A controversial proposal from U.S Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to let bird flu naturally spread through poultry farms is raising alarms among scientists -- who say the move could be inhumane and dangerous.
Let's not use the word "controversial" when "nobody with any qualifications would ever fucking agree with this" is more accurate. Controversial suggests a lack of consensus.
Who would have known. The russian mafia puppet government that's doing it's best impression of the New world order stereotype.. is suggesting a population cull
Inhumane is ironic considering that the mere existence of poultry farms is inhumane. But yeah, it would be stupid, cruel and it will raise the chance of mutations that spread to other species including us.
I think they really mean it would be inhumane if you consider the problem vis-a-vis the yardstick most Americant capitalists measure their "humanity" by, ie: less dollary-doos for them.
Hitler came to power because the treaty of Versailles devastated and humiliated germany. what the fuck are historians going to point at in the US that lead to the rise in fascism? fucking gamergate? The self-inflicted 2008 crisis?
A multitude of issues have contributed to this, the creation of fox News, allowing our entire manufacturing sector to leave the country, and then ignoring the poorest and most vulnerable people's issues, misinformation, social media, state actor disinformation campaigns, and probably a bunch of stuff I haven't mentioned. Pick your favorite.
what the fuck are historians going to point at in the US that lead to the rise in fascism? fucking gamergate? The self-inflicted 2008 crisis?
Losing the Cold War. America wasn't beaten militarily, but brought down via foreign propaganda. (It also hit the UK, with Brexit, and other countries with similar harmful things going on domestically to them.)
Livejournal was one of the earliest "modern" social media sites (for those who didn't experience it, it was like a longer-form tumblr--longer text posts, fewer images), and it was sold to a company in Russia in the early 00s. I remember scratching my head as a 20-something about why the servers kept going down, then I learned that intellectuals in Russia had taken it up as THEIR social media and due to politics "on the Russian" side it was getting DDoS'd.
I was still too young to connect the dots then, or understand what all that really meant (hindsight is always much better, isn't it?) but basically they perfected control via social media first on their own people, probably trawled through all the content of the original LiveJournal users posting in English, then perfected using what they learned there on later social media sites.
And because Americans A) thought the Cold War was over, and B) have a bit of a head-scratcher conundrum when it comes to free speech because it's valued so highly and nobody likes censorshiop, nobody did anything or even realized anything was happening until the harm was already done.
Personally, again with hindsight, I think company-designed social media algorithms that just suggest content to you as "trending" or whatever should be illegal (and block buttons should be mandatory). Users should have to be forced to follow, one by one, the content they want to subscribe to.
Having "trending" algorithms that have no transparency in what they show or boost allows malignant actors to game the algorithm.
If you force people to follow others based on word of mouth or reblogs from their actual friends, and give people a way to solidly block someone that's easy to find and instant to use, it will cut a lot of the bullshit down. People will be somewhat less inclined to fall down wells of stupidity. It won't completely stop it, but people are lazy and if you don't dangle shit in front of their nose many will go off and do something else instead of putting in the effort to find something horrible.
The pandemic, the inherent flaws of an antiquated two party system, malicious individuals controlling all major social media platforms, an overworked and undersupported population, low education standards. Idk I'm German and have never been over but from what I can tell it's very complex. And while many of my fellow Europeans like to give Americans shit online right now the truth is most of us are one or two unfortunate elections away from a similar scenario. Whatever it is that's driving people apart isn't exclusively an American problem.
In retrospect, I think the rise of smartphone-based, algorithm-driven social media circa 2012 will be seen as the information-age equivalent of lead poisoning that quietly brainrotted society. It greatly increased the power and reach of disinformation and radicalizing propaganda while destroying the ability of mainstream news sources to moderate or even alert people to the damage being done. There's a staggering gap in attitudes between people who get their news from social media apps vs. newspapers or even cable TV. And so much of the maliciousness is below the surface, distributed across millions of unique newsfeeds and "for you" pages that the public writ large has very little insight into. If some shell company were airing neonazi recruitment ads on national television, people would be shocked and outraged, but slip it into the feeds of vulnerable people and you can poison an entire generation with hardly anyone noticing until it's too late.
That's dumb, leave the U.S. sometime. Despite the problems in the U.S., we are still one of the richest countries on the planet. I went to a plant in Mexico for work a few years ago, and there were people living in sheds with no running water, entire neighborhoods of that. Outside of homeless people, even our poorest people have it better than a lot of other countries.
Every person in charge of an agency was literally selected for the express purpose of destroying that agency. It's not incompetence, and it's not an accident. It is deliberate sabotage and treason.
checks notes
Yup, I think "sending america back to the dark ages" is the intention.
I actually think if written from the perspective of the men, a frightening amount of current gov leaders in the U.S. would unironically enjoy the "Utopia" in a handmaids tail.
It's a bit complicated. That survival rate primarily includes people who become severely ill and seek medical attention. Since it's the most severe cases, the case fatality rate (CFR) will appear higher.
