Well, Folks... Reality Is Hard To Ignore
Time’s Up
The photo here is of a cat looking straight at us, from in front of a holiday tree, with the sort of dead-serious look cats have perfected that could, really, mean a whole array of things. It’s good photography; catching that.
The cat is giving the look I’d like to be able to give. It says a little bit of everything.
I come to this platform to write… and I throw out most of my drafts. What is there even to say? There are too many things, and so I often give it up for lack of focus, for too much detail needed, for too many references needed, for not having a point, for trying to say too many things, or for not saying enough.
It’s time, though. A reckoning is upon us.
I’m told that I should title this blog a certain way, or open with catchy words, or write shorter posts, or write longer posts, or whatever… to get followers.
It doesn’t matter.
The moments are here.
We have 3 weeks to a likely-highly-disruptive-administration change. Climate change is happening fast. Bird flu is so pervasive it’s made it into the mainstream media as a thing we’re already too late to address. For example, CNN has ”How America lost control of the bird flu, setting the stage for another pandemic.” The LA Times has “Opinion: Bird flu is coming for humans. We can either get ready or court disaster.”
It’s getting very, very hard not to notice the risk landscape getting crazier around us every single damn day.
Hard To Ignore
I spent a bit of time away from the interwebs during the holiday-with-stuff-on-the-trees this past week. It was good to get a bit of distance from the predicted chaos of the new administration and the fast-intensifying bird flu situation — two of the three potential catastrophe/disruption areas that I wrote about 3 weeks ago.
I got a bit of perspective break. Kind of. That was good.
I even almost thought that perhaps I’ve been overreacting to what we’re facing. Maybe it’s not all as pressing or as urgent or as potentially overwhelming or shocking as I’ve been thinking it could be — the various disruptions.
But then… it’s been raining or foggy here all week in a land (mid-Iowa) that should be well frozen. Someone I was with even said, “Well, we need the rain,” and waved at the green grass. Like as if any of this is normal. In December.
Yesterday I went for a walk in lovely April weather — only also in December. It smelled like spring. It was a lovely smell, except what the actual hell???? It shouldn’t smell like spring in December.
Today we ran to Walmart to grab a few things, like eggs. This is what the egg shelves looked like (the far ones are almost totally empty):
Where Are The Eggs?
Well, I can’t say for sure, but I’d guess that the bird flocks that normally produce the eggs normally sold in an array of brands on these particular Walmart shelves here in central Iowa are being, well, depopulated.
It’s an educated guess — not verified fact.
I’ve heard recent news of Iowa and South Dakota agricultural bird/poultry flocks being infected with H5N1 (bird flu / avian influenza). A super quick online search brought up this news nice summary that lends credence to the depopulation possibility, but this one news story is only one piece of a very big picture. Plus, it mentions cattle infections, sort of as an aside. Criminy. Huge big news just sort of casually reported.
Hard To Track In Real Time
I know enough to know that figuring out exactly what’s going on with this situation in real time is likely very difficult unless you’re on the inside of one of the agencies involved in the containment/control efforts, or unless you’re in Big Ag somewhere.
Individual farmers are probably terrified. The rumor mill is no doubt rampant across the industry. Thousands of people work in this business — whether it’s raising and processing chickens, turkeys, egg production, or even cattle or beyond. It’s all huge.
No one wants to advertise that they’re killing birds, in volume (or cattle, or whatever is next). No one wants to scare consumers away from what’s left of the poultry industry’s products. Or from any other food/ag product, such as beef. Even when the metaphorical ships are going down.
The only eggs we found on the shelves at Walmart today were the store brand, Great Value, likely brought in from out-of-state from farther-away flocks.
It was unsettling. I’d been hearing the news everywhere, but yikes.
Handling Outbreaks
Here’s a little bit of what I know about animal/livestock/poultry/bird diseases.
I worked Exotic Newcastles Disease (END) in 2002-2003 in Southern California, on behalf of the US Department of Agriculture as a USDA Forest Service regional employee and coordination center employee. END was in chickens and other poultry, and was being spread along a chicken-fighting route along the I-10 corridor. END was in both small backyard and chicken-fighting flocks as well as in huge commercial poultry and egg production facilities.
Our office supported the containment and control of END in California in cooperation with the state agency, with other federal agencies, and with state agencies all the way along the I-10 corridor in a lot of states pretty much all the way through Georgia.
One of the things we were collectively trying to do was to keep the disease (END) from getting into the wild bird population and going worldwide. Most of the world had a boycott/ban on US eggs and poultry during that whole thing, but we didn’t hear about it much in the US and I suspect that was due to close coordination between Big Ag, federal agencies, state agencies, and the media. It was a different time.
For comparison, bird flu has been well established in the world’s wild bird populations for some time now. It’s not a great comparison because it brings a different risk than END, but we (humans and our governments) have gone to some lengths to keep bird flu from getting into wild bird/animal populations since it first appeared in 1996.
Back to handling outbreaks…
I moved to the DC area in a very post-9/11 world in 2004 and started to learn more about federal and state authorities when it comes to large-scale epidemics and pandemics — and the differences for handling animal/poultry/livestock outbreaks and for handling outbreaks for humans.
