The bird is the word

I'm writing this on December 28th. You're reading it on January 28th.

In that month in between, I know that some awful things have happened. One example: Trump's inauguration. But it may also be the case that the bird flu has spread its wings and taken off, and that we're facing another pandemic. Only this time with more anti-government, anti-vaxxer, pro-conspiracy, execute Fauci lunatics around. And some of them will even be part of the government. Just swell.

But as of December 28th, here's the sitch:

Northwest Naturals, a pet food supplier specializing in raw meats, had to recall its Feline Turkey Recipe because it was contaminated with bird flu. 

The recall comes after the Oregon Department of Agriculture linked the death of a house cat in Washington County to eating the Northwest Naturals chow Tuesday. The pet’s death also comes as concerns over the bird flu have grown. Dozens of people have been infected around the country, California has declared a state of emergency and the spread among livestock has begun impacting the food supply. (Source: USA Today)

If the pet food chain has been impacted, can the food chain for us human types be far behind? Just swell. 

Of course, an occasional bite of sushi aside - or aside the rare licking of the mixing bowl and beaters to grab all the batter that didn't make it into the cake pan, even though there's raw egg in it - most of us humans don't eat raw food. We cook and bake with it. But we don't consume it. And we may even wear gloves when handling it. (At least if it's chicken we do.)

And people shouldn't be feeding their pets raw food, either. Raw food contains all sorts of nasty pathogens.

Sure when the feline and canine precursors were fending for themselves in the wild, they were mowing down raw everything. But our house pets are used to a more pampered life style. No hunting or killing for them. (At least the indoor thems.)

In any case, it's unnerving to learn that the bird flu may be coming for our food supply.  

Ain't no one wants a repeat of the first horrid year of the covid. I'm five years older, and thus have five fewer trips around the sun left. And I really don't want to lose another one of those precious trips to trying to avoid the bird flu.

I want to see my family. I want to see my friends. Although I am wearing a mask when I'm volunteering in my homeless shelter - at least for the winter, during prime germ season - I really don't want to have to mask up everywhere. And I don't want my volunteering job to go away, as it did during the first year of covid. 

I don't want to go back to obsessive handwashing. (Twenty seconds? An eternity!) I don't want to shop for groceries during the crack-of-dawn geezer hour.

I don't want to read the death counts every day in the paper. 

I don't want to battle to get an appointment for vaccine. If there's even a vaccine this time around. 

Oh, there probably will be, but what if the government doesn't back development and distribution as enthusiastically as they did in 2020? What if you have to pay a lot for the privilege of access? How much would I be willing to pay? And how effective will it be in tamping down the spread if all the nimrods out there won't get vaccinated - even if it's free - as they'll figure that vaccination programs are just a scheme to make them more stupider, or turn them into libtards, or track their every movement. Because big gubmint should only be used to deport brown people. Or however the "thinking" goes.

I hope that the dead kitty cat in Oregon is it for pet or human death from the bird flu.

2025 is going to be awful enough without having to worry about whether the bird is the word of the year.

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Don't you know about the bird? Everybody knows that the bird is the word. Papa-oom-mow-mow. Take a listen to one of the big hits of 1963.