Over the past two decades, scientists have paid close attention to the spread of bird flu, a disease caused by the H5N1 virus that has high pandemic potential. Last spring, when the virus made the jump from wild birds to dairy cows, those fears of a new health crisis like COVID-19 were amplified. Though President Biden arguably didn’t do enough to stop the spread of H5N1 — which has infected at least 67 people — now President Trump is in charge of the problem, which is already causing trouble.
It’s not just the potential of anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. soon to helm the health departments responsible for monitoring disease outbreaks or Trump's recent pause on federal health communications, it’s also the president’s immigration policy that is making matters worse. Public health and immigration may not seem like issues that are interconnected, but like many things, neither exists in a vacuum. To understand why, we must first talk about dairy cow density.
