Donald Trump has repeatedly wrong economic advisor Kevin Hassett working on bird flu.
Kevin Hassett is an economist with a history of being way wrong.
At a press briefing, the Trump administration spokesperson Karoline Leavitt explicitly blamed the egg prices on the Biden administration's Department of Agriculture quote "directing the mass killing of 100 million chickens." Of course this was because of avian influenza and the threat posed by keeping flu infected chickens, exposing farm workers, exposing more birds, having the avian influenza spread, and selling infected eggs and chicken to humans. Karoline Leavitt said this was why she thought the confirmation of the nominee for the Dept of Agriculture was a pressing matter – so they can move on stopping the egg shortage. How?
We know that MAGA Republicans often see the mitigation of disease as more of a problem than the disease that's causing the problem – demonstrated again and again with covid. And now we have some of the same players from early in the botched covid pandemic – back in the saddle to do it wrong all over again.
Leavitt specifically mentions that the nominee for the Department of Agriculture is already working with the White House ECONOMIC TEAM. Not doctors, not anybody in the CDC, not infectious disease experts or agricultural experts – she specifically mentions Kevin Hassett by name, leader of the White House economic team.
Kevin Hassett predicted that stocks were undervalued in a book from 1999 right before the bursting of the dot-com bubble. Paul Krugman said the book had basic math mistakes in it, and in 2009 Nate Silver practically called Hassett an irrationally exuberant charlatan. In April 2020 Kevin Hassett was clamouring for reopening and predicted covid deaths would peak in the middle of April 2020 according to his faulty amateur infectious disease model, and said publicly that everything would be back to normal by mid-May 2020. He apparently had no experience with infectious disease modeling.
In the confirmation hearing RFKJr said: "I want to work with our farmers and food producers to remove burdensome regulations and unleash American ingenuity" and he said "if I'm privileged to be confirmed I'm not regulating farms that's under USDA but but I want to partner with all of my decisions with USDA." The CDC has been working with farms, and this sounds like RFKJr won't be having that?
It's possible to just dismiss RFKJr's comments as blathering from someone who has no idea what he's going to do in the job leading HHS if he gets confirmed. However, I don't expect that White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt would lie or be mistaken about who's working on bird flu. She's a young but experienced media point person who interned at Fox News and the White House Office of Presidential Correspondence, was an assistant press secretary under Kayleigh McEnany, then after the first Trump administration ended, she went to work as communications director for Elise Stefanik, and then became the national press secretary for the Trump campaign in January 2024. I don't see that she has any experience in public health, so it seems entirely plausible that she thought she was reassuring somebody out there about something by mentioning the economic team and dropping the name of Kevin Hassett.
It may be time to become a vegetarian, a vegan, or at least a pescatarian for now, because the poultry, beef, and dairy supply may become a lot less safe, or maybe unavailable in America quite soon.
My letter to reps:
I feel it may be necessary to stop buying poultry and eggs because I don't trust food safety since the White House Press Secretary said that Kevin Hassett, the repeatedly wrong economist, is the one who's going to be working on the avian influenza infectious disease threat. Kevin Hassett, got the dot-com bubble wrong in 1999 and got covid wrong in 2020. RFKJr said at his confirmation hearing that he would be hands off the farms and remove regulations, and apparently let H5N1 fester and spread everywhere and contaminate the food supply. What are you going to do to stop this impending threat? Probably not going to be great for the economy if we have more pandemics and wreck poultry farms and sicken more workers who work with the chickens, and maybe have customers getting sick. I'm worried about my health and safety, but I realize many politicians only care about businesses, and I gotta say, I'm pretty sure bird flu won't be good for business.