[seanmcdirmid]

The CDC/FDA assumed culling was better, I’m not an expert. And the point has always been to prevent a human outbreak, not reduce egg prices.

Trump is coming in and saying culling isn’t needed, and he is finding experts that agree with his opinion to back it up. Whatever policy choice coming up, it will be one where science is abused to justify a pre-determined decision rather than using science to come up with the right decision.

[_heimdall]

> The CDC/FDA assumed culling was better, I’m not an expert.

You are taking an agency's assumption as a fact though, its functionally yours at that point. It doesn't matter if someone else says it, it matters if you agree with the logic of how they got there.

> And the point has always been to prevent a human outbreak, not reduce egg prices.

Human transmission has yet to be proven. Culling hundreds of millions of birds to avoid human transmission when we don't even know if that's possible seems idiotic at best, sadistic at worst.

[seanmcdirmid]

> Human transmission has yet to be proven.

Only the quacks say that, the science is firmly in the corner that not only is bird (or bat) to human transmission is possible, it has already happened a few times this season.

This is where having someone like Trump as president isn’t just annoying, but downright deadly.

[_heimdall]

> Only the quacks say that

Not long ago the CDC itself was saying that mammals couldn't catch this strain of avian flu and we had nothing to worry about. Then they found a few milk cows believed to be infected, but they assured us it couldn't kill cows and that the infection couldn't be transmitted through milk.

Where along the way did we go from scientific knowledge that it couldn't jump to humans to only quacks believing such nonsense? More importantly, where are the controlled studies proving transmission from infected birds to humans?

Proving transmissibility of such a pathogen would require something along the lines of Koch's postulates. Unless I missed something extremely important, we haven't done this type of study yet.

[orwin]

I'm not following what CDC said as I'm not from the US, but in my country we had early warning of a big flu season. Poultry farmers were advised to get the flu vaccine in October last year (it's decentralised in my country so it might only have been a local directive), so I doubt a scientific paper ever said 'mammals can't catch this strain'.

[_heimdall]

My point wasn't that transmission had been scientifically disproven though. My point was that the CDC itself was saying that this avian flu couldn't jump to humans - they no longer say this but the earlier commenter claimed that only a quack would say human transmission hasn't been proven.

Where I would expect a scientific paper to come in is to provide a controlled study show transmission from an infected bird to a healthy human. Maybe that has been done, but if so I haven't seen it or ever heard it mentioned anywhere.

[seanmcdirmid]

> My point was that the CDC itself was saying that this avian flu couldn't jump to humans - they no longer say this but the earlier commenter claimed that only a quack would say human transmission hasn't been proven.

Almost all medical research is in the field, and they don't do controlled studies on humans anymore to see if they can get bird flu or not by being in contact with infected birds (can't get it passed the ethics board). It feels like I'm arguing with someone on the spectrum, who states that "we didn't think it was this way before, but now we think it? Impossible!" It is an exhausting argument and I really don't think it is worth our time, except that guy is now president - sigh.