The last time the CDC was able to tell us the number of human cases of bird flu in the US, the number stood at 67. That was more than a week ago. Just after the new year, we had the US’s first human death from the disease. And more recently, a team of scientists in Texas sounded the alarm that the virus is mutating faster than anyone thought possible.
So I can’t really think of a worst time for President Trump’s gag order on the Centers for Disease Control combined with his vicious persecution of what he terms ‘illegal immigrants.’ The one-two punch of these seemingly unrelated orders is nothing less than a gift to a virus that has the potential to wipe out half the human population.
Bird Flu, or H5N1 is responsible for egg prices spiking since 2022, when the USDA started culling flocks that included any infected birds. Since that time it has crossed over to infect mammals like sea lions, mink, foxes, tigers, and others. Fatality rates vary by species. H5N1 kills 97% of infected sea lions and roughly 50% of infected tigers.
Compare: COVID19 is roughly 1% fatal among humans. According to the small print on the CDC’s website – when it was still visible – in its 30-year history, H5N1 is 52% fatal in humans. That means, if this becomes our next pandemic, it could be 50 times worse than COVID.
But when H5N1 was first discovered in US cattle in Texas and Kansas in March 2024, the USDA was asleep at the switch. It took four weeks for them to require testing for interstate transport of dairy cows. Instead of containing the disease, sixteen states across the country have now reported infected cattle. That includes Colorado.
Veterinarians routinely test cattle for a variety of diseases before interstate transport. But for the precious weeks between March 25 and April 29, the feds dragged their feet, even as veterinarians from Colorado and other states literally begged them to take action. Finally, the edict came down that dairy cattle be tested for Avian Flu before transport. But the interstate testing requirement doesn’t apply to the calves of those dairy cows (who must give birth ever 18-24 months to keep their milk going) or other cattle housed with those dairy cows.
The yokels at the Colorado Livestock Association kept blaming outbreaks on wild birds, and not cattle – one spokesman even suggested that farmers purchase “floppy inflatable men you see outside car dealerships” to scare the birds away. It would be funny if it wasn’t so serious.
The thing about ignoring science – it has a habit of biting you in the ass.
As a veterinarian, I can attest to the scientific fact that cows are more like humans than birds. Birds have different pulmonary, reproductive, and digestive organs. Cows breathe like us and they reproduce like us. Humans share 60% of their genome with birds. We share 80% with cows. It was only a matter of time before the virus crossed from cow to human.
The moment the virus jumped from birds to mammals, the risk to humankind increased. When the virus jumped from wild mammals to domestic mammals that risk skyrocketed, because humans work with domesticated animals, increasing the probability of animal to human transmission. And once a human is infected, the virus begins to evolve – it gets a good look ‘under the hood’ and figures out how to better transmit itself and hang on to its victims more efficiently.
Nine months ago, dairy cows started to get the workers who tended them sick.
Now here’s where the combination of immigration crackdown with a CDC gag order really becomes deadly.
The front-line workers who have been infected with H5N1 are disproportionately migrants – likely without health insurance and limited access to medical care in rural areas. Some anecdotal reports of human infection among dairy workers make the disease sound fairly mild: conjunctivitis being the most common symptom. But this isn’t the common pediatric disease pink eye; conjunctivitis caused by H5N1 causes the mucus membranes around the eye to swell and bleed. (Seriously, take a look at the photo posted in the New England Journal of Medicine.)
An infected teen in British Columbia needed a ventilator and intensive care before he recovered. Is this an outlier or the norm? Absent rigorous testing and reporting, we have no idea. Scientific evidence shows that H5N1 is already mutating to be more easily transmissible and to cause worse respiratory symptoms.
No one followed the infected migrants to see if their families became sick. No one tested and tracked the progression of the virus into humans. Now Trump is allowing ICE officials to raid health care facilities – so any information we might have gotten about the majority of human cases from dairy cattle workers has now been driven underground.
If Trump continues his inhumane “rounding up” of “illegal” immigrants, the virus will have an engraved invitation to infect, mutate and rampage through a population of highly stressed, closely confined human beings. And, despite what Trump may think or want, it won’t stop there. Evolution dictates that that virus will become more and more effective at spreading.
The CDC tells us H5N1 is “low risk” to humans. But with an historical human fatality rate of 52% and no mandatory testing, tracking, and reporting of animal-to-human or human-to-human transmission, we can’t know that.
Michelle Dally, DVM/JD, was a Denver Post reporter in the 90s and cofounded Progressive Promotions, a media relations firm in Denver, before attending Colorado State University to earn her Veterinary Degree. She practiced on large and small animals on the Western Slope before retiring.
