<
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/story/inside-the-bungled-bird-flu-response>
"The US Department of Agriculture’s headquarters are situated on a tony stretch
of DC real estate, a world away from the nation’s farms. So when something goes
seriously wrong on America’s plains and pastures, something that could threaten
animal safety or food production, USDA officials rely on rural veterinarians to
sound the alarm.
Those vets report findings to state veterinarians, whose doors and inboxes are
always open. They even post their cell phone numbers online. The state
veterinarians, in turn, utilize a network of diagnostic laboratories approved
by the USDA, chief among them the National Veterinary Services Laboratories
(NVSL) in Ames, Iowa.
This close-knit network, with built-in redundancies, is primed to tackle the
awful and unexpected, whether it’s foot-and-mouth disease, swine fever, or an
act of agroterrorism. There’s little standing on ceremony, and state
veterinarians generally feel free to reach out directly to leading USDA
officials. “If we want information, we go up the chain to the top,” says Beth
Thompson, South Dakota’s state veterinarian.
That, at least, is how it’s supposed to work. It’s how veterinarians responding
to dairy farms in the Texas panhandle earlier this year assumed it would work
when they stumbled upon hellish scenes out of a horror movie. Feverish cows in
respiratory distress producing trickles of milk. Dying cats. Enough dead barn
pigeons and blackbirds to suggest a mass poisoning. Living birds with twisted
necks, their heads tilted skyward.
Worried vets enlisted help from colleagues in other states. In mid-March, one
sent an email to an emergency address at the NVSL, urging the lab to test for
something seemingly unthinkable: highly pathogenic avian influenza, which had
never before been detected in cows.
Days went by in silence. Finally, on March 25, the USDA lab confirmed that
dairy cows in Texas and Kansas had indeed been sickened by a form of bird
influenza known as H5N1. Though versions of the so-called bird flu virus have
circled the globe for almost two decades, spreading to species ranging from
pelicans and polar bears to sea lions and skunks, the announcement stunned the
scientific and agricultural communities. “Every honest virologist will tell
you: We did not see this coming,” says Kimberly Dodd, dean of Michigan State
University’s College of Veterinary Medicine.
“We plan for every agricultural health emergency, but all of our red teaming
missed this” scenario: an agricultural outbreak that potentially imperils
public health and leaves cows sick but mostly still standing, says David
Stiefel, a former national security policy analyst for the USDA.
With continued spread amongst cows, or to another “mixing-vessel” species like
pigs, the virus “could mix and match, then you get a whole new genetic
constellation,” says Jürgen Richt, regents and university distinguished
professor at Kansas State University. Experts are hesitant to speculate about
what could happen if the virus were to begin more widely infecting humans, for
fear of spreading panic, but the toll could, in the worst case, dwarf that of
COVID-19. If the virus “infects a person infected with a human flu strain, and
something comes out that is reassorted and adapted to humans? I don’t even want
to imagine,” Richt says. “Not good.”
The Institute for Disease Modeling, a research institute within the Bill &
Melinda Gates Foundation, has estimated that a global flu pandemic could kill
close to 33 million people within six months."
Via Violet Blue’s
Cybersecurity Roundup: October 22, 2024
https://www.patreon.com/posts/cybersecurity-22-114461931
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
