Are we facing another manufactured health scare?

As we approach another election season, a familiar and troubling pattern seems to be emerging once again. On Oct. 10, an international Bird Flu Summit will convene, raising eyebrows for its timing— just one month before the upcoming elections. Given the history of conveniently timed health emergencies, it’s hard not to wonder: Are the elites planning to recycle the bird flu as the next “fouryear virus”?

We’ve seen this playbook before. Over the past two decades, a new health crisis seems to arise like clockwork, often coinciding with key political moments. SARS in 2004, Bird Flu in 2008, Swine Flu in 2010, MERS in 2012, Ebola in 2014 and 2018, Zika in 2016, and of course, COVID-19 in 2020. These crises, real though they may be, have consistently been leveraged to instill fear, impose control, and influence the political landscape.

Take COVID-19 as an example. What started as a health concern quickly became a tool for unprecedented government overreach. We were told to mask up, stay six feet apart, and keep our kids out of school, all based on guidelines that we now know were not backed by solid research. The vaccine, initially heralded as the key to stopping the spread, could not be fully tested for its ability to do so. In some people, it caused severe side effects like myocarditis, heart attacks, and strokes.

The narrative was enforced with such zeal that even those who were asymptomatic were treated as public enemies. During the Zika virus scare, a doctor who contracted the virus but was asymptomatic was publicly shamed and con- demned for leaving her home. This overreaction highlights a disturbing trend: the stigmatization of individuals based on fear rather than facts. The same tactics were used during COVID-19, where healthy individuals were isolated, businesses were shuttered, and lives were upended, all in the name of safety.

Now, as the dust begins to settle from COVID-19, we’re being introduced to a new potential health scare: Monkey Pox. The World Health Organization is considering declaring it an international emergency after some outbreaks in Africa. While this virus is relatively easy to avoid, we must not overlook how it could be used as a pretext for more draconian measures. Mask mandates, online schooling, and mass mail-in voting could all be on the table once again—just like they were during COVID-19.

The timing of the Bird Flu Summit and the buzz around Monkey Pox is suspicious. It’s hard to believe that these health concerns, whether real or exaggerated, are not being lined up as potential tools to influence the upcoming elections. The establishment knows how effective these strategies have been in the past at keeping people under control and driving specific political outcomes.

But there’s another layer to this story, one that directly impacts the lives of ordinary Americans.

As of this year, the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department has mandated that hunters report the number of turkeys they harvest. On the surface, this is framed as a conservation effort to prevent the “Tragedy of the Commons.”

However, it coincides with the Bird Flu Summit, where there’s a very real possibility that the government could mandate the culling of massive amounts of domestic and privately-owned birds to prevent the spread of the virus.

Imagine being told that, despite owning your animals, you cannot harvest them to feed your family. This could quickly spiral out of control, especially in the hands of those who see the economy as a chessboard to manipulate. What starts as a measure to protect public health could easily become a tool to control food supply and, by extension, the population.

We must remain vigilant and question the motivations behind these emerging health scares. The pattern is too consistent to ignore, and the stakes are too high to be complacent. Whether it’s Bird Flu, Monkey Pox, or the next virus of the year, we must demand transparency, hold our leaders accountable, and resist any attempts to use fear as a means of control.