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RFK's proposal to let bird flu spread through poultry
- 9283409232 1y agoHis idea is eugenics but for chickens. Just let it spread it through all the birds and the ones that get infected will die and the ones that are immune will survive and breed and the chicken race will be stronger for it.
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- amanaplanacanal 1y agoToo bad about the human race though, I guess.
- gruez 1y ago>eugenics but for chickens So... animal husbandry?
- BuyMyBitcoins 1y agoThe same for every species that has been domesticated. Corn, horses, dogs, even yeast. This even happens to species we don’t intend to practice “eugenics” on. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vavilovian_mimicry https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vavilovian_mimicry
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- thomquaid 1y agoYes 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.
- 9283409232 1y agoYou forgot about the part where the virus mutates and jumps to humans.
- ndsipa_pomu 1y agoThat'd be great if the viruses weren't also using accelerated evolution to become far more adept at infecting targets. By allowing the virus to spread unchecked, the chickens become a brilliant breeding ground for the virus and we're more likely to just breed stronger viruses (quite likely to be less virulent to chickens so that they can spread further, but also far more likely to jump between species).
- xracy 1y agoI guess what does he care... he's vegan, right?
- maxbendick 1y agoHe is not a vegan. Here's him drinking raw milk recently: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/PzSe0z6gH0M https://www.youtube.com/shorts/PzSe0z6gH0M
- xracy 1y agoYeah, was intended as a joke, pretty sure he's "whatever he wants to be", but I remember reading something that he said he only ate like "whole food plant based" which I consider to be "vegan for people who are too good for veganism"
- maxbendick 1y agoAh gotcha. My bad, didn't know it was a joke. But I'll still take it as an excuse to post RFK being a fool hahaha.
- tombert 1y agoIt's actually impressive that Trump managed to appoint the absolute worst possible person to be Secretary of Health and Human Services. I know nothing about biology, I know that I know nothing, so if someone decided for whatever reason to appoint me to the position it would be fairly harmless because I would defer extremely heavily to people who actually know about this stuff. If he had appointed someone with proper medical or biological training, that would be fine because they actually know about stuff and can make informed decisions. RFK Jr. is the absolute worst person because he thinks he knows a lot about biology, but he actually knows nothing, and is largely informed by a lot of conspiratorial nonsense, meaning he has the potential to cause a lot of irreparable to the US healthcare system. He's not going to defer to actual expertise, he's going to defer to idiotic blog posts filled with anecdotes about how a friend of a friend of theirs got a vaccine and it was bad. I cannot imagine that this attempt at chicken eugenics will work as intended. I suspect that if this were a good idea, it would have been tried already.
- ekianjo 1y ago> 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.
- tombert 1y agoWhich would still be better than defunding all our scientific research and telling people to eat Five Guys fries because they're fried with beef tallow.
- aredox 1y ago[flagged]
- wand3r 1y agoThis is one of the most darkly funny things I have read this week. Just want in the fuck is going on.
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- aredox 1y ago[flagged]
- tombert 1y agoWhile 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_Fidel_Castro https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIA_assassination_attempts_on_...
- aredox 1y agoIt am not calling for a "political" assassination. The problem with him is not that we disagree on policy matters. It is that he is an idiot and that he will kill millions of people at random out of sheer stupidity. I am calling to kill him because as an idiot, he can't be "convinced" to do otherwise. There is no debate nor discussion nor negociation possible.
- tombert 1y agoI would argue that that is still political. “Political” does not imply “wrong” or anything.
- adriand 1y ago> Kennedy's proposal is also very unlikely to work the way he's claimed it would — the birds that provide eggs and meat on farms are descendants of separate breeding populations and do not breed themselves. So even if there were a population of resilient birds that survived H5N1 infection, that doesn't mean they're passing on their genetic traits to a subsequent generation. Seems like a rather devastating flaw.
- Analemma_ 1y agoUnfortunately it involves too many multisyllabic words for Kennedy— or anyone else in this administration— to understand it, so expect them to plow ahead regardless.
- tombert 1y agoIf 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.
