Tangle - The bird flu.

Starting point is 00:00:00 Based on Charles Yu's award-winning book, Interior Chinatown follows the story of Willis Wu, a background character trapped in a police procedural who dreams about a world beyond Chinatown. When he inadvertently becomes a witness to a crime, Willis begins to unravel a criminal web, his family's buried history, and what it feels like to be in the spotlight. Interior Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+. The flu remains a serious disease. Last season, over 102,000 influenza cases have been reported across Canada, which is Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+. yourself from the flu. It's the first cell-based flu vaccine authorized in Canada for ages six months and older, and it may be available for free in your province. Side effects and allergic reactions can occur, and 100% protection is not guaranteed. Learn more at flucellvax.ca.

Starting point is 00:01:00 From executive producer Isaac Saul, this is Tangle. Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening, and welcome to the Tangle podcast, the place we get views from across the political spectrum, some independent thinking, and a little bit of my take. I'm your host, Isaac Saul, and today's my birthday. It is my birthday today. The big 3-3. I'm celebrating. There's nothing big about a 33rd birthday, but very much enjoying myself here. Have some nice plans laid with the wife tonight, go out to dinner, got a couple nice gifts already, really enjoying myself. And I would like to put it out there that for my birthday this year, I have one wish. One wish. Well, two wishes, depending on who you are. If you're not yet a subscriber, my wish is that you go be home on right now. If you've been waiting, you listen to me say that 9 million times a week on the podcast, and you want to support our work, please go to readtangle.com

Starting point is 00:02:10 forward slash membership, or just go to readtangle.com and click the little membership bar up top and become a Tangle member. That's one. If you're already a Tangle member, my second birthday wish is just to share this podcast podcast or just give us a five-star rating or do both. But anything to promote or support Tangle is my B-Day wish for all of you. Thank you guys so much for hanging out and being here with us all this time. It's crazy. This is my fourth birthday running Tangle and we're coming up on five years of Tangle this August, which is totally nuts. So it's always a good time to kind of stop and take stock of things and super grateful, unbelievably grateful for this audience and this community and this media company that we're

Starting point is 00:02:57 building. It's just really fun. All right. So as I'm passing it over to John and you're going to fulfill my birthday wish by subscribing or sharing this podcast with friends, I'm passing it over to John and you're going to fulfill my birthday wish by subscribing or sharing this podcast with friends, I'm going to transition here into our main topic today, which is the bird flu and some of the federal response we're seeing to them, what it might mean for all of us. So I'm going to let John take over the mic and I'll be back for my take. Thanks, Isaac, and a very, very happy birthday to you, fam. I hope it's a good one. And for the rest of you, welcome.

Starting point is 00:03:37 Here are your quick hits for the day. First up, former President Trump is leading President Joe Biden in five out of six swing states, according to a new batch of polling from The New York Times. Number two, Michael Cohen, Trump's former personal lawyer, testified that he met with Trump to review and endorse a plan to reimburse him for paying off adult film star Stormy Daniels just days before Trump's inauguration. Number three, Senator Bob Menendez's corruption trial began yesterday. Menendez is accused of trading his political influence for cash, gold bars, and a Mercedes-Benz convertible. Number four, President Biden announced new tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles, advanced batteries, solar cells, steel, aluminum, and medical equipment. And number five, over 300,000 Gazans have evacuated Rafah as a large-scale Israel invasion

Starting point is 00:04:23 appears imminent. Separately, Israel proposed the Palestinian Authority could unofficially operate the Rafah crossing, according to new reports. There are new fears in this country about the potential impact of the H5N1 bird flu on humans. After it first jumped to dairy cows back in March, the virus has now spread among dairy cattle across nine different states. Officials at the Food and Drug Administration are taking precautions in the case of the current strain of bird flu, just in case it spreads to humans on a large scale here in the U.S. The impacts of bird flu in our state,

