One Flu Over The Cuckoo's Nest

Don't panic. Listen.

We were lied to, again.

A recent news story confirms what many of us suspected about bird flu in cows, that mortality rates run between 10 and 15 percent, not the 1-2 percent that dairy farmers were told to expect. They’re “shocked.” The disease is infecting far more cows than originally announced, with 50-60 percent of infected herds showing symptoms. Beyond the high mortality rate, an undisclosed number are failing to recover. They’re being “removed,” a euphemism for culling. One veterinarian said, “his firsthand observations have really challenged his notions about the disease, which has so often been described as mild and insignificant.”

This new outbreak of bird flu on 56 dairy farms in California, on top of growing numbers of human cases elsewhere, indicates that it’s not going away or dying out like government agencies have promised.

It’s getting worse, and it’s learning how to infect humans.

Yesterday, I was thinking about Ken Kesey’s novel One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest, a novel…