We may have just rung in a new year, but it feels like epidemiological Groundhog Day. Nearly five years since COVID-19 was declared a global pandemic, health experts are once again sounding the alarm. This time it is the H5N1 virus – also known as bird flu or bird flu – that is causing concern. Although federal authorities have had enough time to contain the spread, the virus has spread virtually unabated from state to state over the past decade, infecting herds of cattle, poultry, pigs and people. There is still no evidence that bird flu can be transmitted between humans, but if the virus continues on its current trajectory, experts say we could be facing at least a devastating pandemic on the scale of COVID-19. And just like in 2020, the US is facing the next major virus outbreak, with none other than President Donald J. Trump at the helm.

It didn’t have to be like this. H5N1, which has been around for decades, was first observed infecting humans in 1997. But last March, a new turning point occurred: The United States reported the first confirmed outbreak of bird flu in dairy cows. Since mammal-to-mammal transmission of the virus is rare, its spread among cows immediately raised alarm among epidemiologists. Still, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) launched a containment effort that critics described as slow and fragmented. Within a month, more than 30 dairy herds in eight states tested positive for the virus.

In April 2024, Zeynep Tufekci, a Princeton University professor who wrote a series of columns about the government’s poor response to COVID-19 in 2020 and 2021, published a new op-ed titled “This May Be Our Last Chance to stop bird flu.” People, and we’re screwing it up.”

“There is a fine line between one person and 10 people with H5N1,” Rick Bright, an immunologist who served on President Joe Biden’s COVID-19 advisory committee, told Tufekci at the time. “By the time we find 10, it’s probably too late.”

As of January 3, 2025, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) has confirmed 66 human cases of avian influenza. One person in the United States has died after becoming infected, according to state officials in Louisiana, where the patient was hospitalized. At least 915 dairy herds in 16 states have now tested positive for the virus. The first known bird flu infection in a pig was reported in Oregon in October. In late December, a Washington animal shelter was quarantined after the virus killed 20 big cats.

Current detailed reporting from KFF Health News provided a disturbing overview of how the U.S. has stumbled headfirst into another public health emergency, thanks in large part to the federal government’s deference to agribusiness interests. Fearing financial setbacks from lost milk production, many farmers refused to test their herds early in the outbreak, monitor their employees for disease, or allow health authorities to inspect their herds. Farm workers said KFF They had received little information about protective equipment and testing. If the USDA Was Officials have been reluctant to share information about genomic testing with scientists, according to officials allowed on farms The New York Times.

Crucially, the USDA only announced a federal mandate to test milk for bird flu in December, months after the virus had already affected hundreds of dairy farms. “The agricultural community has dictated the rules of engagement from the beginning,” said Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota KFF. In other words, Big Ag could be leading us into the abyss of bird flu.

Finally, the agricultural industry has a significant voice in the U.S. government. From 2023 to 2024, agribusiness PACs donated nearly $30 million to political candidates, according to OpenSecrets, and the industry’s trade groups spent more than $130.5 million lobbying the federal government. More than half of agricultural lobbyists registered in 2024 were former government employees, a phenomenon known as the revolving door. Biden’s Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, who previously held the post under President Barack Obama, has also come under scrutiny as a “revolver.” Between his two terms as USDA chief, Vilsack held a lobbying position in the dairy industry and received a salary of nearly $1 million as vice president of Dairy Management, Inc. When asked by reporters at the World Dairy Expo in October, Vilsack did not rule out further possible work as a dairy lobbyist after he leaves office.

The standoff between federal authorities and state agriculture officials is helping to fuel the bird flu fire. Despite the USDA’s lax approach, some states have resisted federal intervention. “They need to back down,” said Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller Politically in May, referring to the CDC’s efforts to track and contain the virus on Texas farms. Texas, the first state where bird flu was discovered in dairy herds, did not invite the CDC to conduct epidemiological field studies, and Miller, a former rodeo cowboy, was considered a leading candidate to be Trump’s agriculture secretary. In mid-November, as the avian flu crisis in U.S. dairy farms continued to worsen, Miller posted an op-ed on the Texas Department of Agriculture’s website criticizing the state’s regulation of raw milk.

“There is nothing more American than the freedom to choose what kind of food you eat,” Miller wrote. “The government should educate and inform about potential risks, but leave it to people to decide what is best for them and their families.”

The sale of raw milk — milk that has not undergone the pasteurization process that kills harmful bacteria and viruses like bird flu — is banned in 20 states. While interest in dairy has increased in recent years, particularly among anti-establishment conservatives, health experts overwhelmingly say the potential harms outweigh the benefits.

California, which allows retail sales of raw milk, has already announced two recalls after bird flu was found in commercial samples. The last thing the U.S. needs in the face of a burgeoning public health crisis from the dairy industry is raw milk deregulation. Therefore, it is deeply depressing that Trump has appointed Robert F. Kennedy Jr. – a raw milk advocate and vaccine skeptic – to head the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), the agency that oversees the various agencies critical to combating public health crises, including the CDC and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

In fact, the manager of one of the California raw milk farms that was the subject of an avian flu recall said that RFK Jr. encouraged him to apply for a job at the FDA. Mark McAfee, managing director of Raw Farm, said Los Angeles Times in December that he had applied for the position of “FDA raw milk policy and standards development consultant” at RFK Jr.’s request.

The botched response to avian flu runs deep because the COVID-19 pandemic was so recent – ​​and its effects are still reverberating. Trump has been rightly condemned for his mishandling of this public health emergency. In fact, Bright — the top vaccine scientist who spoke to Tufekci about bird flu last April — was ousted by Trump in April 2020 from his role as director of the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, the agency responsible for combating emerging pandemics.

The following year, Bright closed a whistleblower complaint he filed against Trump’s HHS. Bright claimed he was demoted in retaliation after he refused to promote unproven COVID-19 treatments such as hydroxychloroquine and after his early warnings to the Trump administration about the pandemic were ignored.

The Biden administration has failed to develop a response to the bird flu outbreak that experts would call impressive or adequate. Even more worrying, Trump’s all-too-recent record shows that he is unlikely to get better.

Editor’s note: This article has been updated to reflect the first reported bird flu death in the United States.