A Shocking Warning from A Former CDC Director
Topic # 91
In my sci-fi political thriller, Black Swan Impact, Dr. Syia Case warns executive leaders that “the genie is out of the bottle” when they discuss an emerging biothreat. The virus in my novel is not COVID or the Bird flu, but earie echoes cannot be dismissed. Today we will look at a warning from Robert Redfield, former Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
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On June 15, 2024, an article in The Hill posted this bold headline: Former CDC director predicts bird flu pandemic and quoted Robert Redfield, “I really do think it’s very likely that we will, at some time, it’s not a question of if, it’s more of a question of when we will have a bird flu pandemic.1” As you have read in my Substack articles and in Black Swan Impact, pandemics are cyclical. That fact kept me busy as an emergency manager who planned and prepared the federal government for such a crisis. There are many biothreats, so it is important to understand why Redfield raise the alarm over Avian influenza.
Perhaps the reasons are these:
Bird flu has been an ongoing panzootic. (See Topic # 71.)
The World Health Organization (WHO) identified the first human death from avian influenza on June 5, 2024, in Mexico.
On June 11, 2024, the WHO confirmed a case of H9N2 in India.
There is an ongoing, perhaps misunderstood outbreak of bird flu in the United States (US). (See Topic # 86.)
The people in Mexico and India contracted different strains than that of the outbreak in cattle in the US. The strain in Mexico was H5N2, the strain in India was H9N2, and the strain the US is H5N1. Nonetheless, H5N2 and H9N2 are types of bird flu. But there is one more concern that may have prompted Redfield to sound the alarm. Knowing that the avian virus must mutate to be an effective parasite that can harm humans, he reported that the necessary sequencing had been mapped out. “[I]n 2012, against my recommendation, the scientists that did these experiments actually published them[,] [s]o, the recipe for how to make bird flu highly [infectious] for humans is already out there.2” That translates into one more bullet point that likely caused Redfield to declare Avian influenza will become a human pandemic.
Any motivated bad actor has access to the information needed to weaponize H5N1.
Welcome to my former professional world. Natural and manmade biothreats abound. Just when the next pandemic might outbreak is anyone’s guess. In fact, we still are in one. However, it is possible to have concurrent pandemics. Pandemic fatigue may cause many to ignore actions that we can undertake now to prevent or mitigate future biothreat catastrophes. If we champion prudent emergency management and public health practices, particularly in unified efforts, we will be better off.
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Next week’s topic addresses the advantages of codifying a world pandemic agreement.