HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins have expressed interest in letting H5N1 outbreaks spread unchecked through U.S. poultry farms. Health experts warn it could lead to a new pandemic.
If the pressure is right, the virus should evolve to be less lethal. If the virus kills its host before infecting a new host, then that evolution is not advantageous. This is why low contact was a good tactic for COVID. Only the strains that were less lethal would continue and out complete the ones that kill people.
Unfortunately I doubt that he would mandate a good management of this. In a environment like barn chickens live in, the virus can transmit so regularly that the lethality is not a pressure for it.
Yeah, but it could take several generations of chickens until “resistant” evolves into being immune enough to not lose half the flock every time.
And in the mean time since human farmers will have to be tending to the chickens in some way, there always a risk of the virus jumping to humans.
7th grade science test question: What would evolve faster, a virus that can create millions of new copies every day, or a chicken.
Apparently RFK jr thinks the chickens will evolve immunity faster than the virus can evolve to jump to humans.
If the pressure is right, the virus should evolve to be less lethal. If the virus kills its host before infecting a new host, then that evolution is not advantageous. This is why low contact was a good tactic for COVID. Only the strains that were less lethal would continue and out complete the ones that kill people.
Unfortunately I doubt that he would mandate a good management of this. In a environment like barn chickens live in, the virus can transmit so regularly that the lethality is not a pressure for it.
I think it’s less that they evolve and more that we just select the already resistant chickens.
Yeah, but it could take several generations of chickens until “resistant” evolves into being immune enough to not lose half the flock every time. And in the mean time since human farmers will have to be tending to the chickens in some way, there always a risk of the virus jumping to humans.