think we have a huge challenge ahead of us on the poultry side. And in particularly, as you’ve seen, egg prices haven’t been coming down. Why? Because we’ve been euthanizing so many birds.

Why are we euthanizing them? Well, once the virus gets into a poultry production facility, it will sweep through like wildfire. I’ve heard people ask, why are we killing all these birds? Farmers are basically euthanizing—and culling is the term that is applied—all of these production animals, because they’re going to die anyway.

Once this virus is in a barn it’s virtually 100% fatal, and it’s fast. If you’ve ever watched birds die from influenza, it’s a hard thing to watch. It’s not an easy illness for them.

So the culling is very humane. That’s different from what we see with wild birds where we don’t have the opportunity to cull them. We don’t know who’s going to be infected.

[Update: After our interview on Feb. 14, the USDA announced plans for a “new strategy” to fight bird flu, and says it plans to make more details available over the coming week. Kevin Hassett, director of the National Economic Council, told CBS’s Face the Nation that this shift could include moving away from the standard practice of mass culling to seek “better ways, with biosecurity and medication and so on,” and “better, smarter perimeters” around poultry farms. Dr. Carol Cardona, a bird flu expert at the University of Minnesota, told The Associated Press that this “requires an incredible amount of work on the ground.” Among the many logistical barriers are the fact that current vaccines are all injectables, and “precision depopulation,” she said, requires “effective barriers to transmission between barns, such as ensuring that farm workers don’t carry the virus on their boots or clothes.”]

Take what’s happening here in Minnesota right now. We’ll see 100 dead Canadian geese on the ice on the edge of open, and then there’ll still be birds floating on the water itself.

At this point, the challenge is around airborne transmission of the bird flu virus.

Many people don’t believe that considering the virus as airborne is important. But geese will be on an old cornfield that was harvested in the fall, eating the residual corn, defecating, and then the wind blows across the field and picks up that dust and the dried bird feces with it. I think these chickens and turkeys are so sensitive to this virus that it doesn’t take much to cause an infection to start in a poultry barn.

And then once that happens, it spreads like wildfire. I think many of these units are getting infected from airborne transmission into barns that are not airtight. Until the industry comes to grips with that and develops a building construction program where they have airtight buildings with HEPA filter fans, we’re going to continue to see this happen.

What about people swimming in lakes and ponds that have waterfowl that are infected and defecating in the water?

I don’t know of any examples where that’s happened. Most bodies of water right now in the United States are cold enough that most people aren’t swimming. However, that’s theoretically possible. We surely know that ingestion is an issue with a number of mammals, like cats and so forth.

What should farmers know about how to keep their cattle safe?

Once a spillover occurs, meaning it goes from the birds to the cattle, then the transmission is within the cattle. And that is where the milking equipment becomes important. Now, it may be that milking itself is a significant risk factor because we haven’t yet seen outbreaks that I’m aware of where meat production cattle are infected and spread that way. So it may be that somehow the milking process enhances transmission within barns where every cow is hooked up twice a day to the equipment that may be contaminated.

It’s possible we could see beef cattle also becoming infected eventually, but so far that’s not happened. There’s not a lot that farmers can do at this point, other than to limit bird contact with their feed sources. We could potentially develop vaccines that will hopefully protect cattle, whether they’re dairy or meat production cattle.

If you’ve ever been to a farm, a dairy farm or a beef farm, you see the mixing. Where the feed troughs are there are going to be wild birds. And that kind of contact surely could enhance transmission.

With the news of this new bird flu variant, what should people know about the potential risks to human health?

Well, there’s not a new variant. This D1.1 genotype is one that was in birds and has been in birds, but now it’s gone over into the cattle and a few humans. But that’s still a significant issue, so your point is a good one: we want to minimize transmission.

Anytime you can avoid influenza, that’s great.

Is it possible that the current surge of the flu in the United States might interact with the bird flu that circulating in animals?

As we’re recording this, the country right now is in a heck of a mess with seasonal flu, both H1N1 and H3N2. We’re seeing significant levels of hospitalizations, serious illness and another condition called acute necrotizing encephalitis, which is occurring particularly in kids who get influenza.

