The Highwire with Del Bigtree - US OFFICIALS WON’T LEAN ON VACCINES TO FIGHT BIRD FLU

Episode Date: March 19, 2025

While the USDA has officially approved an Avian Flu vaccine for poultry, we dive into the perilous outcome in countries who mass vaccinate chickens for H5N1 and HHS Secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr’s response on why acting head of all 3 US health agencies all recommend against the bird flu vaccine.Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-highwire-with-del-bigtree--3620606/support.

Let's talk bird flu. Last week you had Dr. Peter McCullough on, and your segment with him really has had millions of views over this past week, super informative, and we're still in the news cycle. Let's talk egg prices. This is CNN. Egg prices are finally following their reporting. They're saying they're going to go up again because of Eastern Passover. But let's look at this chart here. We have egg prices.

This is the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the USDA. They combine their information. And you can see a big drop in the egg prices. There were about $5.18 a dozen there on the far right. So that's kind of an indicator of what's going on. If you just loop it all in, there's a mass calling. Can I bent for a second, Jeffrey? I just want to say this is one of those places where I really hate how disingenuous the news is.

Like, you know, Trump said he was going to lower prices. But look at the prices of eggs. I mean, clearly killing and killing 120 million chickens in the United States of America, which was mostly done under the Biden. administration is going to make your eggs go up. Does that actually, you know, weigh in on our economy? I mean, I just find that, you know, again, it's just misinformation. Obviously, this is an issue and whether or not you believe we should be calling chickens or not, can we at least admit that that may not be directly tied to our currency, but the fact that we just wiped out our entire,

you know, supply of eggs and chickens across this country. I just wanted to vent there for a second because, I mean, I call it out on all sides, but that is some baloney the way they've been reporting on this. It's super important narrative control. Remember, COVID caused the economy to crash. No, it was lockdowns. Right. Bird flu calling caused a egg price to go up. Yeah. They say just bird flu caused it to go up. No. So we have secretary, agriculture secretary, Brooke Rollins, and she, just a couple weeks ago, she wrote a large extended piece in the Wall Street Journal. And she titled it, My Plan to Lower egg prices. And in there, you start going through biosecurity

measures, increased safety on farms. But then number three, it says USDA is exploring the use of vaccines and therapeutics for laying chickens. While vaccines aren't a standalone solution, we'll provide up to 100 million in research and development of vaccines and therapeutics to improve their efficacy and efficiency. But it also goes down to say USDA hasn't yet authorized the use of a vaccine. So it was hanging out there, but people are like, okay, 100 million dollars, looks like they're moving in that direction. And then at the same time, you have science.org produces this. this headline, pandemic now, prepare now for a potential H5N1 pandemic. And you go in here and the entire article is about a vaccine, it says first,

an effort to develop rapidly scalable pandemic influenza vaccines building on models such as Operation Warpspe. Now this is for people we're talking about, should engage industry governments regulators in the scientific community with equitable access supported by a funded global framework. But then it says second, a comprehensive outreach and communications program supported by behavioral science. should work to better understand and respond to concerns about vaccines and rebuild trust in public health. So let's get this vaccine out for people and let's find out why they're hesitant. Let's study that. So we're talking the vaccine for poultry, vaccine for people, and that's where it's going.

And then you have Zodis, this is a drug manufacturer, one of the largest manufacturers of livestock vaccines and drugs. The CEO does the tour in the media and look like this. All right. So what it says it just got approval from the USDA for its avian flu vaccine for poultry. Joining us now for an exclusive interview. Zouetta's CEO, Kristen Peck, and she joins us on set. Welcome. It's great to have you here.

Thank you. It is great to be here, especially after such excellent results and the great news of our conditional licensure of our high path avian fluency for poultry. So I do actually want to start right there because we've seen what egg prices are doing in the midst of this bird flu. We've seen it spread to other types of animals. We've seen it spread even to some humans. We've seen it show up in the inflation data just this week. What does this vaccine mean and how quickly can it be deployed?

Sure. I mean, what we've seen is a significant impact to the poultry industry from high path avian fluenza across the globe, but certainly in the U.S., especially in the layer population, which is driving the increase in the egg prices. We've also seen it, as you know, in dairy cattle, and it's now in humans. So it's a very one health. We've been working with the administration and with Congress, and we're very excited today to get the licensure for it in poultry, which,

which we think will be a tool that we will help support the government as they, you know, deem necessary. So we'll continue to do whatever the government wants there. So again, completely bypassing idea of the calling is what's driving up the prices of eggs. And as she says there, all the buzzwords, it's a very one health. And then they go, the bottom line there, takeaway is she says, we're waiting for the, basically waiting for the government to give us direction. We have this great new approval, but we're not doing anything without government approval. That's essentially where we're at.

