LITTLE BOBBY KENNEDY is a perfect example of the ignorant arrogance of a kind that is most dangerous when wielded by an Ivy Leaguer with more power than actual knowledge. And there are fewer groups in which that is more dangerous than those with a degree in the make-believe lore of the law.
Little Bobby's declaration that the solution to the bird flu pandemic is east-peasy, just let it loose on entire flocks of birds and it will do all the work of choosing the survivors, the ones that are immune so we can go on with those avian Aryans to the greater profit (that is "glory" to such guys) of the survivors. It is literally what "Darwinian economists" advocated being done in the human population during Trump I which led to hundreds of thousands of dead Americans - it is the stupid and popular understanding of the theory of natural selection.* I say that because as horrified veterinary scientists have said in reaction to to Little Bobby's lawyerly scientific erudition proves, real science, to some extent, has moved on from natural selection as Charles Darwin and the next like five generations of Darwinists thought of it.
With H5N1 avian influenza spreading in poultry flocks, Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., is pushing a new plan: let the virus rip.
Kennedy recently told Fox News that by letting the highly pathogenic bird flu spread through flocks, farmers could “identify the birds, and preserve the birds, that are immune to it.”
But poultry experts say that, in addition to causing an unimaginable poultry death toll, this plan wouldn’t work.
“No, not for this disease,” says Rocio Crespo, a poultry veterinarian at the North Carolina State University College of Veterinary Medicine. “This is crazy.” . . .
Even with avian diseases that are slower-acting than highly pathogenic bird flu, scientists have struggled to find a key to genetic resistance. Huaijun Zhou, a professor of animal science at the University of California, Davis, worked on a project on Newcastle disease, another viral illness that is also nearly always fatal in poultry but that some infected birds can survive for weeks. “We didn’t find any magic bullet,” Zhou says.
There were genetic variants in chickens that allowed the birds to survive longer with Newcastle disease. Yet each one had a tiny effect, and it took a combination of hundreds of them to make a noticeable difference in survival. “It’s just the nature of the disease,” says Zhou, adding that the bird flu’s high mortality rate makes success even less likely.
Kennedy’s remarks belie a lack of knowledge about the way poultry breeding works, Koci says. The chickens that provide meat and eggs are not in the breeding population: they’re the product of parent generations that are bred to maximize disease resistance and meat or egg production. Wiping out the working offspring of these breeders wouldn’t do anything to alter the next generations of chickens coming down the line.
But if you think, thank heavens, Little Bobby doesn't have control of agricultural policy, you aren't counting on the fact that the Ag secretary is another lawyer from one of the functional Ivy Equivalents: (Texas at Austin.)
Kennedy does not have a say in the U.S.’s agricultural policies. But, as the New York Times reported on Tuesday, Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins has also indicated support for the let-it-rip idea, telling Fox News that some farmers are interested in piloting the strategy.
In a statement, Emily Hilliard, the deputy press secretary at the Department of Health and Human Services said, “We want to keep people away from the most dangerous version of the current bird flu, which is found in chickens. Culling puts people at the highest risk of exposure, which is why Secretary Kennedy and NIH want to limit culling activities. Culling is not the solution. Strong biosecurity is.”
But viral spread leads to more viral particles in the environment, begetting more viral spread, Crespo says.
And a no-cull policy would expose farmworkers to sick chickens, according to Koci. “You’re exposing more humans to more chickens,” he says, “and just buying more lottery tickets for that pandemic strain.”
I will bet you that the two lawyers in question, Little Bobby and Brooke are OK with exposing farm workers to the virus, figuring that population could do with some natural culling, ignorant that such exposed workers are one of the more reliable vectors in incubating viruses that can jump to the human population. I understand Marge Greene has been promoting "measles parties."
Darwinism is as dangerous a pseudo-scientific theory now as it always has been.
* I wouldn't call it fair to mention but merely accurate to point out that the most respected and conventional Darwinists from Charles Darwin down till today have, in fact, advocated exactly that policy of leaving the human population vulnerable to preventable viruses and other diseases to let nature kill off those they imagined to be biologically inferior. That is what led Charles Darwin to bemoan the imaginary dysgenic effects of universal vaccination against small-pox, what led his son Leonard to campaign on an anti-vaxx platform for a seat in the Parliament (thankfully he lost) and future generations of scientists, public understanders of such science, politicians and Supreme Court "justices" to go on wringing their hands over public health initiatives that would keep those they liked to imagine as inferior alive and able to have children. That is, even today, the popular understanding of such science and such viciously apathetic scum, of the kind that so many lawyers are, hold dangerously important positions in governments here and around the world. I will also point out that the disastrous ignorance-based inaction they favor is matched by a complete willingness in many cases to forcibly sterilize those they target as inferior, especially People of Color and members of the underclass.
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