We’re seeing the number of deaths go up very quickly. We’re seeing unprecedented pressure on emergency rooms around the country right now.

Now you put those flu viruses together with H5N1 circulating in animal species, and you don’t know what you’re going to get out of it. Maybe nothing. Maybe a new re-assorted virus that could have us all going, “Oh no, here it comes.” That’s the challenge we have right now. I tell people: flu work is not rocket science—it’s more complicated.

March 11 will mark the five-year anniversary of the World Health Organization declaring Covid-19 a pandemic. A lot of public distrust of scientists and public health institutions remains. What resources or media sources should people be paying attention to, whether that’s related to the seasonal flu or the bird flu? What can people do to better inform themselves on public health issues?

I can tell you right now that I’m a very biased individual. CIDRAP news [Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota] is a really good source of information. We try to be very scientifically sound. We don’t get in front of our headlights. At the same time, we’re not afraid to look to tomorrow and ask, “What might this look like?”

In general, there are reporters out there who do a great job.

One of the challenges we have right now is trying to do a review of what happened with our response to the Covid pandemic. After 9/11, the 9/11 Commission did an exhaustive review of what should have been the lessons learned.

It didn’t point fingers, it didn’t blame, it just took an analytical look and said, “Boy, we should learn this, this, this, and this.”

We’ve not done that with Covid. We’ve not done that with pandemic preparedness and pandemic response in general. And I’m afraid we’re going to be relegated to redoing all these things we failed to learn again in the next pandemic. I have a book coming out in September [The Big One: Why Future Pandemics Will Be Worse—And How We Must Prepare] where I try to do that as a layperson, meaning not part of the official government.

Right now we’re caught up on whether there was a lab leak in Wuhan or was it a spillover from bats? Get over it.

We will never know whether it was a lab leak or a spillover. It could have been either one. My point is that we have to prepare for both.

What are we doing to prepare for a potential spillover event in the future, such as what we’re seeing potentially with H5N1? What are we doing in laboratories that are working with these viruses to make sure they don’t leak out or become more dangerous? What didn’t we do well? How can we do it better next time? And what did we do well?

You’ve spent 50 years of your career in the public health arena. You’ve served under every presidential administration since Ronald Reagan, including the first Trump administration. What are your thoughts on our state of our preparedness for responding to major public health threats given the current changes in the second Trump administration?

It’s no secret that we’re watching the public health system in the United States be very rapidly eliminated.

Mr. Kennedy was sworn in as the secretary of HHS, an avowed anti-vaccine individual, who has espoused a lot of scientific untruths, and who has, in a sense, come to the conclusion that he and only he can determine when things are safe.

This is a real challenge. It’s beyond painful. But that’s not good enough. It’s not enough for us to sit by on the sidelines and complain. We’ve got to figure out how are we going to respond to this.

How are we going to be out there providing the right messages on, on vaccines? How do we deal with the issues of scientific disinformation and misinformation? I have to say that I wouldn’t have expected after 50 years of being in the business and seeing all the progress we made, that we could see it so quickly disintegrate in front of our eyes.

I worry very much that CDC will be highly limited in what they can do. The workforce will be greatly reduced. I just shared with you the situation on influenza in the United States right now Where are the health alerts from CDC on flu? We should be notifying parents around this country: If your child has this symptom, this symptom and this symptom, get them into the hospital or the emergency room right now. They are likely experiencing what could be a fatal case of influenza and acute necrotizing encephalitis. We’re not seeing that.

CIDRAP is working on several major projects that we hope will come to fruition that will help of us who are in the front lines of public health to respond and to address these issues.They’re not going to go away.

What are some of the projects you’re working on in response?

One of the things we’re trying to do right now is a major information center where we deal with mis- and disinformation on a daily basis.

We’re working on bringing together all links out there for surveillance data. Right now, unless you knew where to go, you’d have to search and search and search. We want this to be a one-stop resource where if it’s not on that particular page, you probably don’t need to know about it.

It sounds like in some sense you’re trying to replicate what the CDC used to be responsible for.

