Food safety in U.S. at risk from draconian budget and staff cuts

 The United States has the safest food in the world, but maybe not for long.

Massive cuts in the agencies that oversee the healthiness of our grocery store products are threatening the nation.

Food safety has long been protected by four major government offices: the DHHS’s Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS), the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and the Department of Commerce’s National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS). Those agencies work together under dozens of interagency agreements to keep our groceries safe.

Food safety includes far more than just looking for toxic compounds and disease agents in food. There is safe packaging, sanitation in processing plants, pesticide residue testing, animal drug guidance, animal carcass inspections, checking for contamination from insect parts, all kinds of things.

State and local health departments play a role, but that role is widely different in differing jurisdictions. One of the main functions of those local authorities, often working with the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, is investigating outbreaks after the food safety system has failed. Outbreaks like communicable diseases and foodborne pathogens like Salmonella, Shigella, Campylobacter, and E. coli

The broad consistent protections of the food supply come from the actions of the national government.

And the federal government is actively in the process of abandoning the safety of our food supply.

An April 10 White House memo disclosed plans to cut 40% from the budgets of the CDC and the National Institutes of Health (NIH). 

The DHHS is facing $40 Billion in cuts, a third of its discretionary budget. /

 Staffing cuts have already significantly cut services, and the FDA just announced that it will stop testing milk.

And the Administration laid off bird flu investigators at the FDA, while they were working on an active and spreading bird flu virus.

The EPA has been charged with cutting its budget 65 percent, although EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin says the environment will be protected even with the cuts. 

NOAA has been told to cut its budget 25 percent, and the NMFS (NOAA Fisheries) is looking at 28 percent.

A leaked White House document says FDA won’t be inspecting food processing any more, but that states will cover that under contracts from the FDA. 

"The budget eliminates FDA's direct role in routine inspections of food facilities," says the document. "FDA will expand the current state contracts for routine food facility inspections program to cover 100 percent of all routine foods."

But with the giant budget cuts, it is not clear from where will come the money to pay the states to do that.

Indeed, it is not clear how we can keep American food safe by cutting tens of billions of dollars and tens of thousands of jobs out of our food safety programs.

In a current case, a warning of slivers of metal in pork carnitas, it wasn’t government inspectors that discovered it. The FSIS put out the warning after the factory processing the carnitas identified the problem.

In another current crisis, there are four major listeria outbreaks underway right now, with more than 120 people sick at a dozen dead. That would be the FDA and the CDC, both of which are undergoing or facing severe staff reductions.

Food safety seems like something we’d want to support.

© Jan TenBruggencate 2025

Vaccination against the Delta variant: the newest COVID-19 research

The Delta variant has upended the decline in COVID-19 numbers, but the most recent scientific reports indicate vaccination continues to be dramatically effective against it.

The disease is changing with new variants, and the science is changing as more and more researchers report data reflecting the new dominance of the Delta variant. We reviewed the latest scientific studies, which reflect the presence of Delta. The general conclusions are:

❶ Delta is more capable of overcoming vaccination than Alpha or other variants.  That said, vaccination still provides remarkable protection—far more than half of vaccinated individuals will never experience illness with symptoms that make them feel sick.

❷ Vaccination will make you three times less likely to be infected than not being vaccinated. The COVID vaccines provide strong protection—better than the flu shot does against flu.

❸ Underlying medical conditions still increase the threat of severe infection requiring hospitalization, whether you are vaccinated or not, but vaccination improves your odds of experiencing few or no symptoms.

Here are some of the points in research published within the past three months. I have included hyperlinks so you can look at the original source material.

An Israel study showed that vaccination protection from the Pfizer vaccine dropped from 94 to 64 percent when measured against the Delta variant, the protection for the need for hospitalization only dropped from 97 to 93 percent. Meaning there was an increased chance you might get sick, but you were still extremely unlikely to get very sick. 

An India study similarly showed that while Delta gets through vaccination (which researchers call “breakthrough” infections) a little more effectively than other variants, most vaccinated individuals never get sick. 

