Mike the Mad Biologist

We’re potentially doing the same old same old in Utah. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

A key feature of the various COVID lab leaks (note the plural) hypotheses and other related COVID conspiracies is they are much more exciting than the boring obvious explanations like an infected animal managed to infect people in a food market. I bring this up because, in Utah, there is a mink farm that has an avian influenza outbreak (boldface mine):

Under the right conditions, however, that could change. A single mutation could give the bird flu a foothold in people and spark a pandemic that experts fear could be deadlier than COVID-19.

For that to happen, this bird flu would likely need to find an intermediate host — an animal vulnerable to viruses that infect both birds and humans. These animals would be crowded together, each infection raising the odds that a new strain could arise through mutation. Then, for that strain to jump across species, it would have to have access to humans and time to spread among them undetected.

That perfect petri dish exists right now, a ProPublica investigation found. For over two months, an outbreak of bird flu has raged uncontrolled on a Utah farm that raises thousands of mink for fur. Mink have lungs and airways that on a cellular level are remarkably similar to those of people; they have caught and spread other flus and infected some humans with COVID-19.

Instead of trying to stop the outbreak and prevent it from spilling into humans, state and federal officials have done little except try to keep its existence quiet, our investigation shows. The failure to act amounts to a cascade of missteps flu experts called “irresponsible” and “puzzling.” One called it “playing with fire.”

Imagine the worst case scenario, and avian influenza jumps from this farm to cause a massive outbreak, or even another pandemic. We wouldn’t need to invoke a lab leak or UKRAINIAN BIOLABZ!! The answer would be boring and mundane: the Trump administration and the Great State of Utah failed to take action*. To the extent there was a conspiracy, it would have occured right out there in the open. Nothing more nefarious than typical bureaucratic inertia combined with wishful thinking (i.e., the jump to humans wouldn’t happen).

Of course, there would be a good chance that the both state and federal officials would then engage in a bunch of suspicious behavior as part of that age-old behavior known as ass-covering. Any lack of coordination between various parts of government, such as state and local governments or different agencies, could be viewed as part of a coverup, not incompetence.

The key thing is, while this would be tragic, it is ordinary, if bad, behavior for institutions and governments.

Whether this applies to various COVID-related conspiracies is left as an exercise for the reader.

*And Congress needs to expand reimbursement policies to cover mink farms.