- sorcerer-mar 1y agoThey are fundamentally absolute fucking goofballs. This administration is the best argument for DEI I’ve ever seen in my life, if it had anything to do with avoiding this. Just the other day, RFK’s top vaccine nutjob (new chair of ACIP, Robert Malone) tweeted something to suggest that the Amish’s existence despite waves of infectious disease and ~no~ low vaccination is evidence that vaccines aren’t necessary. Apparently ignorant[0] of the fact that the Amish are notoriously cloistered and isolated from the rest of society. [0] By “ignorant” I don’t mean “has never heard the idea,” but that the degree of motivated reasoning has rendered his mind actually incapable of integrating this fact — like many others — into his world view. I’m drawing this distinction because I don’t think this is a matter of smart people pretending to believe stupid things. They are actually, at rock bottom, very stupid people, rendered such by their own ideological commitments if nothing else.
- babymetal 1y agoIn the spirit of HN I will only point out here this fact: RFK Jr's attack book on Fauci was extremely poorly produced. Specifically, 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, it has an inordinate amount of footnotes which makes it very difficult to imagine a person following them all. I didn't read the book. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/58063409-the-real-anthony-fauci https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/58063409-the-real-anthon... 4.49/5.0 on Goodreads with 8.5K reviews. [edit]: misspelled "imagine"
- sjsdaiuasgdia 1y agoIt'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.
- bananapub 1y agonot just that, it provides an easy vector of corruption - random rich people or think tanks / lobby groups funded by rich people can just buy (or say they buy) pallets of said book, directly transferring cash to the "author".
- giardini 1y agobabymetal 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.
- valgor 1y agoAs an animal rights activist, this will do wonders for the movement. As chicken farms become unprofitable due to all the birds dying, prices will go up. This gives people like me an edge to talk about alternatives. We already do this with egg alternatives due to the increases in egg prices. Hopefully companies like JUST Egg can capitalize on this.
- bamboozled 1y agoI'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.
- AtariATMHacker 1y ago[dead]
- tbrownaw 1y agoIt's cheaper, and most shoppers aren't willing to pay enough extra to cover better treatment. (It's not the shoppers' fault that most of the labels aren't very meaningful? Well no, that means it's not cost-effective to ensure people are aware of that.)
- bamboozled 1y agoIt's more of an assumption that people wouldn't want better food, maybe even more a statement about our culture in general.
- aziaziazi 1y agoJUST Eggs aren’t the only alternative, through: seeds, beans, mushrooms, grains… I guess you know that the reason of shitty treatment is price, would you rather buy 20x priced eggs ? There’s many family farms that would be happy to deliver them anywhere at that rate.
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- cjk 1y agoWhat an absolute clown show this administration is. We’ve had enough pandemics for one lifetime, thanks. The midterms can’t come soon enough. That is our only hope of putting some real checks on this administration any time soon.
- tombert 1y agoSince 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.
- ben_w 1y agoIf you live in the USA, just as the Democrat Party shouldn't rely on it being bad enough to be remembered, individuals shouldn't rely on it being mild enough to be forgotten It might be either, but on a personal level, there's multiple things this administration is actively proud of doing/having done that are so bad I expect a noticable reducion in aggregate US life expectency.
- tombert 1y ago> It might be either, but on a personal level, there's multiple things this administration is actively proud of doing/having done that are so bad I expect a noticable reducion in aggregate US life expectency. I don't disagree with that, I think this administration is terrible and I expect the brain-drain of scientists alone might end up being irreparable damage for the entire country. Not to mention that the fake ChatGPT report released by the CDC will likely cause increased vaccine "skepticism" that would be horrible for everyone. I just think that this is going to have a "bed of nails" effect. They're doing so much horrible shit so frequently, that it can be hard for people to focus on just one, which has the effect of the entire thing not coming off as awful as it probably should. I'm quite convinced that's how Trump won the first election as well.
- BLKNSLVR 1y agoWon't this put the price of eggs way, way in the opposite direction to what Trump wants them to go? It risks the entire local US chicken / egg production industry. They'd have to re-onshore it.
- thomquaid 1y agoThe 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).
- YeGoblynQueenne 1y agoFrom the article it doesn't sound like H5N1 really has a "high survivability rate": >> What's more, the mortality rate of H5N1 is extremely high among common poultry, reaching 100% in domestic chickens.
- cameldrv 1y agoThis is a dude who saw a a dead bear on the highway and decided for some reason to pick it up and put it in the back of his van. Then he realized that he'd forgotten he was supposed to have dinner in Manhattan, so he dumped the bear in Central Park. People that expect anything reasonable from someone like this are absolutely delusional. It's just going to be chaos.
- bananapub 1y ago[flagged]
- mathiaspoint 1y agoI wish the US had an egg futures market the way China does.