Starting point is 00:05:10 the Department of Public Health and Environment says about 70 dairy farm workers are now being monitored for possible symptoms. Those workers were exposed to the virus while working at two Colorado dairy farms, which have not been identified. None of them are reporting symptoms right now. On Friday, the federal government unveiled a package of financial incentives to dairy farm owners that encourages broader testing of cattle for bird flu, known as the avian flu or H5N1, and expand security measures to control a potential outbreak of the virus in cows. The package, which totals $98 million, includes up to $28,000 per farm over the next four months. The Department of Agriculture

Starting point is 00:05:50 has made the money available to farms where infected cows have been identified. In late March, the H5N1 bird flu was detected in cows, alarming agriculture experts as it spread across the country. So far, at least 40 herds in nine states have been infected. In April, federal officials in Texas said a dairy worker was being treated for H5N1, marking just the second human case in the history of the United States. The worker had minor symptoms like eye inflammation, and they have since recovered. On Friday, the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment said it was monitoring 70 dairy farm workers who were exposed in an infected herd. While H5N1 is highly contagious and often deadly in wild birds,

Starting point is 00:06:30 its impact on poultry and other livestock is less understood. Severe infections can cause death in humans, according to a 2023 study, and tests have found that some laboratory monkeys develop acute respiratory disease and die when exposed to the virus. Health officials believe widespread testing of animals and humans will be key to containing the virus so it doesn't spread to the human population, but the stigma associated with bird flu and the cost of controlling it make ranchers reluctant to take on the financial risk, the Washington Post reported. A positive test in a cow would be costly for farmers as an infected cow must be isolated from its group and the milk from the rest of its herd and may not be sold or consumed. Until this month, testing for bird flu was voluntary, which has made it difficult to keep count of just how many herds across the U.S. have become

Starting point is 00:07:13 infected. Some health experts have compared the recommended response to what was required in the early days of the coronavirus pandemic, saying the government needs to coordinate more testing and distribute results faster. This virus, like all viruses, is mutating, FDA Commissioner Robert Califf said on Wednesday. We need to continue to prepare for the possibility that it might jump to humans. FDA officials have also begun testing dairy products sold in grocery stores, which undergo a pasteurization process that kills highly pathogenic strains of the bird flu. Early results have found no live virus in the food supply, confirming the FDA's assessment that the nation's dairy supply is safe. Today, we're going to take

Starting point is 00:07:49 a look at some of the arguments about bird flu from the right and the left, and then Isaac's take. We'll be right back after this quick commercial break. All right, first up, here's what the right is saying. The right is skeptical about the threat posed by the virus, suggesting the public has reason to question public health experts. Some say the federal government is ill-equipped to address any threat the flu poses. Others criticize the U.S. for funding virus experiments with countries like China. In the Wall Street Journal, Alicia Finley wrote about avian flu and the experts who cried wolf. A bird flu pandemic could be a hundred times worse than COVID, media outlets warned, citing experts. Readers rolled their eyes, and for good reason. The

Starting point is 00:08:39 press profits from scaring the public, as does the public health industry, Finley said. COVID-19 spurred governments to spend heavily on public health systems. Yet, should another pandemic occur, the U.S. will be in far worse position to respond to it than it was four years ago. No amount of spending on vaccines and virus surveillance can compensate for the public trust health experts have squandered. It isn't impossible that the H5N1 avian flu, which has transmitted from wild birds to chickens and has been found in cattle, mountain lions, and raccoons, could mutate and spread among humans.