An English study done from May to July 2021 found that during the study, earlier variants were completely replaced by Delta. And they found that unvaccinated people were three times more likely to get sick than the vaccinated. 

A Singapore study showed the mRNA vaccines, like Pfizer and Moderna, are extremely effective against the Delta variant. This study found that vaccinated patients who did experience breakthrough infections were much more likely to have no symptoms, while unvaccinated individuals were much more likely to get very sick. 

A Mayo Clinic study in the United States reviewed Moderna and Pfizer vaccines January through July 2021 confirmed that both were generally highly effective, but were less effective against Delta. That said, both are much more effective than the seasonal flu vaccine is against flu. 

A Canadian study found that all available vaccines provide significant protection against all variants. Single-dose vaccination provided some protection but full vaccination (2 doses properly timed) was far better. 

A BMJ (formerly British Medical Journal) article notes that vaccination provides good protection against infection, but that it provides excellent protection (in the 90+ percent range) against being so sick you need hospitalization. 

A Welsh-Scottish-Irish study found that vaccines provide similar or better protection than having actually had the disease. And even if you have had the disease, vaccination increases your protection against reinfection. “Effectiveness of two doses remains at least as great as protection afforded by prior natural infection,” the report says.  

The upshots are these:

Some vaccinated people will still get sick. That is the case with all vaccines--they are not 100 percent effective. As as case counts rise, you'll hear about more of these breakthrough infections, but that doesn't mean vaccines are not working.

All the newest evidence shows that vaccination makes you less likely to get infected with COVID-19, and that even if you do get infected, you are dramatically less likely be so sick that you’ll need hospital care.

Put another way, at this point in the pandemic, if you are not vaccinated,  you and your family are at dramatically higher risk of infection and severe illness.

© Jan TenBruggencate 2021

Your odds if not vaccinated are worse than drawing to an inside straight

Did you get the flu vaccine but not the COVID-19  vaccine?

How about that decision?

According to the Mayo Clinic: 

In the 2019-2020 flu season, 22,000 deaths among 38 million cases. Somewhat less than 1 in 1,000.

In the COVID-19 epidemic in 2020-2021, 580,000 dead among 32 million cases. Somewhat less than 2 in 100.

If you get the disease, you are 30 times more likely to die of COVID-19 than the flu. And these numbers don’t yet reflect the full impact of the new, more virulent Delta Variant.

Among vaccinated individuals, the death rate drops to less than 1 in 100,000, and most of those deaths are among frail, elderly folks in care homes.

Not getting vaccinated is betting on an inside straight. You might get lucky, but the odds are stacked way, way against it. Less than 1 in 10.

Oh, the COVID conspiracies. Can all be true? Can any?

Okay, the COVID-19 conspiracy industry, if it had a stock symbol, would now officially be the hottest stock on the market.


They can’t all be true. There’s considerable evidence that none of them is.


5G stratagem


There are radiation-phobes who are using COVID-19 to advance their anti-5G agendas. (5G is a high-speed cellular data network.)


It is painful to have to repeat this, but clearly 5G doesn’t cause viral disease. If nothing else doesn’t debunk this bizarre position, keep in mind that 5G still doesn’t exist in most of the world. And doesn’t exist at all in many of the places with the worst COVID-19 outbreaks. So, (sigh), if 5G caused COVID-19, how can COVID-19 exist when the vast majority of the world has no 5G?


Another 5G conspiracy theory is that COVID-19 doesn’t exist. That it is really just a hoax to cover up something called “5G Syndrome,” which is presumably a kind of radiation sickness. Again, that doesn’t explain people getting sick in areas that are absent 5G. And it doesn’t explain how the worldwide medical community, using different tests, somehow erroneously found viruses that weren’t there.


Depopulation scheme



There are folks who believe this pandemic is a secret plot to depopulate the world or a certain portion of the world. But wasn’t that AIDS/HIV? Or Ebola. Or SARS. Is it that the folks trying to kill off much of the world just aren’t that competent?