HOWEVER, what also needs to be emphasized is that a disease with like a 10% CFR is probably a civilization (as we know it) ending disease. I believe covid 19 was between like 1-2% and we saw how it nearly broke our health care system, and that was with people more competent than RFK in charge.
If a disease emerges that spreads as easily as COVID did and with a CFR rate 3 to 4X as worse, it'd obliterate the health care system very, very quickly. Then people are going to start dying en masse from preventable diseases, like common infections, moderate injuries (e.g. broken leg) etc.
If a disease emerges that spreads as fast and far as COVID and has a 50% CFR, yeah that'd collapse most societies completely. Maybe some societies that can truly lock down and enforce social distancing, like China, could survive long enough for a vaccine or other solution to become available.
From what I've read i think it will be worse than 50/50 if lots get it because the recovery stories I've seen involved weeks in the ICU and required those machines that help with organ functions like pumping blood.
There will be a massive shortage of ICU beds and machines to save the people.
If bird flu is such a minor issue, I say we inject it into Donald Trump, JD Vance, RFK Jr., and Elon Musk. Demonstrate how safe it is. Do it. Come on. DO IT YOU WUSSES.
why inject, since you can spread bird flu by coughing in the same room as them. Trump also is a well known germaphobe too, considered trump and his dad both bullied thier brother into suicide and alcoholism.
I’m pretty sure bird flu currently cannot be spread person-to-person and that’s why it’s only a notable concern rather than a pandemic 2.0 level threat
Interestingly, my understanding of the way in which flu vaccine was (in part) produced involved injecting blood infected with a the flu into developing chicken embryos (eggs), allowing them to develop the flu, and several probably very complicated steps later, you've got flu virus particles for a vaccine.
I remember when people laughed at the concept of the immune system being like a muscle, that needs frequent excercise, and with same excercise it could be built back.
Good times.
Nowadays I wonder when will people shoot each other with increasingly higher caliber bullets to build up immunity to bullets.
his own family more or less disowned a while ago, and also hes not all there because the way he speaks is like someone got a stroke, he was a known heroin addict.
stand with rfk. americans voted trump twice into office and shows now sign of stopping their brain rott. bird flu is best that can happen.
last time the facist leader was in office we had corona globally - lets just hope for a very localised (to the USA) bird flu outbreak to help the imbeciles remember 2020.
Hahahahahaha jesus tapdancing christ this timeline is fucking wild. He is going to create the conditions for the next pandemic. It’s gonna start here. I’m calling it now.
That's the whole logic. It was awful enough with Covid's 1% mortality. Measles only kills about 0.1%. Bird flu kills 90-100% of infected birds and 50% of infected humans. And there's plenty of lasting/permanent deficits short of literal death. They're psychopaths.
hey theres a good chance certain very old people in leadership and in high risk group of falling over to it will catch it, so the problem would solve itself naturally?
I guess that would succeed in killing off a bunch of the elderly and infirmed, which be a huge savings to Medicare and social Security, so it's a win-win right?
That is exactly how the Nazis in charge are thinking about this. They assume they'll make it through because they're constitutionally superior, while the weak die and are no longer a burden on the Übermenschen.
I knew he was just a huge shill for the reptile egg shadow industry. Before you know it, all US omelets will be made from factory-farmed sea turtle eggs.
I still have not gotten it. I was very conscientious about masks and social distancing and even have my vaccinations up to date just in case. But, I haven’t masked or social distanced in a long time, so now I’m just running on luck I guess.
From what I know it's mostly the trucks transporting between farms. They're not being cleaned frequently enough or well enough. Though, there is I think some cases of it being transmitted in migrating wildlife.
I still don't like the everyone get measles version of this.
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
"pilot with safe perimeter" seems reasonable, as long as safe perimeter works. Bird flu is endemic already, afaik. = "will remain a constant presence". It only makes sense for domestic chickens/fowls. It is not endemic yet in other animals/humans, and maximum quick containment seems like only approach to keep it that way.
Bird flu not being a problem in countries that have smaller flocks, seems a transformative solution.
I didn't like the rebuttals in my link above. One of them says that the best thing for you/chickens is "to have a central authority decide to cull you minimizing for a balance of cost and your pain, instead of giving you the chance/choice of either surviving, or far more likely, suffering before death." I would choose the 2nd option, but can only do so under central authority that has already decided what it prefers.
I didn't like the rebuttals in my link above. One of them says that the best thing for you/chickens is "to have a central authority decide to cull you minimizing for a balance of cost and your pain, instead of giving you the chance/choice of either surviving, or far more likely, suffering before death." I would choose the 2nd option, but can only do so under central authority that has already decided what it prefers.
Like what? Who is saying this to the person that is "you" in this scenario? Wtf? Absolute fucking non starter. I'm not choosing shit, fuck that we're not doing that.
The rebuttals for a pilot included that if you cull the whole flock, when signs of avian flu in part of the flock, then you are killing all of the chickens humanely instead of the large majority dying in pain from likely getting the flu. You are the chicken whose death is being decided from above.