The entire political establishment is in agreement on the need to enforce the pro-corporate policy of “forever COVID,” in which the working class and broad layers of society as a whole are condemned to unending waves of mass infection, death and debilitation with Long COVID.
I think the government has a good handle on COVID-19 now with more-or-less mass vaccination, so it's not going to cause mass deaths and disabilities.
I'm more worried about H5N1 bird flu, more currently the affect it's having on milk and egg prices (over USD$12/doz. yikes!) and the potential to mutate to direct human-to-human transmission.
Overall, the mortality (death) rate for bird flu in humans is high — historically, about half of all people with known infections have died. But most recent cases in the U.S. have been mild.
Overall, the mortality (death) rate for bird flu in humans is high — historically, about half of all people with known infections have died. But most recent cases in the U.S. have been mild.
This is a good thing in immunology, actually. Diseases with extremely high severity rates tend to not spread through a population because it incapacitates their host too quickly- Ebola is a classic example. Fucking insane severity, but bad to the point where it hasn't ever spread to epidemic proportions because it's super easy to recognize then isolate. Ebola outbreaks have been (mostly, sans 2014) limited to small geographic areas of small populations.
This only matters if it incapacitates the host quickly enough that they don't spread it, which isn't necessarily closely related to its deadliness. In the 1980s, AIDS was a death sentence, but that didn't make HIV less transmissible.
Depends where you shop and where they source them from. Once that source gets hit and they have to cull their entire flock, you'll see the price increase.
In 2024 up to week 50, there have been 45,447 deaths involving COVID-19. This is compared to 159,940 deaths involving flu or pneumonia and 2,892,661 deaths from all causes in the same time frame.
Easy way to avoid high egg/dairy prices, drastically or completely eliminate your chance of getting it, and reduce the spread of it overall: just don't eat 'em. Consider making some chili instead.