As anybody who shops at a local supermarket knows, the price of eggs is too damned high. In the photo above, it was just swell to see the shelves of WinCo fully stocked on my last visit, but at $7.42 per dozen I rolled right on by the egg case. I love my eggs, scrambled, over-medium, poached, whatever, but enough is enough.
You can blame it on outgoing President Joe Biden, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, or California’s woke poultry policies if you want to. One truth that generally holds for most inflationary periods is that prices are “sticky.” Once prices go up they don’t necessarily come down when the economy returns to equilibrium. Incoming President Donald Trump has already conceded he can’t wave his MAGA wand and bring prices down.

Screenshot
This is particularly true with the price of eggs, which have spiked in price since 2020. That’s the year the COVID-19 pandemic hit the United States, leading to some federal and state policies that were considered inflationary. But it’s also the year that two strains of bird flu — low pathogenic LPAI H7N3 and high pathogenic HPAI H7N3 — were detected on U.S. turkey farms, according to the CDC.
In 2022, the even more lethal (to birds) HPAI H5N1 virus was detected in wild birds in the United States for the first time since 2016. That same year, HPAI H5N1 was detected in various wild mammals across the United States, a cross-species jump common with bird flu viruses.
In March 2024 H5N1 bird flu was detected for the first time in cattle on dairy farms in Kansas and Texas; in April, the first cow-to-human transfer of bird flu was detected. The mode of transition is believed to be via milk droplets. This month, H5N1 took its first human victim in the U.S., an older man over age 65 who “was exposed to the virus through contact with backyard poultry and wild birds.”
During this four-year time period, the average price for eggs nationally shot up from $1.50 per dozen to nearly $5 per dozen as millions of potentially infected birds were exterminated. In California the average price for a dozen eggs is currently $8.97, the highest in the country. Just in November and December of last year, more than 10 million birds, mainly in the Central Valley area, were put to death.
Somehow, perhaps because bird flu is a virus and could involve public health mandates he opposes in the future or the price of eggs is just too damned high, H5N1 caught the attention of Shasta County District 1 Supervisor Kevin Crye. He brought in Public Health Officer Dr. James Mu to give a quick course on bird flu at Tuesday’s meeting of the Shasta County Board of Supervisors.

Shasta County Public Health Officer Dr. James Mu.
“What’s interesting about this is it starts to affect mammals, specifically dairy cows,” Dr. Mu said after presenting a short history of H5N1 bird flu, which was first detected in Asia in the 1990s. “In early springtime (2024) it was reported (in dairy cattle), as well as the first case of a human, a dairy worker was involved. The next state I believe was in Michigan, then Colorado, Kansas and westward towards California. East coast there’s a little Carolina state involved. Overall there are 16 states that have dairy cow bird flu infections.”
Dr. Mu said that as of last week, there are 700 dairy cow herds in California that are infected with H5N1 bird flu. He presented CDC information that shows California leading the nation with human bird flu cases with 34 cases, followed by 11 cases in Washington and 10 in Colorado.
“In California, a majority of the cases are due to dairy cows; in Washington and Colorado they’re mostly from poultry,” Dr. Mu said, adding that for most humans the symptoms of H5NI are relatively mild. “The most common symptom is conjunctivitis; the theory is that when dairy workers were working with milk that milk contains the virus itself and you rub your eyes and get conjunctivitis, which is known as pink eyes. The other symptoms are very similar to a respiratory infection, people get a runny nose, cough, fever and chills.”
The doctor recommends Tamiflu for treatment.
In addition to advising people to live a healthy lifestyle and abstain from smoking, Dr. Mu recommended that people handling wildlife or livestock to wear person protection equipment (PPE), avoid contact with dead birds and refrain from consuming contaminated raw milk or raw milk products.