Realistically, pandemics have been with us for a long time. Think of the 1918 Spanish Flu. And much earlier, the Black Death. And before that the Justinian Plague. Both of the latter were likely bubonic plague. Smallpox and cholera have also caused historic pandemics. You don’t need an evil conspiracy to have pandemics.


Vaccination plot


There’s a weird one that COVID-19 is just a means to an end, a long game, a conspiracy to force everyone to accept vaccines. Well, dude, you can always not take the shot. But when a working vaccine is developed, you should.


Police state incubator


I heard a suggestion that this pandemic is a scheme aimed at putting a permanent police state into effect. Doesn’t China already have one of those? Why would they launch this?


Reelection intrigue


Some conservative pundits argue this is a Democrat conspiracy to reduce President Trump's likelihood of being re-elected. That wouldn’t explain why the disease is not only in the U.S. but everywhere else as well, or why Democratic mayors and governors appear to be working far harder than the President on responding to it.

Another theory


But maybe a new theory would be that COVID-19 is a secret government scheme to bring down organized governments, liberal, socialist, capitalist, communist, whatever. That’s it, a Greenie plot to solve climate change and save the planet by destroying the global economy.


It’s as random as the others. On its face, it might make sense, except for lack of evidence.


Debunk your own conspiracy


There’s a fun resource on conspiracy theories that can help you recognize one when you come across it. It is “The Conspiracy Theory Handbook,” by cognitive psychology professor Stephan Lewandowsky of University of Bristol and John Cook of the Center for Climate Change Communication at George Mason University.


The booklet can be downloaded free from here.  


My favorite clue recognizing a conspiracy is its invulnerability to evidence. This is the “but that’s what they want you to think” argument. If every piece of contrary evidence is met with that response—that’s a clue.


© Jan TenBruggencate 2020

COVID-19 conspiracy theories: Hoofbeats and zebras?

Lots of conspiracy theories about the new coronavirus make little sense, and if you actually apply a little scientific rigor to the issue, they fall apart.

They even contradict each other. If it came from a Chinese lab, why? They got hit first. If, as some
Russians say, it came from America, why are we Americans also sick? Whoa, what about the fact that
Russia seemed to be largely free of the disease, isnʻt that suspicious? Well itʻs not, any more--they've got a growing number of cases as well.

The philosopical theory known as Occamʻs Razor suggests that the simplest solution is generally the
right one. There's the old line that if you're in the American west and hear hoofbeats, your first thought should not be zebras.

A group of researchers looked into whatʻs likely and whatʻs not about the origins of COVID-19, also
known as SARS-CoV-2.

1. They found that we know of seven previous cases of this class of disease getting into humans;
2. They found that itʻs highly unlikely that this was a human-engineered virus.

Their study was published in the journal Nature Medicine. The authors are American, Australian and British researchers Kristian G. Andersen, Andrew Rambaut, W.vIan Lipkin, Edward C. Holmes and Robert F. Garry.

"Our analyses clearly show that SARS-CoV-2 is not a laboratory construct or a purposefully manipulated," they wrote.

One clue, they said, is that when you look at the genetics, this virus behaves more like a random
mutation than a purposeful construct. In other wordS, if someone had engineered it, theyʻd have done a better job, or at least would have done it differently.

Which is not to say that labs donʻt work on viruses. They do. But not like this. "The genetic data irrefutably show that SARS-CoV-2 is not derived from any previously used virus backbone," the authors wrote.

The most likely pathway is one of two, Anderson and his co-authors said. Either the virus evolved into its current form in an animal and then was passed to humans, or an earlier form of the virus passed from animals to humans and then evolved into its current form in humans.

You may have heard that many of the early victims of the virus had visited live-animal markets in
Wuhan, China. And that the animal host might have been bats, or pangolins or birds.

So far, none of those animals has been found with a form of the virus that looks close enough to be the source of the COVID-19 pandemic, they said, but they admitted that the animal population has been "massively undersampled." Pangolins seem to have the virus version closest to the pandemic version.

