RFK's proposal to let bird flu spread through poultry

That's not even the worst of it, either. Viruses evolve faster than birds; allowing the disease to spread unchecked is likely to result in more virulent strains emerging. This could potentially include strains which can infect other species, including humans.

If we have learned anything from this administration, even RFK Jr. specifically, is how lazy they are in pushing their agenda.

They published a "report" claiming that vaccines cause autism that was lazily created with ChatGPT that had fake citations, or citations that actively go against what they're saying. Everything in the administration is half-assed.

"Letting the virus spread to pass on the genes" seems like an idea that would come from a conversation when two drunks who are discussing how they'd solve all the world's problems.

This idea definitely came from a tweet he read, and involved no extra consideration.

Unfortunately it involves too many multisyllabic words for Kennedy— or anyone else in this administration— to understand it, so expect them to plow ahead regardless.

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It's not meant to be read. The people who produced it don't care what's inside, only that the book exists. The book existing is enough for the target audience to accept that there are valid arguments within. The target audience does not need to read the book, they've already been told what they need to know.

The producers and the audience prefer it that way. It's less effort for everyone involved.

Remember when a slew of SV execs lined up behind his presidential campaign? That was way back when he was a Democrat.

> In the spirit of HN I will only point out here this fact: RFK Jr's attack book on Fauci was extremely poorly produced.

It's in the spirit of hn to attack the person rather than the specific proposal?

babymetal states "the text rolled up to the top and bottom edges of the pages as well as the sides. As a bookseller this was a big red flag for me: either the book was poorly self-published, or no-one big (and sometimes reputable) wanted to publish it, and it looked like they were trying to save paper and ink."

Also babymetal admits he didn't read the book. How can anything he says of the book be trusted?

I read the book. Actually there are two stories in the book, the first mostly about Fauci and COVID-19 and the second about Fauci and AIDS. FWIW I'm glad RFK is in power now.

>> As an animal rights activist, this will do wonders for the movement.

The article says allowing the virus to rip through flocks could kill "billions of birds" [1]. Is that really OK with the movement?

___________

[1] Allowing widespread infection of commercial flocks would kill billions of birds, drive poultry and egg prices up, as well as destabilize local economies and global trade through import restrictions imposed on U.S. products, the authors wrote. Simultaneously, it could also foster reservoirs of H5N1, increasing the virus' odds of making the leap to humans — and gaining the ability for human-to-human infection.

> become unprofitable due to all the birds dying

Isn't this just switching from, if you detect any infections you're required to kill your flock, to if you have any infections your flock will die of illness? Your flock is still dead either way.

you're wrong here... eggs will become obscenely profitable, because of the sheer demand for the things. Backyard/black market and over seas eggs will be worth an order of magnitude more than before.

And guess what, America will have next to no say in the animal welfare of the source of the eggs.

I'm not sure what's going to happen here, but I'm never going to be eating "JUST Eggs"(tm). Sorry.

I'd like to see a world where animals are treated better though. I don't really understand why food and food production has to be so shit.

He is not a vegan. Here's him drinking raw milk recently: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/PzSe0z6gH0M

Since I don't think that the shitshow is going to slow down, I suspect that basically all the damage done in 2025 will be forgotten by most voters. Democrats might do a bit better in 2026, and I certainly hope that that's the case, but I doubt we'll get anywhere near the super majority required to override the president.

The culled birds definitely arent producing. The proposal here is to let sick birds recover from their flu instead of being killed. True, you can effectively stop the spread of the flu if all the animals are dead, but the flu has a high survivability rate, and so once birds recover from their flu, they'll still be laying eggs (instead of being dead). That seems to be the proposed approach. It matches what we did for covid (we didnt cull the infected to stop the spread--it might have worked though).

I'm convinced very little of these folks beliefs are anything more than pantomimed poll results. Oh look at me I'm anti establishment, opposing those that made you wear masks during COVID. Whatever polls well there gives you a lifelong set of supporters.

“Worst possible person” isn’t accurate but “worst person ever in the role” probably is.

Picking the absolute worst person for a particular job is Trump’s MO. Trump selects for either compromised individuals, or people with an ax to grind against the organization they are appointed to head. The reason is because compromised people are going to be dependent on his good graces, and hence absolutely loyal to him personally.

> It's actually impressive that Trump managed to appoint the absolute worst possible person to be Secretary of Health and Human Services.

It's a legitimate and popular republican strategy, I forgot the exact name. They did the same thing with the EPA during the last Trump administration - appointing an actual oil tycoon to head it. I imagine it's pretty difficult to just find an oil tycoon. The idea is to derail the agency from the inside out.

It's actually impressive that Trump managed to appoint the absolute worst possible person to be Secretary of Health and Human Services.

And the republicans in the senate approved the halfwit because they all fear getting primaried.

> defer extremely heavily to people who actually know about this stuff.

in a system with high regulatory capture, you would be defering your power to the industry's interests.

>eugenics but for chickens

So... animal husbandry?

Yes the idea is that birds that recover from bird flu will keep producing. You end up with more live birds than culling entire flocks. Some of the birds survive, because of their genetics.

Too bad about the human race though, I guess.

While I don't really agree with political assassinations, and you are likely to get flagged for this, it's not like the US government hasn't done similar stuff to leaders that we thought were harmful.

The CIA tried to kill Castro a bunch of times [1], presumably because they felt that him being in power was harmful and killing him was a net good. It's not like this kind of stuff is unprecedented.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIA_assassination_attempts_on_...