Countering a toned-down alert from the Centers for Disease Control over a new “bird flu” case, survivalists who have long seen the H5N1 virus as more threatening than COVID-19 this week stepped up their warnings about it.
“This is a real threat,” a national prepper and survivalist organization warned on its app.
“This is a warning to prepare for a potentially severe pandemic and collapse,” added the statement on the “Collapse Survivor App” recently featured in Secrets and produced by the founder of Fortitude Ranch, a chain of survivalist resort camps.
The administration on Monday reported in an alert that a Texas dairy worker was struck by the bird flu, which actually spreads in birds and mammals.
“This infection does not change the H5N1 bird flu human health risk assessment for the U.S. general public, which CDC considers to be low,” the CDC said.
But Drew Miller, the Fortitude founder, said the CDC was being too dismissive. A former government intelligence officer, retired Air Force colonel, and Harvard Ph.D. graduate, Miller told Secrets, “The Center For Disease Control is endangering Americans with false assurances that H5N1 is ‘low risk.’ The opposite is true: H5N1 is a clear, growing risk of a pandemic that could kill billions.”
He and others who help the public prepare for disasters have long warned about the threat of the virus once it reaches human-to-human spread levels.
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“The recent human case in the U.S. is not from human-to-human transmission of H5N1, but the risks of this are clearly rising,” Miller said. “H5N1, which historically has been about 60% lethal to humans, had a major mutation last year, enabling it to spread in many mammal populations around the world.”
He added in a memo to members, “We cannot know when human-to-human transmissible H5N1 pandemic will happen, but to say it is low risk is wrong. An H5N1 pandemic is coming. It could start tomorrow, or a few more years from now. The CDC must stop reassuring people that H5N1 is low risk; it is a looming huge disaster that will kill billions if we are not prepared for it. The CDC should be publishing the message the Collapse Survivor App just released: H5N1 is a huge risk, and you need to be prepared for a bad pandemic and collapse.”
