To the editor: As a retired public health and emergency medicine physician, I want to thank you for your recent articles about the bird flu (H5N1), most recently those articles by Times reporters Susanne Rust and Melissa Gomez. (“Despite warnings from bird flu experts, it’s business as usual in California dairy country,” Nov. 26)
The combination of a mutating and potentially virulent virus, industrial animal agriculture, a poorly immunized and highly vaccine-skeptical human population and an incoming presidential administration whose members have shown contempt for science is a witch’s brew for a pandemic that could make COVID-19 look like a walk in the park.
Please continue your coverage of what could become a matter of life and death for millions of humans and other sentient beings.
Fred Leonard, M.D., Saddlebrooke, Ariz.
..
To the editor: Great! A flu strain that in the recent past killed half of the humans confirmed to have been infected is now found in cows and is reportedly infecting the workers. It could evolve into a strain that can infect and spread efficiently among humans.
In response to this, those running the dairy farm your reporters visited are basically saying, “Meh, nothing to see here.”
Our arrogance and greed are astounding. This flu strain, if it takes off, could make COVID-19 look like the sniffles. Yet just after 1.2 million Americans perished in the last pandemic, it looks like we couldn’t care less about another one.
Do we have a death wish or what?
Mike Aguilar, Costa Mesa