The below article was written last summer. Since then, although the potential Bird Flu pandemic has not yet emerged, worrisome signs that it is mutating in dangerous ways have emerged. In its final days, the Biden administration increased surveillance efforts and efforts to reduce the spread of influenza H5N1 among dairy cattle. As I write this on January 23, 2025, the Trump administration has ordered a halt to CDC updates on bird flu and all other issues, and it remains unclear whether or when the updates will resume. The Trump administration’s candidates for leadership of major health-relevant posts in the Federal government include Robert Kennedy, Jr., a leading critic of vaccines whose arguments strike almost all medical and epidemiology experts as somewhere between ignorant and whacko (although it should be noted that some people do suffer serious side effects from some vaccines). The general incompetence of health-related officials in the new administration raises questions in our minds about whether, if a pandemic does emerge, Trump would order the rapid development of vaccines (as he did with Operation Warp Speed for COVID-19, one of the few useful decisions he made in his first term in office.) So far during COVID, the United States has demonstrated incompetence at handling pandemics as compared with other relatively wealthy nations. I expect that if another pandemic emerges in the near future, the U.S. response will be devastatingly incompetent, and lead to unnecessary disease and death on a massive scale. The situation is dire, and calls for far more than resistance, it calls for the replacement of capitalism and current systems of government with a socialist world.
Pandemic futures - Tempest Sam Friedman was a guest on Howie Hawkins' Green Socialist Notes program today. #GreenSocialist Notes, Episode 216 with Special Guest Sam Friedman "This week Howie is joined by Sam Friedman, an expert on HIV, Covid, STI, and drug use epidemiology, to discuss public health crises under Trump." -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group. View/Reply Online (#35251): https://groups.io/g/marxmail/message/35251 Mute This Topic: https://groups.io/mt/111210498/21656 -=-=- POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. #4 Do not exceed five posts a day. -=-=- Group Owner: [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://groups.io/g/marxmail/leave/13617172/21656/1316126222/xyzzy [[email protected]] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