Alternatively, it is possible an early version of the virus jumped repeatedly to humans in a version that did not spread from human to human. Until one evolved the ability to be transmitted between people.

It is not yet possible to determine which of these things actually led to the outbreak, but there is lots of study going on, and at some point, it will be possible.

"We do not believe that any type of laboratory-based scenario is plausible," but more research will doubtless show which of the natural mechanisms was the more likely culprit.

One of the best arguments against a laboratory conspiracy to infect the world: Animal-to-human transfer of disease has been a common source of human misery since long before sophisticated laboratories were set up. There is even a term for it, zoonosis. That link is the Centers for Disease Control site on zoonotic diseases.

We have had lots of zoonotic diseases in Hawai`i, like leptospirosis and dengue, but most of these diseases require an animal-to-human infection path for each sick human. The difference with COVID-19 is that once it crossed the species barrier, it could be transmitted directly human to human.

This has happened repeatedly. Think of bird flu and swine flu. The source of the devastating 1918 "Spanish" flu, is not well known, although it almost certainly didn't come from Spain. It went on to infect a third of the world population and to kill an estimated 50 million people. Some suggest it might have crossed from birds.

Thus, this is neither new nor rare. "More than 60% of the roughly 400 emerging infectious diseases that have been identified since 1940 are zoonotic," wrote the authors of this 2012 paper in the journal The Lancet, which has the ominous title, "Prediction and prevention of the next pandemic zoonosis."

© Jan TenBruggencate 2020

COVID-19 Fake News: Stuff people are saying about the disease thats just bull

There is lots of information about COVID-19 out there, and some of it is bad information.

Hereʻs some of the stuff Iʻve been hearing thatʻs not true, or not entirely true.

Q. A friend asked whether, once youʻve had the virus, youʻre immune in the future.

A. The answer is, probably, but not certainly. 

Youʻre generally immune to a virus after having gotten it—at least for a while. However, there have been rare cases in which people have appeared to be over COVID-19, and then got sick again. Was it simply a relapse of the original infection or a new one? Thatʻs not yet clear.

There is also indication that the virus has evolved, at least in China, and that there are now at least two versions of COVID-19 out there. If youʻve had one, you might still be susceptible to getting the second. Hereʻs a link to a scientific paper on that.

The Centers for Disease Control says this: "The immune response to COVID-19 is not yet understood. Patients with MERS-CoV infection are unlikely to be re-infected shortly after they recover, but it is not yet known whether similar immune protection will be observed for patients with COVID-19."

Q. Another person said flu goes away in the summer, so this will be gone by mid-year.

A. Donʻt count on it. This disease has not been around long enough to know. Hereʻs what the Centers for Disease Control says about that: 

"It is not yet known whether weather and temperature impact the spread of COVID-19. Some other viruses, like the common cold and flu, spread more during cold weather months but that does not mean it is impossible to become sick with these viruses during other months.  At this time, it is not known whether the spread of COVID-19 will decrease when weather becomes warmer.  There is much more to learn about the transmissibility, severity, and other features associated with COVID-19 and investigations are ongoing."

Q. A co-worker told me he read that if itʻs a dry cough itʻs COVID-19, but if itʻs a wet cough itʻs the flu.

A. Wrong. (Sometimes.) 

As this guide from Johns Hopkins Medicine notes, thereʻs no sure thing with symptoms. A dry cough occurs most often in COVID-19, but not always. Same with fever—some patients have one, some donʻt. Same with soreness and tiredness. Same with shortness of breath. 

A World Health Organization study in Chinaʻs outbreak found that fever occurs 88 percent of the time,  dry cough in 68 percent of cases, fatigue in 38 percent, sputum production in 33 percent, shortness of breath in 19 percent, sore throat in 14 percent, headache in 14 percent, joint pan in 15 percent, chills in 11 percent, nausea or vomiting in 5 percent, nasal congestion in 5 percent, diarrhea in 4 percent, and coughing up blood in 1 percent and  and watery or inflamed eyes 1 percent.

