Yes, and I’ve heard people say “It’ll be OK; the strain that goes pandemic won’t be as lethal as the current strains.” There’s some truth in this, that extremely deadly viruses will tend to burn themselves out by killing their hosts so not spread so widely. So perhaps bird flu transmitted from person to person would not sustain the extremely high death rates this type of flu has shown in people in the past. But as the 1918 flu and even the COVID pandemic show, there’s a lot of wiggle room for a virus between utterly deadly and utterly harmless, and even something that’s far from the worst can still go pandemic and cause huge amounts of death, disruption and misery.

That’s their problem

Unfortunately, with how pandemics work, it would be everyone’s problem.

This would be much worse than COVID. Bird flu is far more deadly.

We serve as human resources for the rest of the federal agencies, but unlike HR at a private company—where HR really works for your boss and not for you—our agency actually does work for the American people and the public servants who serve them.

And there’s why Republicans hate you and want to undermine you: they don’t believe any resources should be wasted on the American people. The people are only there to be fleeced to further enrich billionaires.