The conception of folly expressed by Erasmus partly diminishes the role of rationality in human existence, provided that one “does not consider anything human as alien to oneself.” But this is wise philosophy. Today, unfortunately, we are moving along a path where a pernicious folly – anti-rational and anti-scientific – has become the guiding star of behaviour, undermining any sensible project for humanity’s future.
Thus, while climate change is destroying the planet, while those in power believe it right and necessary to wage war and claim wider borders for their respective countries, while a real estate developer wants to turn Gaza into a resort for the rich while also claiming Greenland “because I need it,” there is the equivalent of a Minister of Health of the world’s most powerful state – already known for his anti-vax and anti-health positions – who now wants to contain the avian influenza epidemic by letting it spread freely.
“Survival of the fittest,” said Darwin. It matters little whether it is chickens, laying hens, dairy cattle, or human beings: it is always the weakest who suffer! And not only the physically weakest: on a global scale, it is always the countries with the poorest populations that succumb!

Avian Influenza

The problem of avian influenza caused by the H5N1 virus is a striking example, and much more serious than laypeople realise. The trade war – first hinted at and then triggered by Trump – has turned it into an issue of egg prices, demanded by the average north-American at breakfast, to the point of sending cargo planes from many European countries to U.S. airports (tariffs or no tariffs) and leading to pressing demands even from Italy’s Po Valley regions and Denmark itself – despite the “Greenland” dispute.
But let us try to shed some scientific light on it.
Since the first major epidemic in chickens – the one that gave the name to avian influenza (Hong Kong, 1997) – the virus, classified as a highly transmissible influenza type A originating from aquatic birds, has circled the globe multiple times, carried by migratory birds, progressively jumping species, infecting other wild animals and then mammals, especially dairy cattle, with rare cases of transmission to humans: but never yet from human to human.
Now the virus is widespread in Asia, North and South America, and even in Arctic and Antarctic regions (seals, sea lions, etc.), with outbreaks almost everywhere. A recent editorial in Nature identifies avian influenza as the next human pandemic: just a single further genetic change would be enough to allow the virus to bind perfectly to the human receptor (Nature, January 27, 2025).

In the United States

The situation in the United States is particularly worrying. The virus is present in the waters of many rivers and lakes. More than 160 million chickens, particularly laying hens, have therefore been culled, causing the price of eggs to rise by more than 300%.
The greatest concern lies in the fact that the virus has rapidly spread among dairy cattle, infecting the mammary glands and being transmitted from animal to animal through automatic milking machines.
Infected animals can be asymptomatic. The virus has in fact also been found in milk from farms that appeared disease-free. The Food and Drug Administration has issued strict instructions to boil milk – a practice that inactivates the virus – but, in the folly of follies, the “Go to Raw Milk” movement has grown in the United States, a denialist movement that, with the full support of Minister RF Kennedy Jr, pushes people to drink raw milk. To date, around a thousand human infections have been reported, with at least one death. But in other countries with weaker healthcare systems, the mortality rate probably reaches 50% of those infected.
After the new U.S. government took office, the country’s withdrawal from all international organisations also resulted in the suspension of health data sharing, culminating in the policy of allowing avian influenza to spread, in the belief that resistant animals would naturally select themselves: a highly unlikely scenario given the characteristics of the virus.
The WHO (World Health Organization) continues to monitor the spread of the disease in other countries, ready to order the culling of all livestock in affected farms and to prepare vaccines in case of human-to-human transmission. A global plan to contain avian influenza has existed since 2008, but it is now at risk due to the lack of data and funding from the United States.
The situation is paradoxical: around the world, health systems are being steered towards the One Health Initiative, a coordinated system in which human health is inseparable from the health of animals, plants, and the environment (see figure below).
Such a policy requires interventions to protect land (urban and rural) and biodiversity, the rational use of medicines to prevent antibiotic resistance, mitigation and adaptation measures against climate change, control of zoonoses and infectious diseases, food safety and food security, and environmental pollution control. All activities absent from the protocols of the current U.S. president, whose only concern is making money!
What kind of global health is it to let infected animals die of severe respiratory symptoms, diarrhoea, tremors, and suffocation, without intervention, simply in the hope of generating improbable resistance? And if the virus completes its species jump because of inefficient containment policies and we face a new pandemic, what then? Shall we patiently wait for Darwin’s law of “survival of the fittest” to work again?

With or Without Humans

The WHO states it is ready to produce an ad hoc vaccine, but certainly not to face a new global pandemic in a world where major U.S. institutions call themselves anti-vax.
In the world shaped by Homo sapiens, there are no simple or effective answers to complex problems: we have expanded the world for our own use and consumption at the expense of all biodiversity, confining ourselves in physical, political, and social cages where nature itself continues to evolve in an unstoppable process, with timescales very different from those we would like.
What is needed is a scientifically grounded reality check, one that leads us to recognise that life on Earth will go on regardless – with or without sapiens. Even without sapiens!
“Hope does not disappoint,” said Pope Francis in proclaiming the Jubilee of Hope. And so I find myself hoping once again for greater reasonableness and serious scientific information! I read that Robert Kennedy Jr rushed to Texas to the funeral of an eight-year-old girl from an anti-vax family, who died of measles in an outbreak affecting over 500 cases. Newspapers report his belated words: “I am here to console the family; the only solution is the vaccine.” Let us hope!

See, Follie antiscientifiche

Giulio Marchesini is Professor of Dietetics at the University of Bologna. He is a member of the group Energy for Italy (www.energiaperlitalia.it)
Photo by Nir Elias/Reuters/Redux