USDA is the lead federal department for attempting to control domestic disease outbreaks in livestock and poultry with some pretty far-reaching authorities.
As we all learned during the human Covid-19 pandemic, other federal agencies (including primarily HHS) are in charge of attempting to control or to minimize a human disease outbreak, epidemic, or pandemic.
That was all of course when this country had a robust and functioning public health system, and a government run by an administration that believed in a) government, b) science, and c) government helping society to function reasonably well.
We’re in a bit of a pickle because we’re coming into a moment where the incoming administration and the incoming majority ruling political party as a whole do not believe in those things.
I’m understating it.
A Best Case Scenario
Of course, bird flu is only one of the threats we’re facing, but it’s just moving so fast that it’s hard to ignore (exponential disease spread will do that).
The incoming administration itself promises all kinds of big trouble… from getting rid of federal agencies to taking rights away to mass deportations. It could be bad bad bad bad bad, if those things (and more) don’t align with your values.
Famous historian person
points out something important, though. The MAGA folks are having a bit of an internal foofaraw. A bit of a kerfuffle. The Republicans coming in to in power are very much not agreeing on priorities, values, and ways-forward for the new administration.What are they going to do with their proposed Project 25 strategy to disable government if the entire agricultural sector is melting down and begging that same government for help? What happens when everything from food production to grocery stores are thoroughly disrupted?
Are they going to stop all the stuff the USDA is doing now to try to make this bird flu thing less bad, which already has not been enough?
What about stuff that all the other federal agencies do to keep the US economy and civilization running?
Will anyone in the US even want to buy eggs, chicken, beef, milk, or any dairy products if even a few stories surface of people picking up killer-bird-flu from any of those products?
To be fair, it’s not actually called “killer-bird-flu,” but the most highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) is really quite dangerous for humans. So far our known death rate with exposure is very high (although we’re not testing widely so the percentage may be lower). There’s more on the death rate in the catastrophe post from 2 weeks ago.
How many things do we all rely upon that include dairy products, eggs, beef, or chicken?
How fast could that all go to heck? What in the bloody hell will happen to our supply chain?
Would this new administration suddenly find that in fact big business needs big government?
Stay tuned, Americans. I bet we’re going to find out.
I’d sure like to be wrong, but that’s not the way the story is unfolding.
I did mention that this was a possible best-case scenario, even if that’s not what this sounds like.
In this one little best case scenario possibility, the new administration and party-in-power might just figure out that their hare-brained schemes to get rid of the very structures that enable the American economy and society are maybe not a good fit for an animal disease outbreak that is threatening to take down a whole lot of our supply chain, food sources, and critical infrastructure (ag/food systems being part of that).
Also maybe the new party-in-power will have too much trouble getting along with itself internally to actively take all these government systems and policies apart and so the bureaucrats who run things day-to-day might have a chance to hold things together while this great threat unfolds.
And maybe this thing (bird flu) won’t start spreading human-to-human (the dreaded mutation everyone’s talking about) and we all get a massive disruption but maybe not a human bird flu pandemic.
It’s certainly possible.
Plus, if the new party-in-power is not getting along with itself already before they take power as a new administration and as a new majority in Congress… and then they have to actually deal with this unfolding bird flu crisis by actually taking action to solve or address some of it… it’s certainly possible that they’ll get sidetracked from a whole lot of the stuff in their Project 25 framework.
One never knows.
But all that might be less bad than lots of other potential scenarios that could unfold over the next months and years.
Getting Through It
Either way, this is all a lot.
Whatever’s coming is a lot.
Because this is all A LOT and navigating it is A LOT — bird flu or not — this nonprofit, Shift the Country, is going to host some sessions to help folks get through this soon-to-be-unfolding disruption.
We’ll be doing Zooms on Monday nights in January 2025 to get going. It’s going to be a little wild, because the situation keeps changing and people will have a zillion questions and it will be a bit tricky to focus.
But, we’ll start. We’ll just dig in and get going.
Bring your seat-belts. Could be a bumpy ride — whether you join us or not.
Today’s Unsolicited Advice
Today’s unsolicited advice:
Seriously, work on prioritizing. We can all stand to get a whole lot better at it.
When it comes to getting ready for disruption and disaster or dealing with an active disaster, there is a bunch of stuff that just does not matter.
There will be a bunch of stuff that does matter; one whole hell of a lot.
Being able to figure out what matters now and what’s likely to matter soon is going to be a key. People who can be agile and flexible and who can change priorities fast have better chances of navigating disruption.
Okay keep the faith. We’ve got a whole lot of good humans out here hoping and planning to do good things, and some who don’t even know it yet but they’re going to do good things too.
Onward and forward.
And hey! Send funding if you’re able! We’re a nonprofit and this stuff is a service. We need help to make it happen and to keep it happening.
Vanessa Burnett is the Executive Director of Shift the Country, an unusual nonprofit promoting increased civic action & public pressure to help communities pull together, to navigate increasing disruption, & to work toward a more resilient, sustainable, caring, just, & equitable US. Vanessa is a former homeland security professional with 25+ years experience in resilience, big disasters, wildland fire, emergency management, land management, project management, continuity of operations, public communication, and disaster information sharing.