Dr. James Mu.
“In Shasta County, again we are at low risk because we do not have any commercial dairy or poultry farms,” Dr. Mu said.
To be honest, I did not know that fact, but with the exception of a few small family operations, he appears to be correct. But we’re not out of the woods yet—and speaking of the woods, bears, foxes and otters have tested positive for bird flu. Not to mention cats, wild and domestic.
“However, we do have wildlife presence so we could be exposed to wild birds, poultry and range cattle,” Dr. Mu said. “In fact, we do have wastewater monitoring. We have detected some H5N1 in the city of Redding, mostly associated with after rainstorms. So we do have some watershed conditions we do have some detection after the rain, but that level goes down.”
Dr. Mu noted that Gov. Gavin Newsom declared a state of emergency regarding bird flu in dairy cow herds and poultry flocks last month. As part of the response, the California Department of Public Health has partnered with federal, state and local officials to monitor farm animals and people who work in the dairy and poultry industries.
In an ominous story in the current issue of The Atlantic (sorry about the paywall), “Bird Flu is a National Embarrassment,” staff writer Katherine J. Wu talks to several experts worried that such monitoring is “too little, too late.”

Testing chicken for bird flu diagram courtesy of Wikipedia.
“When I asked experts if the outbreak had a clear inflection point—a moment at which it was crucial for U.S. leaders to more concertedly intervene—nearly all of them pointed to late winter or early spring of last year,” Wu writes.
According to the article, H5N1 has now spread to all 50 states, affecting 100 million birds, mostly chickens, and 1000 dairy cattle herds. Wu argues many farm animals might have been saved and the spread of bird flu slowed or even halted had the Centers for Disease Control ordered immediate testing one year ago when it was first detected in Texas. Another major problem: the lack of timely bird flu vaccines for farm workers.
As Dr. Mu pointed out, so far there’s no evidence that H5N1 has mutated to a virus that can be transmitted human-to-human, which is the main issue virologists worry about. So far, Wu writes, H5N1 hasn’t evolved in that direction, but every chance the virus gets to jump from a milk cow or a chicken to a human is a mutation opportunity.
Asked by Crye what he’d do if bird flu becomes a more urgent problem in Shasta County, Dr. Mu said he’s start a social media campaign to inform the public.
So what’s all that got to do with the high price of eggs?
Just about everything, actually.

Shasta County Sheriff Michael Johnson wants an alternative sentencing facility, cost and funding unknown.
Proposition 36 and that New Jail Smell
“Mistrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful,” the philosopher Friedreich Nietzsche wrote in the late 19th century. He was commenting on executioners of his time and the rabble who celebrated them, but he might as well have been referring to the 86 percent of Shasta County voters who chose to sign on to Prop. 36 last November.
It wasn’t just Shasta County. A supermajority of state voters went blood simple, with 68 percent choosing to undo 2014’s Proposition 47 and make theft of less than $950 a felony if the defendant as two or more prior drug or theft convictions. That’s roughly 27 60-count egg cartons at $35.98 each. Or one iPhone.
The return to this failed drug war policy was sponsored in part by WalMart, Home Depot and Target, those proud purveyors of American-made products that keep our working class gainfully employed.
Being in the tiny minority who voted against Prop. 36, I should perhaps tone it down, but after following this issue for a decade or more I’ve become convinced the people of California just won’t pay for correctional facilities that actually rehabilitate criminals, especially the hardcore repeat offenders, the 20 percent who supposedly commit 80 percent of the crime. Prop. 36 would send such felons straight to prison, even though it’s not clear there’s enough room to constitutionally house the increased number of prisoners, which is why Prop. 47 passed in the first place.
However, there’s an option to prison time, Shasta County Sheriff Mike Johnson told the board of supervisors Tuesday. Johnson was there on Kelstrom’s invite and gave an enthusiast pitch for a multimillion dollar alternative custody program that would offer drug-addicted offenders a chance to sober up, and provide mental health services to those in need of it.
“I’d like to start off by telling you in person the foremost, the number one option that is best for us to deal with our incarceration and accountability problem in this county is either a new jail or expanding beds, expanding the jail till we get more beds is what we need,” Sheriff Johnson began. “Now, I want to make it very clear that is not what this presentation is about. That is an option that we all wish we could proceed with, but we don’t have the money for it, and I realize that.”
Johnson repeated the caveat “that is not what this presentation is about” throughout his presentation, perhaps to assure people this isn’t yet another pie-in-the-sky new jail scheme that will fall flat like all the other proposals that have come before it during the past 20 years.

