Editorials: Mutating virus

Fast-moving mutation and spread of avian flu to humans should set off alarms and be met with an all-out effort to protect health and a reliable, safe food supply. Unfortunately, there is a prevailing agreement in the scientific community that government efforts to control spread of the virus have been too little, too late.

We watched in frustration over a decade as congressional funding for livestock disease research has been stunted by incompetence in budgeting and cowardice in facing up to challenges that could turn into the next crippling pandemic.

The flu has come at a terrible cost to Northwest Iowa as millions of birds have been eradicated and production interrupted. There are economic losses and psychic costs to wasting millions of hens or turkeys. Now, there is an imminent threat to human health and safety.

The government reported Thursday that the virus showed mutations in a man in Louisiana and a girl in Canada that would make it easier for the virus to spread to other humans. The observations were made after scores of humans contracted the disease, most of them dairy workers who exhibited mild symptoms. More severe cases have started to emerge.

Scientists surveyed by KFF Health News of the Kaiser Family Foundation said they have been dismayed at the response to the persistent flu, from not testing milk to not vaccinating workers. Government credibility is crucial to food safety.

“We are in a terrible situation and going into a worse situation,” Angela Rasmussen, a virologist at the University of Saskatchewan in Canada, told KFF Health News. “I don’t know if the bird flu will become a pandemic, but if it does, we are screwed.”

The Centers for Disease Control called the mutation findings “concerning” in a prepared statement.

The USDA recently ordered bulk milk testing for the virus. Pasteurized milk is safe to drink. Mammals such as cats have died from eating contaminated meat, which suggests that not enough testing is being done. Cats can allow the virus to mutate into forms that more easily transmit to humans. Swine also have been infected with avian flu, and they are excellent carriers to humans.

Corporate concerns should not hinder human health and safety. We need vaccination of people who work with livestock immediately. We need broader testing to protect the animal and human food supplies. We need a farm bill that specifically provides for more research and preventative funding into livestock disease, which becomes human disease. It is time to quit fooling around.

Another warning

Iowans would do well to heed the warnings of Chris Glonginger, senior climate scientist at Woods Hole Group and a former KCCI-TV meteorologist, who notes that 2024 will be the second-warmest year on record for Des Moines. Of the 10 warmest years, seven occurred after 1950.

Further, Glonginger notes in his latest column on Substack, in 1879 Des Moines saw temperatures rise above 60 degrees 192 days per year. Now days above 60 degrees number two weeks longer.

“Fewer subfreezing days mean fewer opportunities for the soil to rest in winter, for pests to die off, and for the ecosystems that rely on cold to thrive. It’s not just about comfort or inconvenience—it’s about a fundamental reshaping of the environment,” he explains.

His ruminations have been voiced and put to paper many times before, including in the quadrennial National Climate Assessment. It cautions us that the number of days rising above 90 degrees in southern Iowa, at least, will be inhospitable to corn pollination and could cut a third off yield potential.

People have a hard time coming to grips with it, but the effects are real. It leads to disease when waterfowl routes are altered by drought. It leads to new kinds of crop pests and more efforts to control them. Denying it as a hoax won’t water the hogs for long.