Not to put a damper on the holiday festivities, but bird flu is looming.
We all remember (or maybe we don't) the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020, and Team Trump's woeful mishandling of it. It was clear that Benedict Donald's bungling contributed mightily to his re-election defeat that November. But now, horrifyingly, with Trump returning to the White House next month, a new epidemic is on the horizon: H5N1.
Back in 2017, the outgoing Obama Administration handed Trump a comprehensive how-to manual on dealing with pandemics, perfected by Team Barack's expert handling of Ebola and Zika. Trump promptly threw it in the trash, and the rest was history. Will the Biden Administration offer a similar blueprint for bird flu? Surely they will, and surely it will receive the same treatment the Obama report did.
As the Rand Corporation has warned, "The United States is failing to act decisively against the growing H5N1 threat, with human cases already emerging from unknown origins and evidence of widespread animal transmission. Without immediate nationwide livestock testing and isolation, expanded wastewater surveillance, and rapid vaccine distribution to at-risk populations, the virus risks mutating into a form capable of sustained human transmission — repeating the catastrophic delays of COVID-19."
Those were fun times in 2020, weren't they? Maybe America doesn't recall. A similar thing happened after the 1918 flu epidemic — "The Great Forgetting." People tend to bury terrible national experiences, and try to live for the moment afterward. That was certainly evident in this year's Presidential election. The question is, will the nation forgive a second Trump Administration for killing hundreds of thousands more Americans, if it comes to that? Not a cheery note, sorry! We cats HISS.
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