The On-Going Pandemics

 In 2006 I was on a holiday  in Cancun Mexico when I saw, on a Mexican News channel that an outbreak of Avian Flu had been detected in a chicken farm there. I thought not much of that until the next year when there were troughs of disinfectant for  air travelers to walking through to prevent then 'importing' germs and questions about visits to farms, whilst away. 

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-09-23/thanksgiving-turkeys-never-cost-so-much-as-bird-flu-ravages-us-flocks

That didn't impress me much and if the price of the Christmas gobbler was higher than usual in 2007 I didn't notice it.  When I did notice it was in 2020 - when the birds all disappeared.

I live in a small Ontario town near a Great Lake, in the kind of mixed forest habitat almost any bird could find a home.   I've never not not noticed any birds.  Their pre dawn 'tweets' and 'whistles' are,  often,  the harbinger of a beautiful day in any of the three pleasant seasons. The chickadees frolicking in snow covered cedars and the sudden descent of a 'covy' of snow buntings cheer the greyest of winter days.  As I sit at my computer  I can generally hear some indication that there are 'feathered friends in the area.  For the last three hours all I have heard is a dog barking. 

I remember the last time  noticed a bird, a sparrow, on my front steps - but that had to be three weeks ago.  It is only now beginning to get cold at night  and there should be birds still around.  My wife tells me that there are birds,  she says she saw a large flock of Canada geese near the dog park this week.  I'm going to look.

My son spilled  tub of cracked corn all over the trunk area of an SUV he was prepping to return.  He had left that one day too long, after a trip to our local park with his kids, to feed a population of wild and domesticated  waterfowl.  He was told that wasn't happening as the flock had been euthanized last week - including the 'decorative pheasants'  and peafowl that decorated the area. 8 Mute Swans, part of a 'heritage flock' donated to our city in 1915, by her late Majesty's Grandfather, were in isolation and being monitored for avian flu.  The rest had been 'culled'. Similar operations have been done in farmyards and industrial poultry farms in our area, apparently since last spring. 

https://www.bayshorebroadcasting.ca/2022/09/22/harrison-park-birds-ducks-and-geese-euthanized-due-to-avian-flu/

Perhaps premature, but 'heartening' Fordguvermint:  https://www.wattagnet.com/articles/45326-avian-flu-recovery-is-now-well-underway-in-ontario

https://www.independent.co.uk/climate-change/news/bird-flu-uk-poultry-cull-defra-b2167370.html

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/sep/14/unstoppable-bird-flu-epidemic-causes-growing-alarm-among-dutch-farmers

Apparently too,  since 2006 the avian flu has become cyclical, like the human kind, except we haven't devised a vaccine for birds or any way to give that to them.  So mother Nature has her way with them. Some do survive.

https://phys.org/news/2022-01-bird-flu-outbreak-chickens-burkina.html

Apparently Avian flu isn't a big killer of humanity - yet.  There were 14 people infected on that 2006 farm in Mexico. And hundreds of people have been infected since. One of the latest being a worker in an  NYC animal shelter who contracted the flu from a sick cat.  Apparently cats, dogs and other animals can catch avian flu, ir has been known to kill juvenile animals. 

https://metro.co.uk/2022/08/30/experts-say-bird-flu-outbreak-in-humans-on-the-horizon-17264972/

Last winter China had a double whammy - swine flu eradicated their pork population last Fall and an outbreak of  bird flu was 'named' as the official source of the most recent go round.  You'd think that such a large population of hungry people would be very careful with animal health.  I think they may be getting there. The Chinese curt-off Canadian pork products completely last year and this year they are refusing to import chicken from three Canadian provinces.  No doubt Don Trump's trade policies are paying off bigtime, making the Chinese safer. 

But Bird flu is just another 'problem' interfering with feeding the growing World population.  Something tells me it will still be a problem when we hit the UN 'goal' of  "SUSTAINABLE Development" in only  8 short years.    

https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2022/09/un-sustainable-development-goals-progress-report/

I want to take a look at the Sustainability Plan in a future Tweet. The UN general Assembly has met this week, among other things, to receive the progress report.   The other things may be trumping the report.