Starting point is 00:09:10 But it isn't likely, Finley wrote. The public health clerisy accuses conservatives of fomenting distrust in science and vaccines. They might look in the mirror. Next pandemic, officials will have a much harder time convincing the public to believe or do anything they say, and they'll have themselves to blame. In Fox News, Betsy McCoy said, Biden is dangerously unready to address the virus. There are too many unknowns to predict whether H5N1 will kill people in the U.S. It seems unlikely, but better to be prepared. Here's what needs to change. Don't censure the scientists, McCoy wrote. Like H5N1, COVID-19 was full of

Starting point is 00:09:46 unknowns. The federal government's biggest mistake was to aim for an illusion of consensus rather than welcoming debate. The feds silenced anyone, including scientists, who disagreed. The result was a long string of deadly mistakes. The government must create a domestic supply chain for hospital supplies and curb dictatorial governors, McCoy said. During COVID-19, state legislatures ceded their authority like sheep to governors, allowing them to shutter schools, churches, businesses, and recreational facilities. Fortunately, some states, including New York, came to their senses and undid those grants of authority or time-limited them. Biden and the left-wing media were highly critical of these states, a sure sign that more states need to curb emergency health powers before the next health crisis.

Starting point is 00:10:28 In the Washington Examiner, Anthony Belotti suggested the USDA and China are creating deadly new bird flus. The bird flu outbreak has cost U.S. taxpayers billions of dollars in rising food costs, new government oversight of food supply, and industry bailout money, too. So why is the Department of Agriculture working with Wuhan-affiliated experimenters in China to create more dangerous bird flu viruses in the lab, Baladi asked? People will be shocked to learn that the USDA, the same agency charged with stemming the current bird flu outbreak,

Starting point is 00:10:57 has wasted at least a million dollars of taxpayer funds in recent years to soup up bird flu viruses and dangerous laboratory experiments conducted in collaboration with Chinese experimenters. This isn't the first bird flu outbreak, and unfortunately, it won't be the last. We shouldn't be openly inviting even more devastation by using U.S. tax dollars to create dangerous new bird flu viruses. Wasn't one deadly pandemic caused by reckless government animal tests in Wuhan enough? Taxpayers shouldn't be forced to fund high-risk virus experiments on animals in collaboration with foreign adversaries. The solution is simple. Stop the money.

Starting point is 00:11:40 All right, that's it for what the right is saying, which brings us to what the left is saying. The left notes some troubling signs about the virus's spread, but views the threat as low for the time being. Some worry that viruses could spread to other mammals before jumping to humans. Others suggest industrial farming practices make these outbreaks more likely. In the Boston Globe, Shira Daron argued, it's time to prepare, not panic. Why is this cattle outbreak a big deal? it's time to prepare, not panic. Why is this cattle outbreak a big deal? Over the past two years, an increasing number of mammalian species have been reported to have contracted the virus and,

Starting point is 00:12:14 for the first time, it appears to be spreading from mammal to mammal in sustained fashion. Since humans are mammals, that phenomenon warrants close attention, Duran wrote. Surveillance shows no increases in human influenza cases across the country. In fact, those numbers are still falling, consistent with the expected springtime drop in respiratory viruses. That likely means, and this is not at all surprising, that pasteurization is working as it should to kill all traces of this virus in milk. Is this my biggest public health concern of the day? At this point, given the numbers, we're far more likely to see cases of measles, which is also orders of magnitude more

Starting point is 00:12:45 contagious. Measles cases are far too common in the United States today due to declining vaccination rates in children, Daron wrote. One thing is clear, with this and future public health incidents, officials should learn from the communication mistakes made through the COVID-19 pandemic and avoid panic-driven decision-making. Based on Charles Yu's award-winning book, Interior Chinatown follows the story of Willis Wu, a background character trapped in a police procedural who dreams about a world beyond Chinatown. When he inadvertently becomes a witness to a crime, Willis begins to unravel a criminal web, his family's buried history, and what it feels like to be in the spotlight. Interior Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+. The flu remains a serious disease. Last season, over 102,000

Starting point is 00:13:30 influenza cases have been reported across Canada, which is nearly double the historic average of 52,000 cases. What can you do this flu season? Talk to your pharmacist or doctor about getting a flu shot. Consider FluCellVax Quad and help protect yourself from the flu. It's the first cell-based flu vaccine authorized in Canada for ages six months and older, and it may be available for free in your province. Side effects and allergic reactions can occur, and 100% protection is not guaranteed. Learn more at FluCellVax.ca. In Bloomberg, F.D. Flam said, if pigs get bird flu, we could be in for a real nightmare. Pigs are capable of harboring both human flu and bird flu,