Shasta County Undersheriff Gene Randall.
His pitch, with an assist from Undersheriff Gene Randall, sounded a lot like the Wagon Wheel of Justice proposal he made back in 2020, when Matt Pontes was CEO, minus the spokes directly connecting rehabilitation services to the jail. Johnson proposes expanding the existing Alternative Custody Program, which has existed on-and-off since 1982 and was brought back to life in 2011 with the passage of AB-109, the prison realignment bill.
Last fiscal year, the ACP had a budget of $3.7 million and a total of 910 bookings, according to Johnson’s presentation. That took a significant burden off the jail, which is basically at full capacity most of the time, as Randall explained.
To be certain, only low level nonviolent offenders are eligible for ACP. Under Prop. 36, eligible offenders are held in custody upon booking pending a judicial review prior to making bail or being released. The idea is to relieve jail space in order to hold the hardcore 20 percent.
“The offender, and I love this bullet point because this is like right out of the Michael Johnson plan that I presented a few years ago,” Johnson said, “the offender can opt for drug treatment to avoid jail or prison time, and if they complete that treatment, they do not suffer a conviction for the offense.”
Johnson plans to fund it with money from a $6.4 billion state mental health fund, an apparent reference to Prop. 1, the mental health makeover bill sponsored by Gov. Newsom that narrowly passed in the March primary last year.
“So one other thing which is not tied to Prop. 36 but is very much worth mentioning is in this year’s California budget they have allocated 6.4 billion dollars towards mental health and mental health-related programs,” Johnson said. “That is a significant change that can be very impactful and helpful in our community.”
Johnson’s vision is typically ambitious, featuring a campus of 80 acres or more—on cheaper land conveniently located near local sewage facilities—and a low cost building to house expanded vocational/work program activities in wildfire fighting, forestry, farming, the culinary arts and auto mechanics. And wouldn’t you know it, buried deep in Johnson’s presentation, this new campus will also be the site of … the future new jail!
I thought he said that wasn’t what this presentation was about.

Shasta County District 4 Supervisor Matt Plummer and HHSA Office Assistant Supervisor Ryan Toney.
Your Employee of the Month
I’m often amazed that anyone turns up for work at the county considering the ongoing tension, so the Employee of the Year and the Employee of the Month awards in back-to-back meetings have been the high point of the year so far. This time, Shasta County District 4 Supervisor Matt Plummer presented the Employee of the Month award to HHSA Office Assistant Supervisor Ryan Toney. According to Toney’s bio:
“Ryan Toney started working for the Health and Human Services Agency in February 2020 as an Extra Help Office Assistant II. Ryan has since become a full-time employee who has advanced in his career within Health and Human Services Agency to his current position as an Office Assistant Supervisor. Ryan is a self-starter who is constantly searching for his next opportunity while offering fresh perspective on the always changing eligibility landscape. Ryan’s commitment to professional growth is demonstrated not only through his advancement in the Health and Human Services Agency, but also his determination to help those he supervises reach their full potential.”
Good job, dude!

Buttercup Lane.
Watch Where You Park, Soccer Players!
The Shasta County Public Works was back on the agenda Tuesday, this time represented by Director Troy Bartolomei, who presented a clarification of just where the proposed “no parking” zone on Oregon Trail near the California Soccer Park is located. According to the agency, the new zone will be implemented along Old Oregon Trail from Buttercup Lane to 1,300 feet south of Buttercup Lane. Soccer players can look at the map above to avoid a potential parking ticket.
Bartolomei was also on the closed session agenda, undergoing an employee performance evaluation. The board reported no action coming out of closed session, so apparently Bartolomei still has a job.
You never know with these guys.