Q. Someone asked, if I get tested, will I know for sure that I am or am not infected?

A. If you have symptoms and a positive test, youʻre infected. The test can confirm that the disease youʻve got is not a cold or flu or other virus and is COVID-19. 

If you have no symptoms and you can get someone to test you, chances are it will be negative. But that doesnʻt necessarily mean you donʻt have it. It could mean you donʻt. Or it could mean youʻre infected but havenʻt been infected long enough to test positive.

A report on a Stanford COVID-19 test said: 

"As with all currently available tests, it’s not yet clear how long a person needs to be infected before testing positive, or whether someone who's infected could be identified by the test before displaying symptoms." 

Q. If I get sick, I can only infect others while I have active symptoms.

A. Wrong. You can infect people a day or two before your active symptoms show up, and you might be able to pass the virus to others for a week or more after youʻve recovered.

 

This German study found active viruses for many days after symptoms disappeared.

© Jan TenBruggencate 2020

Dengue, Zika, and now Yellow Fever? Mosquito-borne plagues are growing

The Aedes mosquito is responsible for the dengue fever outbreak that’s been terrorizing the Big Island, and the zika virus that has infected several Hawai`i residents while traveling, and now another Aedes passenger, yellow fever, is spreading.

Yellow fever is famously the disease that killed thousands during the construction of the Panama Canal in the early years of the last century. Malaria, another of the major disease of the Panama Canal construction, is caused by a different mosquito genus, Anopheles.

The worst effects of those diseases around the Canal Zone were controlled by aggressively draining swamps, pouring kerosene on any standing water, and installing domestic water systems, so catchment rain barrels could be replaced. The barrels were perfect mosquito breeding areas.

Hawai`i has the Aedes mosquito, and has had several dengue fever outbreaks. Recently, with the spread of zika virus from Africa to Asia, across the Pacific and into the Americas, the mosquitoes are responsible for a new disease outbreak.

And now, another Aedes-carried disease is breaking out. Yellow fever, which has been a constant threat in some parts of the tropical world, has taken a turn for the worse in Africa, and has spread to China.

The medical journal, The Lancet, has just published a new paper, Yellow Fever: A Global Reckoning, calling it a “global health security risk.” 

The new outbreak started in 2015 in Angola, and has spread to the Democratic Republic of Congo, Kenya and China. Vaccines against yellow fever have run out in Angola. Unlike dengue and zika, there is a vaccine that provides lifelong protection.

Yellow fever can present with flu-like symptoms—fever, chills, severe headache, muscle pain, nausea, vomiting and fatigue. Most people recover, but 15 percent develop liver damage, jaundice, organ failure and in some cases death. The disease gets its name because of the yellowed skin and yellow eye whites of people with severe cases.

During the late 1800s and the first decade of the 1900s, sailors referred to the disease as Yellow Jack, and reportedly were more afraid of it than any other disease.

A case of yellow fever came to Hawai`i with a visitor, who was immediately quarantined. The disease may have spread to one additional person, a quarantine guard. Because of the Panama Canal yellow fever crisis, health officials were aware of the disease, and knew how to set up an effective quarantine.

Meanwhile, in news about Zika, which has been found in Hawai`i residents who caught it while traveling abroad, there are not reported cases of local transmission. Zika has been reported on several islands, all in people who had traveled to zika-infested areas. In January, a Hawai’i woman who had traveled to Brazil gave birth to a child with birth defects.

In addition to birth defects among a small percentage of infected pregnant women, zika has been linked to Guillain-Barre syndrome, and recently with another attack on the nervous system, acute myelitis.

For more information see our previous pieces on zika: Zika,not your friend, and Zika and birth defects. 

You can also search our blog for several articles on dengue. Here was the first, from last November. 

© Jan TenBruggencate 2016

Dengue: You don't know how big a threat it is. It's big.

Not too worried about dengue fever? 

You should be. It is the leading cause of illness and death in the tropics and subtropics. It's a miserable disease to have. 

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) say 400 million people annually are infected.

