CDC Bird Flu Response Cuts Could Lead To Another Pandemic

Forbes

09-07-2025

TOWNSEND, DE - NOVEMBER 14: Bill Powers checks on his flock of white turkeys, which have been kept ... More under shelter all year to prevent exposure to avian influenza, at his family's farm on November 14, 2022 in Townsend, Delaware. Some turkey distributors are warning of higher prices and lower availability ahead of Thanksgiving after supply chain issues, inflation and fears over avian influenza affected the 2022 season. (Photo by)
Bird flu remains a risk in the U.S., but we don't know as much about its threat level because the CDC stopped conducting much surveillance some time ago. They never did the kind of studies some experts had wanted.
Reported cases of bird flu are down now. Some of that may be seasonal shifts. Budget cuts at health departments likely contribute to this. More than 20% of the Veterinary Services arm of the U.S. Department of Agriculture and 16% of those in the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service have left in response to President Trump and Elon Musk's efforts to shrink the government.
Immigrant farm workers who get bird flu symptoms are undoubtedly reluctant to seek care amid the growing ICE crackdowns and imprisonment.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced on July 7 that it was ending its emergency response for H5N1 bird flu. It will now report infections only on a monthly basis, combined with influenza activity. Infection rates in animals will no longer be reported on the CDC's page, but will be moved to the USDA's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Services avian flu page.
Infections Don't Recognize Borders
Infections may have slowed in the U.S., but since January 2025, the World Health Organization has recorded 964 cases and 466 deaths from bird flu in 24 countries.
While the CDC is dropping reporting animal infections, one should note that there is a problem on an ostrich farm in British Columbia. At least 70 of the 400 ostriches there died of bird flu this spring. Owners have resisted efforts to cull the flock, which is the standard response to an infected flock.
States have restricted the transport of infected animals across state lines, and the USDA restricts importation from countries with H5N1 infections. Showing an apparent lack of understanding of how infections spread, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., and Dr. Mehmet Oz, now administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, proposed relocating the ostriches from Canada to Oz's ranch in Okeechobee, Florida. Kennedy went so far as to appeal to the Canadian Food Inspection Agency to cancel the cull. He was unsuccessful.
Kennedy's proposal
At the same time that we are cutting surveillance, some experts are concerned that Kennedy's proposal to let bird flu spread through poultry could set us up for a pandemic. In fact, in this week's Science, several argue that this 'let 'er rip' approach would be 'dangerous and unethical.' Their concern is that by allowing the virus free rein, it will more likely spread and mutate, resulting in a pandemic. Gigi Gronvall, PhD, Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, explains: 'The thing that we are most concerned about is that H5N1 could reassort with a circulating flu virus and gain the ability to transmit between humans. Anything we could do to reduce that likelihood, we should be doing. That includes vaccinating people against what's currently (influenza) circulating and also against H5N1.'
Angela Rasmussen, PhD, a virologist now at the University of Saskatchewan, Canada, added to Gronvall's concerns, stating in her Substack, 'If they take another tip from Kennedy and start prophylactically dosing the birds with oseltamivir (Tamiflu), this will select for viruses that are resistant to our first line class of antiviral drugs. The 'Let 'Er Rip' plan for bird flu is a really, really bad idea that will have severe health, economic, agricultural, environmental, and food security consequences. Because this plan is to basically do nothing.' She is equally scathing in her comments about surveillance (or lack thereof) and why numbers of cases are decreasing.
Vaccines For Bird Flu
There's one major problem with Gronvall's recommendation. Kennedy doesn't like these bird flu vaccines, it appears. He has stated that he believes mRNA vaccines to be dangerous and canceled the contract with Moderna to further develop the leading candidate.
The other bird flu vaccine we have in the national stockpile comes in multidose vials with the preservative thimerosal—which Kennedy's hand-picked advisory panel on vaccines voted to ban last week due to unsupported concerns that it causes autism.
We have no other options.
When I previously spoke with Saskia Popescu, Ph.D., an assistant professor of biodefense at George Mason University, she had emphasized concerns over the lack of surveillance. She and others are very worried about the impact of cuts domestic and international health efforts such as USAID, GAVI, WHO, and other global health partners. She noted, 'Global biosurveillance is a really critical resource. Early detection only happens if you are collaborating with people. And I'm very concerned that we're slowly but surely losing that capacity.'
Another of Popescu's widely shared concerns is about the growing misinformation and rejection of expertise. A recent example is the reaction to the recent new Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices recommendations, which are not evidence or science-based. Popescu noted, 'So during emergencies and any that might be coming up, we will have a population that feels unsure if they can trust any guidance that's given to them. And on top of that, I genuinely do worry that any guidance that is given to them may not be evidence based if provided from increasingly politicized non-experts.'
The fallout from Kennedy and ACIP is so bad that leading medical professional societies and a pregnant patient have just sued HHS and Kennedy for firing the ACIP committee members and replacing them unjustly. They also object to the new restrictions on COVID-19 vaccines, which would prevent healthy teens, adults, and pregnant women from receiving them. Furthermore, the American Academy of Pediatrics states that it will continue to make its own recommendations for vaccinating children. Others are following suit.
If H5N1 bird flu is allowed to spread unchecked in poultry flocks and if it
becomes easily transmissible to humans, where will the lack of surveillance, the
lack of mRNA vaccines, the banning of the non-mRNA vaccine due to its
incorporation of thimerosal, and the general mistrust of evidence-based guidance
leave us?