What the H5N1 scare tells us about ourselves and our society

I don't know whether there is an H5N1 "bird flu" pandemic in our future. H5N1 seems to be very dangerous to humans. Half of the 900 people known to have contracted it worldwide since 2003 have died. And, so a lot of scientists are concerned about the possibility of a pandemic now that the virus has crossed over into mammals including dairy cows.

That means that the milk we drink may have the virus in it though the U.S. Food and Drug Administration says that pasteurization makes the milk safe. Or does it? A recent study indicates that a "small but detectable quantity" of H5N1 bird flu virus can survive "a common approach to pasteurizing milk."

We humans think we can build moats around our modern way of life that protect us from the natural world. We will pasteurize our milk and that will solve the problem. We will spray kitchen counters with some noxious disinfectant to kill offending organisms. We will wash our hands again and again with anti-bacterial soaps. And, when soap and water are not available, we'll use hand sanitizer. All the while we have actually been building the equivalent of superhighways into the heart of human society everywhere due to our dense living arrangements and global travel and trade.

Some research suggests that we need more exposure to those microorganisms around us to develop healthy immune systems than our modern way of life provides. The idea is that we have been too concerned with providing a "clean" and therefore "healthy" environment for our children. It turns out that children need exposure to the microorganisms of the world in order to develop an effective immune system, and that without that exposure they may develop autoimmune diseases such as asthma and eczema more often.

This is not to suggest that we should all visit our local dairy farms expressly to expose ourselves to H5N1 (assuming the cows actually have it). More important is how we got here in the first place.

Many readers are already familiar with industrial farming as most farming is these days. Cows are treated as factories for milk and spend most of their time in barns eating. So-called Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations are breeding grounds for disease as animals live close together without regular access to pasture. Moreover, the animals are bred for high production and are often so taxed by it that they are sent to slaughter after only three or four years. Under traditional dairy farming methods, cows could live two decades or longer.

The emphasis on tight quarters and high production brought on by a combination of competition, technology and high consumer demand has essentially forced dairy farmers into a way of farming that now threatens them and the society around them with a possible pandemic.

Would it be possible to raise dairy cattle in more humane ways, ways that might prevent the spread of pandemic disease while also being better for the cattle, the environment and the humans who drink the milk? Some people are willing to pay more for milk from organic farms where the law requires access to pasture and from farms that pledge to feed their cows only on pastures (grass-fed). But this represents a tiny part of the market for milk. If everyone who currently drinks milk demanded such products, they would overwhelm the relatively small number of producers.

Modern dairy farming is but one tiny aspect of our current global system which I've described previously as something that looks like it was designed by viruses for the convenient spread of viruses. Author and student of risk Nassim Nicholas Taleb stated the following in a prescient paper released January 26, 2020: "With increasing transportation we are close to a transition to conditions in which extinction becomes certain both because of rapid spread and because of the selective dominance of increasingly worse pathogens." Contemplate that! Our widely heralded and increasing physical mobility—the turning of the world into a "village"—may be our undoing as a species.

But any discussion of the spread of novel viruses must also touch on the increasingly compromised health of modern people exposed to toxic chemicals in food, air and water; bad diet; and the psychological stress of modern life including the stress of being poor. A robust population of healthy, well-nourished, fit persons not subject to the constant assault of chemical toxins or excessive stress would be able to withstand such viruses much better.

But we have now narrowed the ambit of public health down almost to "get your shots"—which, of course, assumes that there is a shot to get (and that the shot is effective in preventing both infection by and spread of the pathogen in question). It would take a political revolution to create a healthy population by ensuring the availability of good nutrition and healthy activity (with the time to do it) and a dramatic reduction in exposure to human-made toxins—a revolution that those currently in charge would fight with every weapon available.

We modern folk have made our bed; now we must lie in it—and it seems die in it, too. If H5N1 passes us by, we will all breathe a sigh of relief. But the world of pathogens never sleeps and eventually our choices will catch up with us.

Kurt Cobb is a freelance writer and communications consultant who writes frequently about energy and environment. His work has appeared in The Christian Science Monitor, Resilience, Common Dreams, Naked Capitalism, Le Monde Diplomatique, Oilprice.com, OilVoice, TalkMarkets, Investing.com, Business Insider and many other places. He is the author of an oil-themed novel entitled Prelude and has a widely followed blog called Resource Insights. He can be contacted at kurtcobb2001@yahoo.com.