We are, and we’re trying to go one step beyond that. So, for example, one of the things we’re working on right now is with the group FactCheck.org from the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania. We’re working with them to figure out how can we do an even better job, in a timely way, in a comprehensive way, of dealing with misinformation and disinformation so that policymakers, public health officials, medical care providers have factual and correct information in their hands when somebody comes to them with one of these mis- or disinformed statements.

What is the role of states in responding to national public health events? The state health departments of Minnesota and New York have both put out advisories to doctors to test flu patients with certain symptoms for H5N1.

The states are trying to do what they can within their state. It helps if you can have a coordinated national approach, too.

States are where the work of public health gets done on a day-to-day basis. The states are singularly responsible for public health, and I think some readers may not be aware of it.

Anything that’s not described in the U.S. Constitution is by itself what’s called a states’ rights issue, meaning that they are responsible for it. And there’s nothing in the Constitution about public health. So the states are responsible for disease surveillance, for follow-up, for outbreak investigation.

And CDC, for example, can only go into a state upon an invitation from that state to come and participate. At this point, states are very important. And we’re very concerned about that because of the fact that funding for state health departments and public health has eroded over the years.

In most states today, more than 90% of the funding they get comes from the federal government for public health activities, even though it’s a states’ rights issue. We’re quite convinced a lot of that 90% is going to evaporate over the next few months. So the states are going to be in even deeper trouble.

Does the political makeup of a state reflect how that state has responded to the threat of bird flu?

It does. And I mean this as a purely analytical statement. It has no politics to associate with it.

If you look at the red states, we see much less activity around public health and support for public health than in blue states. We’re seeing health departments in red states that are not promoting vaccines. They’re not putting out information that indicates they have a disease problem in their state that’s exacerbated because people are not getting vaccinated—information that can be helpful to the public. It’s a challenge.

We’re all trying to come together and say, we shouldn’t be red or blue states. We’re all one country. And however we can make that work, we’ve got to do that. We could have another pandemic today. For all I know, it started last night somewhere in the world.

As I’ve said many times, the pandemic clock is ticking. We just don’t know what time it is.

People who work with animals, or who have been in contact with sick or dead animals or their droppings, should watch for breathing problems and red eyes for 10 days after exposure. If they develop symptoms, they should tell their health care provider about their recent exposure.

Other ways to stay safe include:

• Do not touch sick or dead animals or their droppings, and do not bring sick wild animals into your home.
• Keep your pets away from sick or dead animals and their feces.
• Do not eat uncooked or undercooked food. Cook poultry, eggs and other animal products to the proper temperature, and prevent cross-contamination between raw and cooked food.
• If you work on a poultry or dairy farm, talk to a health care provider about getting your seasonal flu vaccination. It will not prevent infection with avian influenza viruses, but it can reduce the risk of coinfection with avian and more common flu viruses.
• Report dead or sick birds or animals to the U.S. Department of Agriculture toll-free at 1-866-536-7593.

(Adapted from the CDC’s guidance for prevention of avian flu in people)

Justin PerkinsMore by this author →

Justin Perkins is Barn Raiser Deputy Editor & Publisher and Board Clerk of Barn Raising Media Inc. He is currently finishing his Master of Divinity at the University of Chicago Divinity School. The son of a hog farmer, he grew up in Papillion, Neb., and got his start as a writer with his hometown newspaper the Papillion Times, The Daily Nebraskan, Rural America In These Times and In These Times. He has previous editorial experience at Prairie Schooner and Image.

Joel BleifussMore by this author →

Joel Bleifuss is Barn Raiser Editor & Publisher and Board President of Barn Raising Media Inc. He is a descendent of German and Scottish farmers who immigrated to Wisconsin and South Dakota in the 19th Century. Bleifuss was born and raised in Fulton, Mo., a town on the edge of the Ozarks. He graduated from the University of Missouri in 1978 and got his start in journalism in 1983 at his hometown daily, the Fulton Sun. Bleifuss joined the staff of In These Times magazine in October 1986, stepping down as Editor & Publisher in April 2022, to join his fellow barn raisers in getting Barn Raiser off the ground.