Starting point is 00:14:13 allowing the viruses to mix and match parts of their genetic material. A 2009 flu pandemic started with pig-to-human transmission. That strain, called H1N1, wasn't deadlier than seasonal flu, but that was just a lucky break, Flam wrote. Now is the time to get ahead of 2024's H5N1 virus with systematic testing of both sick and healthy-looking animals, including pigs. Right now, there's no system to compensate farmers for H5N1-infected cows or pigs, which means that they have no incentive to let public health officials do enough testing. So, it's up to our political leaders to make further policy changes so that farmers are encouraged to work with scientists, Flam said. This must be extended to testing of healthy-looking animals.

Starting point is 00:14:49 Failing to test asymptomatic animals would be a mistake akin to the insufficient testing for COVID-19 in early 2020. That was one of the most egregious public health mistakes of that pandemic. In The New Republic, Melody Schreiber wrote, Avian flu is our fault. Experts have been warning the public for decades about how industrial animal farming can make disease more likely, leading to the emergence of old or new viruses. Once bird flu gets into large-scale poultry, or now a dairy operation, it can spread quickly in cramped confines and then spread to other farms before spilling back into wild birds and animals, Schreiber said. It's also possible that people may spread the virus by tracking the virus into and out of

Starting point is 00:15:28 farms on their unwashed boots or transportation vehicles. We're getting the story of bird flu backward. The way that we farm animals in the U.S. and the world is amplifying costly and potentially deadly pathogens, Schreiber wrote. Stopping this outbreak and preventing future outbreaks means reckoning with a troubling paradox. Food is essential for our health, but the conditions under which we create our food is making us and the animals around us sick. All right, now we're going to send it back over to Isaac for his take. All right, that is it for what the right and the left are saying, which brings us to my take. So first of all, I'm not going to pretend that I became a bird flu expert overnight. I kind of hate when people do that. I mean, I get a little bit of a weird feeling reading some columnists

Starting point is 00:16:22 who I've followed for a long time and never seen them talk about anything that has to do with epidemiology or, you know, zoonic diseases or whatever. And then all of a sudden they're writing authoritatively about something like the bird flu. I'm not an epidemiologist. I don't know a lot about zoonic viruses like the rest of you. I learned a lot during the pandemic during the last few years. So the last thing I'm going to do here is tell you what's going to happen or what isn't. I would say my very amateurish prediction is that this is going to be a lot more like the monkey pox scare of August 2022. Do you remember that? Then it is going to be like the COVID-19 pandemic. But please do not make any health or lifestyle decisions based on what I am saying here,

Starting point is 00:17:05 because I am not somebody who knows what they're talking about when it comes to these viruses. That said, I will share some things that I do believe strongly that are more related to the government. I do know what I'm talking about, I like to think, in that arena. So first of all, yes, it is actually the government's responsibility to handle problems like this. A few writers on the right are criticizing the government throwing money at this problem, or the response from the feds, or the involvement of government regulators in the testing, monitoring, or even creation of bird flus, but I don't buy that line of thinking. On the contrary,

Starting point is 00:17:40 I'm not sure who else would handle tasks like these. Aside from enforcing the laws and protecting us with a standing army, I struggle to think of many things that fall more clearly in the government purview than oversight of this kind. Protecting Americans by monitoring our food supplies along with our water, our air, and energy is a core function of the government. It's something I want regulators, not the food industry, taking the lead on. So I'm glad to see the feds trying to step in and take control of this problem. Criticizing their response is actually pretty easy, but I really can't think of any major thing that I'd be doing differently based on their actions so far. I hope the FDA continues to prioritize creating strong incentives

