Just a few days in and Donald Trump has already failed the millions of people who proudly voted for fascism because they believed that Donald Trump would lower the price of eggs, just like how Mussolini made the trains run on time. However, in a disappointing turn of events for people who don’t really put a lot of effort into determining if things are actually true or not, Mussolini didn’t actually make the trains run on time and the price of eggs has shot up to an all time high.
Whoops!
The prices are on a major upswing, thanks to the bird flu, a situation that will definitely get worse in the coming months, what with all of the Trumpers guzzling gallons of raw milk day in and day out.
But that doesn’t matter — because the promise was that he was going to lower them by magic. By the mere power of his manly, manly presence. Just like how he was supposed to make Mexico pay for the wall.
Via NPR:
A dozen large, Grade A eggs cost an average of $4.15 in the U.S. last month – a nearly 37% increase from the year before – according to data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. That’s a much larger jump than the 2.5% increase of overall food prices.
The last time that average price was above $4 was two years ago, when the cost for a dozen eggs spiked to a record $4.82.
The egg industry has been impacted by a surge of bird flu cases in recent weeks. More than 13 million egg-laying hens died in December due to the virus – the most of any month last year – according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. And another 3.3 million died in early January.
Please to enjoy this graph, showing how prices have spiked for eggs in the Midwest, so as to cut off any “Well that’s just your coastal elite egg pricing!” arguments.
Also too, here are some screenshots of egg prices from my very own Instacart app, of various prices for store-brand eggs in the Chicago area.
We’ve got Mariano’s:
We’ve got the Jewel:
And, for fairness sake, Kroger’s, which is in the suburbs. And still much higher than usual:
And it’s likely to get much worse in coming weeks and months.
This, of course, is not the only way that the avian flu is going to fuck us with Trump in charge.
It’s already starting to spread to humans — earlier this month, the United States had its first death. That person got it from a backyard flock of chickens, and we haven’t had a case of human-to-human transmission yet … but that doesn’t seem too far off.
If/when it does happen and we end up with a bird flu pandemic, it’s probably going to be a hell of a lot more damaging than COVID was, because we know for sure that these people won’t do anything to prevent transmission this time around, even for a little bit at the beginning.
One thing to be thankful for? Just a few days before Trump entered office, the non-Robert Kennedy Jr.-led HHS gave Moderna $590 million to develop a vaccine for humans — which about half of the country won’t take. And sure, maybe a part of you right now is thinking “Eh, fuck ‘em,” but we have to remember that these people have children and will also likely be around people with immune disorders who can’t take the vaccine for health reasons and rely on the rest of us for herd immunity.
In any case, while we do know better, we should absolutely blame the shit out of Trump for every price increase on eggs — since he was the one who promised to do so. And we should definitely blame him when our country is ravaged by bird flu because his idiot followers tried to cure it with Ivermectin, bleach and scarecrows.
And on that note: OPEN THREAD!
PREVIOUSLY ON WONKETTE!