In the run up to the November elections, then-Republican vice presidential candidate J.D. Vance famously blamed Democrat presidential candidate Kamala Harris for spiking the price of eggs.

“Let’s talk about eggs. Eggs, when Kamala Harris took office were short of $1.50 a dozen. Now, a dozen eggs will cost you around $4, thanks to Kamala Harris’ inflationary policies.”

It’s true egg prices are through the roof. The Consumer Price Index for last November showed the price of eggs jumped 8.2% from October and spiked 37.5% year over year.

But Vance is oh so wrong on why egg prices are out of control. Inflation really has very little to do with it. The driving culprit is the spread of bird flu across the country. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says more that 133 million birds have been detected with the highly pathogenic viruses since January 2022. All those dead chickens directly impact the U.S. egg supply. And fewer eggs combined with higher holiday demand equals higher retail egg prices. 

Since the fall elections, Donald Trump admitted bringing down the cost of groceries would be some feat: “I’d like to bring them down. It’s hard to bring things down once they’re up. You know, it’s very hard.” 

But when it comes to the bird flu, the Trump White House has much bigger problems than the cost of eggs. And it better be paying attention.

That’s because the bird flu can infect dairy cows.

USDA confirmed the first-ever case of bird flu infection of a dairy cow on a farm in Texas last March. Less than a week later on April 1, tests confirmed the first reported human case of bird flu in the U.S.

As of mid-January, the CDC reported that 928 U.S. dairy herds in 16 states were infected with bird flu as well as 67 people.

Just as disconcerting: in December, a Louisiana man, who contracted the first human case of severe bird flu, died. The CDC reported genetic mutations that could potentially make it easier for bird flu to spread more easily from person to person.  

Reportedly the man likely was infected following exposure to birds carrying the D1.1 genotype virus. While different from the virus genotype currently infecting almost 100% of U.S. dairy cow herds, the man’s death is a clear warning sign that bird flu needs close monitoring and potential rapid response.

The National Institutes of Health admitted the current strain of H5N1, with just a single glutamine to leucine mutation, would make human-to-human infection possible. Efforts are underway to develop a new vaccine, in the event of a pandemic.

Federal and state health officials got off to a rocky start in deciding how to work together to understand the potential threat of bird flu on dairy cattle. The governmental turf war created unnecessary delay as bird flu infected dairy cattle from Hawaii to Florida.

It was only last month that USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service finally announced a national milk testing program and other requirements to understand what in blue blazes is going on.

The Fed’s sluggish response to these emerging bird flu outbreaks is too familiar. Recall the U.S. train wreck in dealing with COVID. The nadir, perhaps, was when then President Donald Trump publicly encouraged his top health officials to study the injection of bleach into the human body as a means of fighting COVID:

“I see the disinfectant that knocks it out in a minute, one minute. And is there a way we can do something like that by injection inside or almost a cleaning? As you see, it gets in the lungs, it does a tremendous number on the lungs, so it would be interesting to check that.” 

Earlier this week, Trump was inaugurated for a second term. So it is fair to ask how the Trump White House will treat bird flu. The CDC continues to stress that public health risk is low. But the risk of a worldwide COVID pandemic was also low … until it wasn’t.  

Have the feds learned from their blunders in dealing with COVID? If bird flu mutates in such a way that allows easy spread from human to human, will the government be ready? That one cannot confidently answer those questions with “yes” and “yes” should be upsetting. 

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