Virologist sounds alarm on aggressive flu season, avian influenza and CDC cuts

Data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) shows this flu season is the most severe since the 2009 swine flu, reported CBS News earlier this month.

Dr. Angela Rasmussen, a virologist and professor at the University of Saskatchewan, told “The Gee and Ursula Show” on KIRO Newsradio that fewer people have gotten the flu vaccine this season.

Why is the flu spreading?

Part of that, Rasmussen said, is due to the CDC stopping a flu vaccination campaign. According to NPR, the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases told CDC staff the campaign would not continue.

“Any time that we’re discouraging vaccination, it’s never a good thing, because ultimately what that does, is that it decreases the number of people who are actually going to go get a flu vaccine and the whole reason for that campaign was to educate people on the fact that vaccines can prevent the surge in flu cases — in serious flu cases or even deaths that we’re seeing right now — not only in Washington state, but throughout the U.S.,” Rasmussen explained. “So flu is a seasonal disease. It is something that can cause severe illness, but vaccines have been known for decades to actually reduce the likelihood that you end up in the hospital, certainly reduce the likelihood that you end up in the morgue, and it’s always going to have really negative, harmful effects when fewer people take those vaccines.”

She also believes the political effects of the COVID-19 pandemic have led to fewer people getting vaccinated, adding vaccines don’t always prevent infections but are meant to prevent serious illness and death.

Impacts of health cuts

Rasmussen then provided insight into how cuts are affecting her colleagues in the federal government.

“Thousands of jobs have been cut from all of those agencies at the CDC, the Epidemic Intelligence Service — which is our nation’s essentially disease detectives, they respond to outbreaks and contain them — has been gutted,” she shared. “The laboratory services that support them doing diagnostics has been gutted. The influenza division at CDC, which tracks seasonal flu, has been gutted. The website has been profoundly altered to remove all references to DEI, which actually can change the information that’s there for some diseases such as MPOX and HIV and diseases that affect women’s health, things that affect types of cancer that women get, for example, it can affect diseases that are particularly likely to affect one ethnic group over another. This has really profound effects for the way that we’re even communicating about some of the health risks to the American people.”

Virologist says bird flu is ‘out of control’

Switching topics Gee Scott, host of “Gee and Ursula” asked about bird flu.

To which Rasmussen replied, “is out of control.”

“We have thousands of cows, potentially millions of cows, around the country that are infected with this and are secreting extremely high amounts of virus in their milk that has caused a record number of human cases in dairy workers,” she shared. “So now we’re up to at least 70 confirmed human cases, as well as probably many more, as well as we have data that suggests there are a lot of cases that are going undetected.”

To listen to the full conversation, where Rasmussen delves more into each topic, click the player below:

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