Starting point is 00:18:22 for farmers to test and isolate sick animals, monitoring the human workers closely, and getting as many tests out as possible. We may not have learned enough from COVID, but one very obvious takeaway is that testing and isolating are good ways to monitor and contain a virus. For what it's worth, I thought every writer we cited today had at least one good point to make. Under what the right is saying, Alicia Finley was right to note that the press profits from scaring the public, as does the public health industry, and we should be wary of overblown headlines saying bird flu could be 100 times worse than COVID, like the New York Post recently said. Betsy McCoy is right that

Starting point is 00:19:01 the Biden administration needs to allow robust public debate among scientists and ensure we have domestic supplies to manage a potential major bird flu outbreak. And Anthony Bilotti is right that scientific research can sometimes lead to dangerous outbreaks, though, to be clear, I have not seen any evidence yet that this is what we are witnessing here. And under what the left is saying, Shira Doron is right to call for plans, not panic, and also right to point out that the current threat of measles is probably much greater than the threat of bird flu. F.D. Flam is right to warn about H5N1 jumping to pigs and to call for the testing of healthy-looking animals. And Melody Schreiber is right to note that we are actually

Starting point is 00:19:40 partially to blame for outbreaks in livestock, and we should be thinking long and hard about the way industrial farming, a relatively new phenomenon, risks making disease outbreaks like this more common and more dangerous. Again, all of these are good observations coming from all across the political spectrum. Our focus now should be on expanding testing and observation, keeping our wits about us, and having a plan for a worst-case scenario. We'll be right back after this quick break. All right, that is it for my take, which brings us to your questions answered. This one's from Micah in New York. Micah said, I just attended the New York City event for the election debate, and I was wondering

Starting point is 00:20:29 if you could tell me about how you selected your panelists. I wish I could have asked it in person, but alas. Okay, so picking guests for an event is actually quite difficult. It's a lot more like finding people to come on the podcast than people to cite in our daily newsletter. A big reason why finding guests is hard is that great writers aren't always great speakers. I found that a lot of writers create work I respect and admire, but I'd never invite them to appear on the podcast

Starting point is 00:20:56 or at a live event because I don't think the way they articulate their views would make for a great product. So first and foremost, we are looking for people who we know can show up and hold their own on stage, immediately limiting the candidate pool. Next, of course, is that we are looking for ideological diversity. For the New York event, we reached out to about a dozen conservatives, a dozen liberals, and a dozen quote-unquote

Starting point is 00:21:19 never-Trump Republicans, libertarians, or people whose political ideology we just couldn't identify. Given that we were talking about the 2024 election, we wanted someone who could articulate Trump's worldview well on stage, someone who could articulate Biden's, and another person who could represent more of an independent or undecided voter. After that, we try to find people with similar areas of expertise who can speak to each other. So far, this has been the hardest part. You don't want to put someone on stage who only writes about economic news with other pundits who are immigration experts or generalists. You want people who can spar competently on the topics

Starting point is 00:21:54 of discussion. In New York, we talked about the 2024 election, so we found people with a lot of experience discussing that topic. On the whole, those are the big things we shoot for. At this past event, something interesting actually happened. We had two guests who bailed at the last minute. One was Camille Fosser, the host of the Fifth Column podcast. We ended up replacing him with his co-host, Michael Moynihan, who stole the show with a lot of well-timed humor. Katrina Vanden Heuvel, the editorial director of The Nation, backed out late in the game, too. We replaced her with Katherine Rample, a columnist of The Washington Post who I thought did an

Starting point is 00:22:29 excellent job making the case against Trump and for the Biden economy. The one person we had booked from the beginning was Josh Hammer, a fast-talking conservative legal expert and editor at Newsweek who I thought did a very good job making the case that some of Trump's legal troubles were overblown and that his trade policies were the right thing for America. In the end, the guests felt like equal sparring partners who represented a lot of ideological diversity on stage. I was pretty happy with the result, but it is never easy getting the right collection of people together. And for what it's worth, if you want to check out the event, you can scroll back a few episodes. We actually published the full audio of that on our podcast channel, and you can go listen

Starting point is 00:23:07 to it. All right, that is it for your questions answered. I'm going to throw it back to John for the rest of the podcast and go try to enjoy some of my birthday. See all you guys tomorrow. Have a good one. Thanks, Isaac. Here's your Under the Radar story for today, folks.