And there’s a lot you likely didn’t know about this mosquito-borne disease, which has showed up and been defeated several times in the Hawaiian Isands, but now appears widespread now on the Big Island. 

One feature of the disease is that there are four different related viruses that cause dengue. If you get one, you’re protected from getting that one again, but after a few months you can get any of the other three. Most parts of the world have all four types.

There is some evidence that if you get a second type after a first infection, the symptoms can be significantly more severe.

Dengue is pretty much everywhere within a thousand miles or so of the equator—Hawai`i has been one of the outliers in not having it.

There is no vaccine for it so far, although there's a lot of work being done toward a vaccine. Your best hope of not getting it is not getting bitten. 

It is possible to have the infection and not have symptoms—but you’ll still be able to pass the disease to others via mosquito bites.

Dengue is in a group of viruses called Flaviviruses. Yellow fever and West Nile are also in that group. It causes illness that outwardy mimics a lot of other disease, even flu. It can be very similar in outward appearance to another tropical disease called chikungunya. Says the CDC: “Chikungunya and dengue are both acute febrile illnesses characterized by fever, myalgia, and lethargy. Some patients may also have … rash, nausea, vomiting, and headache.” 

Fortunately, we don’t have chikungunya in the Islands. On the other hand, dengue is worse: “Chikungunya is rarely fatal. In contrast, early identification and proper clinical management for hospitalized dengue cases can reduce the case-fatality rate from 10% to less than 0.1%. Therefore, patients suspected of having dengue or chikungunya should be managed as having dengue until dengue can be ruled out.”

Dengue can be transmitted blood to blood, but the main reservoir for infection is mosquitoes. Two mosquito varieties can carry dengue, Aedes aegypti and Aedes albopictus. We have both of them in Hawai`i. Albopictus, the Asian tiger mosquito, is a daytime biter. Aegypti is a daytime biter that’s most active a couple of hours after dawn and before sunset. Aegypti is the one you’re more likely to find inside your house.

The virus is creepily robust. Most get it from the mosquitoes, but folks working in laboratories have been infected: “The virus is stable in dried blood for up to 9 weeks at room temperature,” says the Public Health Agency of Canada. Dengue isn’t in Canada, but visitors to the tropics can bring it home.

You get sick 4 days to a week after being bitten, and you can stay sick 3 to 10 days. In some people, it can progress to more serious diseases called dengue hemorrhagic fever and dengue shock syndrome, which can be fatal. These diseases are more common in young children than adults.

Folks who have traveled in the tropics often have experienced airline crews spraying insecticide up and down the aisles. Often, that’s for dengue, which can be so painful it’s called “breakbone fever.”

You avoid getting dengue by avoiding getting stung by infected mosquitoes. Recommendations are to stay out of areas with lots of mosquitoes, and to wear protective clothing and insect repellent if you must be there. Also, reduce mosquito numbers in your environment by emptying standing water where they breed in pots, plants, and other locations. 

Longer term, to stop the cycle of infection, public health authorities need to break the cycle of humans passing the disease to mosquitoes and mosquitoes passing it to humans.  If new infections can be stopped for several weeks, the cohort of infected mosquitoes can die off, and the reservoir of infectivity is shut down. A mosquito, once it picks up the virus, can pass it on for its lifetime, but does not pass it on to its young.

Once again, the key symptoms of dengue, according to CDC, are a lot of pain—headache, pain behind the eyes, joint pain, muscle pain, bone pain—and also rash, mild bleeding from the nose or gums, and bruising or red and purple spots on the skin. Lab tests will show low white blood cell counts.

Victims should seek immediate medical attention, CDC says, if the symptoms move to severe abdominal pain or persistent vomiting; red spots or patches on the skin; bleeding from nose or gums; vomiting blood; black, tarry stools; drowsiness or irritability; pale, cold, or clammy skin; or difficulty breathing.

Resources:

The Hawaii State Department of Health fact sheet on dengue. 

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention web pages. 

World Health Organization treatment guidelines. 

© Jan TenBruggencate 2015