The US election and public health megathread

[u/TheYellowRose]

Please contain all election-related questions and commentary to this megathread! The repeat posts are clogging up the subreddit at this point. Thanks!

[u/healthbeatnews]

Trump’s immigration tactics obstruct efforts to avert bird flu pandemic, researchers say https://www.healthbeat.org/2025/04/10/trump-immigration-bird-flu-pandemic-farmworkers/

Aggressive deportation tactics have terrorized farmworkers at the center of the nation’s bird flu strategy, public health workers say.

Dairy and poultry workers have accounted for most cases of the bird flu in the United States — and preventing and detecting cases among them is key to averting a pandemic. But public health specialists say they’re struggling to reach farmworkers because many are terrified to talk with strangers or to leave home.

Outreach workers who teach farmworkers about the bird flu, provide protective gear, and connect them with tests say they noticed a dramatic shift — first in California, the state hit hardest by the bird flu — after immigration raids beginning on Jan. 7, the day after Congress certified President Donald Trump’s election victory. That’s when Border Patrol agents indiscriminately stopped about 200 Latino farmworkers and day laborers in California’s Central Valley, according to local reports cited in a lawsuit subsequently filed by the American Civil Liberties Union on behalf of the United Farm Workers union and several people who were stopped and detained.

Trump’s first legislative action was to sign the Laken Riley Act into law, mandating federal detention for immigrants accused of any crime, regardless of whether they’re convicted. On Jan. 21, the Department of Homeland Security rescinded the “protected areas” policy, allowing agents to arrest people who don’t have legal status while they’re in schools, churches, or hospitals. Last month, the Trump administration deported more than 100 Venezuelans and others without a hearing, ignoring a court order to turn around planes flying the men to El Salvador.

The public health ramifications of farmworkers shrinking from view are potentially massive: Infectious disease scientists say that preventing people from getting bird flu and detecting cases are critical to warding off a bird flu pandemic. That’s why the government has funded efforts to protect farmworkers and monitor them for signs of bird flu, like red eyes or flu-like symptoms.

About 65 dairy and poultry workers have tested positive for the bird flu since March 2024, but the true number of infections is higher. A KFF Health News investigation found that patchy surveillance resulted in cases going undetected on farms last year, and studies have revealed signs of prior infections in farmworkers who hadn’t been tested.

State and local health departments were beginning to overcome last year’s barriers to bird flu testing, said Salvador Sandoval, a doctor who retired recently from the Merced County health department in California. Now, he said, “people see a mobile testing unit and think it’s Border Patrol.”

Last year, outreach organizations connected with farmworkers at places where they gathered, like at food distribution events, but those are no longer well attended, Sandoval and others said.

“Regardless of immigration status, people who look like immigrants are feeling a lot of fear right now,” said Hunter Knapp, the development director at Project Protect Food Systems Workers, a farmworker advocacy organization in Colorado that does bird flu outreach. He said some Latino community health workers have scaled back their outreach efforts because they worry about being harassed by the authorities or members of the public.