by Brenda Baletti, Ph.D., Childrens Health Defense:
Government agencies are relying on PCR tests as they ramp up testing for bird flu, but critics argue the technology is likely to lead to false positives, just as it did with COVID-19, because it was never accurate as a diagnostic tool.
Dr. Deborah Birx, the Trump administration’s coronavirus response coordinator, told CNN’s Kasie Hunt the U.S. is making the “same mistakes” with bird flu that it made with COVID-19, which she said spread because there wasn’t enough testing for asymptomatic infection.
TRUTH LIVES on at https://sgtreport.tv/
Birx is now calling for every cow to be tested for bird flu weekly and for regular pooled tests for dairy workers. She also said it’s likely that undetected cases are circulating in humans.
“We have the technology,” Birx said. “The great thing about America is we’re incredibly innovative and we have the ability to have these breakthroughs.”
The technology Birx referenced is polymerase chain reaction or PCR testing — the same diagnostic tool that came under fire during the COVID-19 pandemic for producing inaccurate results, including false positives.
NEW – Deborah Birx wants to test millions of cows in the U.S. weekly and test dairy workers for “asymptomatic” bird flu cases.pic.twitter.com/EchXB7ckWS
— Disclose.tv (@disclosetv) June 5, 2024
Speaking out on X (formerly Twitter), critics like Simon Goddek, Ph.D., pushed back, accusing Birx of “deliberately using the same strategy to fabricate another fake health emergency.”
On Wednesday, the day after Birx’s interview, JAMA published its own article advocating for more widespread bird flu testing.
“No animal or public health expert thinks that we are doing enough surveillance,” Keith Poulsen, DVM, Ph.D., director of the Wisconsin Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, told JAMA.
Andrew Pekosz, Ph.D., from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, told JAMA that more testing should be conducted to find asymptomatic and mild infections. Workers at infected farms should be tested twice weekly, he said, and cows should be tested once a week.
Read More @ ChildrensHealthDefense.org
