The wall-to-wall coverage of Bird Flu is getting wallier-to-wallier with each passing week, to the point it’s almost hard to keep up with the waves of hot takes and chilling insights. But if you’re going to try, the best place to do it is right here, where I spend a good portion of my time reading very similar articles in very similar papers all about the danger of a pandemic they’re about to pretend is happening.
Not a dream of mine growing up, but life’s like that.
Anyway…bird flu.
In our last bird flu update, we pointed out that the “bird flu death” in Mexico was very likely no such thing, and that reporting it as such was right out of the Covid playbook.
Since then the head of Mexico’s Health Ministry has criticized the WHO for calling it a bird flu death at all.
But the big bird flu news is that former head of the US CDC Robert Redfield has gone hysterical, telling NewsNation:
I really do think it’s very likely that we will, at some time, it’s not a question of if, it’s more of a question of when we will have a bird flu pandemic.”
This story was naturally picked up and spread everywhere, but Redfield is hardly alone in this hysterical panic-fueling nonsense.
Last week, The Conversation headlined:
An ounce of prevention: Now is the time to take action on H5N1 avian flu, because the stakes are enormous
USA Today echoes the tone:
Concerns grow as ‘gigantic’ bird flu outbreak runs rampant in US dairy herds
Apparently a new study has found something scary – Americans “have little to no pre-existing immunity to the H5N1 avian flu”. Frightening stuff.
Just a few hours ago the Daily Mail reported on yet another doctor doling out yet another dire warning. This time Dr Rick Bright, who told PBS that:
We’re being blindfolded in this battle right now, and I’m really concerned that the virus is winning the game and getting ahead of us.’
We’re flying blind and the disease is getting ahead of us! It’s running rampant and the stakes are enormous!
Even some channels that supposedly know better are spreading the fear.
Hellbound and Down 