So let's talk about the science here because vaccinating poultry, vaccinating large flocks of chickens, this is something that is not new. This is something that has been happening for a long time. In 2018, Quantum Magazine did a report on this, and they had disease ecologist Andrew Reed. He's an expert in this area. Vaccines are pushing pathogens to evolve. And it says the problem with leaky vaccines, Reed says, Andrew Reed, is that they enable pathogens to replicate unchecked. while also protecting hosts from illness and death, thereby removing the costs associated with increased virulence. Over time, then, in a world of leaky vaccinations, a pathogen might evolve to become

deadlier to unvaccinated hosts because it can reap the benefits of virulence without the costs. Much as Merrick's disease has slowly become more lethal and unvaccinated chickens, this virulence can also cause the vaccine to start failing by causing illness in vaccinated hosts. And we go further, ScienceD.Ory actually released a study, looking at, so that's AmeriX disease, that's kind of one example, but let's look at actual avian influenza virus throughout the world because other countries are vaccinating their flocks. Here is the association of poultry vaccination and transmission, and it goes on to say there are concerns that mass vaccination against H5 avian influenza virus could affect the molecular

evolution of the virus. For example, after the introduction of mass vaccination against H5N1 AIV in China, a notable increase in the evolutionary rate of H5N1AIV was, observed during 2005 and 2010. So in five years, they had an increase. But then it goes on to say in North America, the evolutionary rate of that of H5N2 in Mexico was inferred to be higher between 93 and 2002 after a period of mass vaccination in this region compared to the regular evolutionary rate of H5 AIV in the United States where vaccination was not used. And finally, it says this avian influenza virus lineages that circulated in Egypt and Indonesia, where vaccination against H5N1 is prevalent are characterized by higher evolutionary rates and a greater number of

positively selected sites in the hemaglutin gene compared to the countries where vaccination is absent, such as Nigeria, Turkey, and Thailand. So that's a long-winded way to say it moves faster in vaccinated communities of chickens. And so we have the science. And wouldn't it be great if government was listening? Here's RFK Jr. All right. We've, in fact, said to USDA that they should consider maybe the possibility of letting it run through the flock so that we can identify the birds

and preserve the birds that are immune to it. The vaccines do not, there is no indication that those vaccines actually provide sterilizing immunity. And all three of my health agencies, NIH, CDC, and FDA, the acting heads of those agencies have all recommended against the use of the bird flu vaccine for that particular genotype because the vaccine could actually promote antigenic shift, which means you're turning those birds into mutant factories and that could actually accelerate a jump to human beings. There's never in history that we know of. Bird flu has been around for

for a hundred years, there's never been human to human transition. I mean, I watch a lot of the chatter online and in think tanks around this that are, you know, we've talked about it. Bobby is catching heat from both sides. You know, what good is he if he's not going to, you know, do anything for vaccinations? And every week, Jeffrey, I mean, this is a massive, massive shift in the thinking inside of our health agencies. And I mean, if you, if you, You've been watching this the way that we have and studied this. People don't realize, you know, what a disaster we just averted in vaccinating these chickens. Had anyone else been ahead of HHS, I guarantee you, that was the approach.

It was going to be use a vaccine. We know nothing about that looks like it's failing, that all around the world is failing, is going to pressure this virus to get more virulent, more dangerous, and potentially more capable of jumping from animals into human beings. And finally, finally, we have a clear thinking person that is so well educated on this, despite what mainstream media tried to say about Robert Kennedy Jr. This is a guy like you and I that has read every study, every trial, knows the Merrick studies around the chickens. And my God, is it a breath of fresh air to hear actual science being discussed here and not an agenda pushed by a pharmaceutical industry that's just trying to make, you know, millions, if not billions of dollars off. of a new useless or even dangerous vaccine. Yeah, and you can see it's influencing.

I mean, the hammer's been put down now. So that Wall Street Journal article by Secretary of Agriculture, Brooke Rollins, just a couple weeks ago, this is the exclusive interview for statement she released to Breitbart. She says, vaccines are off the table now. And it goes on to say this. This is at her actual quote, because she had a numbered, a bunch of numbers of things she wanted to do.

She said the fifth one that has perhaps taken a little bit more of the space and I assume was the vaccine piece, Rollin said. The idea was that initially before I rolled a plan out, the thought was maybe the vaccine is the solution here and that maybe we need to stick a couple hundred million chickens with vaccines so we could potentially move out of this crisis quicker. But what I learned is that looking at countries like Mexico that actually do vaccinate their egg layers

is that those chickens have to be stuck three or four or five times with those vaccine shots. And then 80 to 83 percent of those chickens still get the avian bird flu. So I pulled that off the table. And for a lot of reasons, we are not going to be moving off the table on mandatory vaccines now or frankly, ever. So to your point, this is a big, big movement. Absolutely huge. And once again, now what you're seeing is transparency in science. Not only is Bobby stating it, the head of the USDA is finally telling you how the science works. These are leaking vaccines, which makes them more dangerous.

It makes, as Bobby well put, turns them into incubators for future viruses that could be even worse. So it's an amazing story. And I love seeing this transition now into science. It's great. And as we're moving into this kind of health, we call the revolution, just of the transparency, our immune systems are under attack. This is a fact. And there's a lot of reasons for this. Last week, we talked about a study out of Yale.

It was a preprint, but it showed that the spike protein was, still circulating in people after the COVID shot, 709 days later. That shouldn't be happening. We had a lot of ideas of why that may be happening, but people's immune system were challenged because of that in this study. They were taking the heat of trying to just

neutralize these spike proteins that keep coming.