Stephen Armstrong: Bird flu, RFK Jr. and the price of eggs

A hen stands next to an egg, Jan. 10, 2023, at a farm in Glenview, Ill. AP PHOTO/ERIN HOOLEY

Published: 03-27-2025 12:42 PM

If I had one wish for government officials (not that I have only one), it would be that they understand exponential equations.

Take the H5N1 bird flu virus, for example. RFK Jr. thinks it is ducky to let the H5N1 bird flu virus run free in chicken populations. In his view, the resulting free-running virus will create an immunologically pure and immune population of chicken survivors, from which farmers will simply rebuild their flocks.

If he understood exponential equations, however, he would understand that this highly transmissible and fast-replicating virus kills chickens faster than human culling and leaves a pathetically small survivor population. The exponential equation works like this: the virus replicates within eight hours, and transmits between birds at a high rate through snot, secretions, fecal matter, contaminated equipment, chicken feed, water, air, or ground.

Suppose one bird is infected this morning at 8 a.m. Eight birds will be infected by the evening. In two days, 64 birds will be infected or dead. A whole flock of birds within three days.

Why no one has taught exponential equations to RFK Jr. is a puzzle to me. The same kind of equation holds for human viruses (like measles), nuclear explosions, or my favorite from childhood, pink eye, which kept us out of school, so we sat at home and read, like books, for instance, although none on exponential equations.

No one has taught RFK Jr. about immunology, either, his second successful knowledge hole. Our domestic chicken population has a simple and stable genome. Thus, infecting one bird is equivalent to infecting all of them. So there would be few immune survivor birds in a chicken population. There is no way to isolate all the chicken flocks, to “protect” them, because the virus can be transmitted by birds flying overhead, which is how they tend to get around.

Economists say our egg prices will come down by September. I appreciate their optimism, but chickens have no way to duck this virus, nor we a way to avoid RFK Jr.’s lack of knowledge. The virus and RFK Jr.’s ignorance will remain; only the prices of eggs will change.

Stephen Armstrong

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