The United States has been dealing with its worst-ever bird flu outbreak in humans for almost eight months now. You wouldn’t know it from talking to members of Congress.
“Is there a big one?” Alaska Sen. Dan Sullivan asked NOTUS. “I didn’t know anything about that.”
The CDC said last week that it had confirmed 55 human infections of bird flu since April across seven states, and more than half of the infections have been in California. Two cases in California and Missouri have unknown sources, while the other 53 were from exposure to animals. So far, confirmed cases in the U.S. have been mild, and the virus has not evolved to transmit between people, with the CDC saying the virus remains a “low” risk to public health.
Lawmakers from both parties weren’t able to speak in great detail about the bird flu or the federal government’s response so far. NOTUS asked 19 lawmakers about it last week, and only a handful were familiar with the virus that experts warn could become a bigger problem. The outbreak has been concerning public health officials — and already frustrating grocery shoppers.
“I don’t have much to say. I don’t know, so I couldn’t give you an honest assessment,” said Democratic Rep. Raul Ruiz, ranking member of the House’s COVID-19 subcommittee, when asked about the federal government’s response to the outbreak.
New human infections popping up are also increasingly worrying experts. Many of the reported human cases have come up in agricultural workers, who regularly have contact with animals spreading the virus, like livestock and poultry. Experts say continued spread gives the virus more opportunities to mutate, and they are advocating for more proactive surveillance to catch genetic changes in the virus and prevent more spillover to humans.
Outgoing Republican Ohio Rep. Brad Wenstrup, a COVID-19 subcommittee member and one of a few lawmakers who told NOTUS he’s following the outbreak, said he’s content with the federal government’s response.
“We’re doing good things to try and quarantine this and not let it go any further. These are risks we’re always going to have,” Wenstrup said. “We’re doing surveillance, and we’re always looking for these things popping up.”
Outgoing California Democratic Rep. Anna Eshoo, the ranking member of the House’s health subcommittee, said the CDC has kept her informed about the outbreak and that the government’s response is in “very good hands.”
“What I’m impressed with is the very, very early reporting of it. Because when you can respond to something early, in so many cases, that helps to put parentheses around it. So that says, to me, that their detection and their analyzation of it, that they’re on top of it,” Eshoo said.
But for the most part, Wenstrup and Eshoo’s colleagues didn’t know much about the outbreak, and at least one Republican thinks there’s potential for bird flu to get overblown.
“I’m concerned that we may overreact to things like we did in the pandemic,” said Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson, who previously promoted anti-vaccine conspiracy theories and said the COVID-19 pandemic was “preplanned by an elite group of people.”
He had heard about the bird flu outbreak but didn’t consider it a big deal. He said the government was “trying to whip another frenzy, another pandemic.”
Some lawmakers told NOTUS they’ve been too busy to follow the outbreak.
“I haven’t been following that. I’ve been pretty occupied with national defense matters,” said Mississippi Sen. Roger Wicker, a Republican.
Wicker wasn’t alone in his preoccupation with other issues.
“The outbreak is very serious,” Oregon’s Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden told NOTUS last week. But he didn’t have much else to say. “I’ve been juggling a lot of stuff today.”
Like Wyden, whose state announced its first human infection on Nov. 15, several lawmakers had at least a general idea that a bird flu outbreak was happening. For most of them, it was because it was already hitting close to home.
Public health officials aren’t the only ones grappling with the outbreak. Farmers and grocery shoppers are too: Mass culling of poultry has caused egg shortages, resulting in surging prices ahead of the holidays.
“It has the potential to so intensely impact the raising of chickens in Georgia, agriculture being our number one industry, and broilers being one of our top exports,” Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff said. “So this is material to Georgia, both from an agricultural standpoint and potentially from a public health standpoint.”
There have only been two confirmed human infections in Michigan, but bird flu has affected at least 30 dairy herds in the state.
Michigan Rep. Debbie Dingell acknowledged her state’s dairy cow outbreaks but made a point to say she’s not an expert on the matter. Still, to her, it brought back some of the issues the COVID-19 pandemic laid bare.
“What I’m very concerned about is people’s lack of trust in public health, and with public health protections, and we’ve got to address it,” Dingell said. “COVID has left a lot of people feeling wary, and we’ve got to be very careful.”
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Emily Kennard is a NOTUS reporter and an Allbritton Journalism Institute fellow.