The Bird-Flu President

Presidents always seem to have a crisis to deal with. George W. Bush had 9/11. Barack Obama had the Great Recession. Donald Trump had the coronavirus pandemic. Joe Biden had the war in the Middle East. For America’s next president, the crisis might be bird flu.

The United States is in the middle of an unprecedented bout of bird flu, also known as H5N1. Since 2022, the virus has killed millions of birds and spread to mammals, including cows. Dairy farms are struggling to contain outbreaks. A few humans have fallen sick, too—mostly farmworkers who spend a lot of time near chickens or cows—but Americans have largely remained nonplussed by bird flu. No one in the U.S. has died or gotten seriously sick, and the risk to us is considered low, because humans rarely spread the virus to others.

On Friday, the fear of human-to-human spread grew ever so slightly: The CDC confirmed that four health-care workers in Missouri had fallen sick after caring for a patient who was infected with bird flu. A few weeks earlier, three other Missourians showed symptoms of bird flu after coming in contact with the same person. It’s still unclear if the workers were infected with H5N1 or some other respiratory bug; only one has been given an H5N1 test, which came back negative.

The CDC says the risk to humans has not changed, but the incident in Missouri underscores that the virus is only likely to generate more scares about human-to-human transmission. The virus is showing no signs of slowing down. In the absolute worst-case scenario—where Friday’s news is the first sign of the virus freely spreading from person to person—we are hurtling toward another pandemic. But the outbreak doesn’t have to get that dire to create headaches for the American public, and liabilities for the next president.

Either Trump or Kamala Harris will inherit an H5N1 response that has been nightmarishly complex, controversial, and at times slow. Three government agencies—the FDA, the CDC, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture—share responsibility for the bird-flu response, and it’s unclear which agency is truly in charge. The USDA, for example, primarily protects farmers, while the CDC is focused on public health, and the FDA monitors the safety of milk.

Adding to the complexity is that a lot of power also rests with the states, many of which have been loath to involve the feds in their response. States must typically invite federal investigators to assess potential bird-flu cases in person, and some have bristled at the prospect of letting federal officials onto farms. The agriculture commissioner for Texas, which has emerged as one of the bird-flu hot spots, recently said the federal government needs to “back off.” Meanwhile, wastewater samples—a common way to track the spread of a virus—indicate that bird flu is circulating through 10 of the state’s cities.

Government alone can only do so much. Though only 14 Americans have knowingly come down with bird flu, we have a woefully incomplete picture of how widely it is spreading in humans. Since March, about 230 people nationwide have been tested for the virus. Although the federal government has attempted to compel farmworkers to get tested—even offering them $75 to give blood and nasal swabs—it has struggled to make inroads. That could be because of a range of factors, such as distrust of the federal government because of farmworkers’ immigration status, and lack of awareness about the growing threat of bird flu. A USDA spokesperson told me the agency expects testing to increase as it “continues outreach to farmers.”

You should be experiencing some serious déjà vu by now. In 2020, the U.S. was operating in the dark regarding COVID because tests were scarce, many states were not publicly reporting their COVID numbers, and the federal government and states were fighting over lockdowns. The systematic problems that dogged the pandemic response are still impediments today, and it’s unclear whether either candidate has a plan to fix them. Trump and Harris both seem more intent on pretending that the worrying signs of bird flu simply don’t exist. Neither has outlined a plan for containing the virus, or said much of anything publicly about it. (The Trump and Harris campaigns did not respond to requests for comment.) If America is going to avoid repeating our COVID mistakes, things need to change fast. Angela Rasmussen, a virologist at the University of Saskatchewan, highlighted the need for more widespread testing, and vaccinations for those at high risk of catching the virus. (The federal government has a stockpile of bird-flu vaccines, but has not deployed them.)

H5N1 is already showing its potential to spoil both candidates’ promises to lower grocery prices. Poultry flocks have been hit hard by bird flu, and the price of eggs has spiked by 28 percent compared with a year ago. (Inflation also played a role in increased prices, but bird flu is mostly to blame.) The next president will have to spar with America’s dairy industry if they want to get useful data on how widely the virus is spreading. Dairy farmers have been reluctant to test workers or animals for fear of financial losses. But none of this will compare with the disruption that a new president will have to deal with should this virus spread more freely to humans. For Americans, that will likely mean a return to masks, another vaccine to get, and isolation. Some experts are warning that schools could be affected if the virus begins spreading to humans more readily.

Bird flu doesn’t seem like a winning message for either candidate. Talk of preparing for any type of infectious disease triggers the fears of uncertainty, isolation, and inconvenience that Americans are still trying to shake after the pandemic. It’s hard to imagine either Trump or Harris starting their presidency by instituting the prevention measures that so many people have grown to hate. Unfortunately, the next commander in chief may not have a choice.