Starting point is 00:23:26 Controversy has erupted over the way the United Nations is counting the death toll in Gaza. Late last week, the UN Office for the Coordination of Human Affairs, or OCHA, revised the data it used to tally the number of Palestinian casualties, reducing the number of women and children it had said were killed by half. Then on Monday, the United Nations clarified that the overall death toll tracked by the Gaza health ministry remains unchanged at over 35,000. But the UN's latest report only included fatalities of women and children whose names and other identifying details have not been fully documented. The identified fatality total is distinct from the total number of women and children killed, and the UN is relying on the

Starting point is 00:24:03 Gaza health ministry for both figures, UN spokesperson Farhan Haq said. Fox News has a story on the revision, while CNN has the latest UN comments. You can check out both those links in today's episode description. All right, next up is our numbers section. The year H5N1 was first identified in southern China was 1996, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The year of the first human case of H5N1 in the U.S. was 2022. The number of detected cases of H5N1 in birds in the U.S. since 2022 is 90,892,846. The number of U.S. states with confirmed cases of H5N1 in birds to date is 48. The number of human deaths caused by H5N1 worldwide since 2003 is 463. And the number of countries with

Starting point is 00:24:55 reported cases of H5N1 in humans is 23. All right, and last but not least, our Have a Nice Day story. All right, and last but not least, our have a nice day story. In Kruger Park, South Africa, a baby elephant stumbled into a woman's yard, dehydrated and alone after being separated from his herd. Thankfully, South Africa's first elephant rehabilitation center was not far away. Hoadsbrood Elephant Rehabilitation and Development, or HERD, took in the orphaned elephant and named him Fabeni. Now, Fabeni is learning to walk in a pack with sheep and how to suckle from Lundy, his adopted mother. Lundy surrounded him immediately,

Starting point is 00:25:31 protectively reversing toward him and touching his trunk with her own. It was an absolutely heartwarming introduction, Hurt said. Sunny Skies has the story and videos, and you can check those out in a link in today's episode description. All right, everybody, that's it for today's podcast. As always, if you'd like to support our work, and especially because today is Isaac's birthday, you can go to readtangle.com and sign up for a membership. And again, to our founder, our CEO, our favorite writer and voice on the podcast, I just want to take a second to say happy birthday, brother. I hope you're having a great day, man. And yeah, I hope you get everything you wish for,

Starting point is 00:26:11 especially more Tangle memberships. And to everybody else from Isaac and the rest of the crew here at Tangle, this is John Law signing off. Have a great day, y'all. Peace. Our podcast is written by me, Isaac Saul, and edited and engineered by John Wall. The script is edited by our managing editor, Ari Weitzman, Will Kedak, Bailey Saul, and Sean Brady. The logo for our podcast was designed by Magdalena Bacova, who is also our

Starting point is 00:26:41 social media manager. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet75. If you're looking for more from Tangle, please go to readtangle.com and check out our website. Based on Charles Yu's award-winning book, We'll be right back. begins to unravel a criminal web, his family's buried history, and what it feels like to be in the spotlight. Interior Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+. The flu remains a serious disease. Last season, over 102,000 influenza cases have been reported across Canada, which is nearly double the historic average of 52,000 cases. What can you do this flu season? Talk to your pharmacist or doctor about getting a flu shot. Consider FluCellVax Quad and help protect yourself from the flu. It's the first cell-based flu vaccine authorized in Canada for ages six months and older, and it may be available for free in your province. Side effects and allergic reactions can occur, and 100% protection is not guaranteed.

Starting point is 00:27:59 Learn more at FluCellVax.ca.

Tangle - The bird flu.

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