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They are literally the ones bringing it up.
It's almost as if we want to give the flu as many opportunities as possible to spill over, instead of just letting the birds who have immunity survive and thus basically drive the virus to extinction.
We don’t know the reservoir capabilities of novel viruses, nor can we confidently rule when a previously-sick bird is well and non-infectious at scale.
> It's an evolutionary pressure that we refuse to allow to work
We’re selecting against birds that get infected in the first place. (Probably to no tangible effect. But the goal isn’t to have birds that can survive a plague, it’s to prevent it in the first place.)
I don't agree that we're selecting against birds that get infected in the first place, or at least I don't think that's how it works. My understanding is that if any birds on a farm get sick, the whole house is killed. Maybe the whole farm.
To me that seems like selecting for lucky birds not selecting for populations that never get sick because lots of populations never get exposed.
I could be wrong on my understanding or how I interpret the impact, though, so I'm super open to learning more.
Now sure, if there were a clear way to tell that some birds have been infected and survived and recovered, it could be a good idea not to sacrifice those birds, and even to specifically breed them. However, there is no good way to do so, especially not with any confidence. It's much more likely you'll end up infecting any population that you put these new birds in to.
So, the best and cheapest solution is to sacrifice the entire group, to prevent the disease from spreading to other populations, and to do so quickly, to prevent the virus from evolving or crossing a species boundary.
We also refuse to allow it to fail....
So the current culling of entire flocks is seen as a means of nipping any of these mutations in the bud.
But one thing worked, and they should have known it all along. Fear. If you can make people afraid, you can control them. They want us to fear birds. They want us to fear our neighbors. They want us to fear other governments, and faceless terror organizations that are probably hiding in your bushes outside, if you see something, say something!
By this logic, any coverage of international relations is also a conspiracy.
But mass media and social media have given it new opportunities. Ironically I think we all expected that having access to more information would have been a tool against that, but it turns out to be much less effective at explaining fear than conjuring it.
All criticism levelled at the people loading obscene amounts of sugar into bread, tomato sauce, baby formula, water, and every other food under the sun is good criticism, even if it comes from a sometimes-problematic mouth.
There are several “UPFs” that have better health outcomes than NOVA 1 “unprocessed” foods, because the NOVA system was never developed to categorize foods by how healthy they were but instead how closely they matched a fairly regional Brazilian diet.
There is no evidence that “seed oils” are bad beyond their caloric density, and seed oils like Canola oil are some of the healthiest fats we have, far more than the lard they’ve been encouraging people to consume instead (which is almost certainly worse than most seed oils, except possibly rhe single scenario where a fast food chain may be heating and reheating the same fat source many times over).
No one is buying and consuming oesticides, so that’s in actionable advice for people.
There is absolutely no evidence fluoride levels in US water are anywhere near dangerous levels. Having people buy and maintain expensive filters simply to keep fluoride out of their water likely won’t help with anything, and will likely displace some other more healthful actions they could be taking, like spending the money on buying berries for their kids.
Surely you don't mean to suggest that just because UPFs aren't perfectly defined, that means there's no fundamental difference between a diet composed of skittles, donuts, and ice cream cookie sandwiches versus a diet composed of organic, plant-based whole foods, right?
2. You say there is "no evidence" that seed oils are bad... yet when I search for "canola oil health hazards", the very first thing I see is "Canola oil has been associated with potential health hazards due to its high omega-6 fatty acid content, which may contribute to inflammation and chronic diseases when consumed in excess. Additionally, the refining process often involves chemicals like hexane, which raises concerns about the presence of harmful byproducts, although these are typically present in very low amounts in the final product."
Am I crazy to prefer that the amount of hexane in my food be as close to absolutely none as possible? Am I crazy to not wanting to be loading myself up with something that's at least clearly associated with inflammation and chronic disease?
3. Why do we have to assume that the optimal replacement for seed oils is lard? Is it possible to consider that maybe we'd all be better off if we stopped eating french fries, rather than merely switching what greasy junk we're frying them in?
4. Plenty of non-organic foods have pesticides on them! https://www.ewg.org/foodnews/full-list.php
Is EWG not a generally reliable and trustworthy source of information? Do you mean to suggest that no foods grown outside ever have any pesticides on them, or that the pesticides never follow the food all the way to the grocery store? Haven't plenty of agricultural products over the years, including Round Up, been linked with high probability to various cancers, neurodegenerative diseases, etc?
5. Why do we assume that filtering water means taking away other healthy actions? Do we need to be giving kids MORE sugar just because it's natural (berries)? Is there not extensive scientific literature linking fluoride ingestion with decreased IQ?
6. Why can't we have a open, good-faith conversation about these topics without engaging in tribal politics? Why do we get so emotionally attached to current narratives and beliefs about these kinds of things even when we know those beliefs are formed based on incomplete information and should be subject to change as we learn more over time, a standard exercise of basic epistemic humility?
That's the crux of this disagreement. Assuming the relationship and then assuming the next step that the antitheses must be true. Unprocessed foods aren't inherently healthy and ultra processed foods aren't inherently unhealthy, the two things have nothing to do with each other.
…but they are statistically associated with worse health outcomes.
Their nutrient profile, additives’ effects on eating behavior, and how human metabolism responds to engineered foods lead to harm for humans.
Imagine I took raw sugar cane then added vitamin d, calcium, vitamin c and some electrolytes to make a sports drink.
"Whereas most prior research has estimated effects of exposure to extremely high levels of fluoride, we consider exposure to levels of fluoride within the range typical in most places and of greatest relevance to policy debates about government water fluoridation. We use data from the nationally representative (United States) High School and Beyond cohort, characterize fluoride exposure from drinking water across adolescence, adjust for confounders, and observe cognitive test performance in both secondary school and at age ~60. We find that children exposed to recommended levels of fluoride in drinking water exhibit modestly better cognition in secondary school, an advantage that is smaller and no longer statistically significant at age ~60."
I'm very much overweight, though not morbidly obese. I have been at my best weight when I did "get out and move". The problem, of course, is that schools, jobs, and modern infrastructure don't make that as easy to do as in prior decades. You can't just tell people to do something that has been made difficult to do and expect them to do it.