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Tag: high prices

  • AP-NORC poll finds consumers pinched by prices this holiday season

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    WASHINGTON, D.C.: As Americans head into the heart of the holiday shopping season, many say festive spending feels more stressful than joyful, weighed down by stubbornly high prices and economic unease, according to a new AP-NORC poll.

    Large majorities of U.S. adults report noticing higher-than-usual costs for groceries, electricity, and holiday gifts in recent months, the survey by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research found. Many say they are dipping into savings, hunting more aggressively for bargains, or cutting back on discretionary spending.

    About half of Americans say it is more complicated than usual to afford the gifts they want to give, while similar numbers report delaying big purchases or reducing nonessential spending more than they typically would during the holidays.

    The findings present a challenge for President Donald Trump, who returned to the White House promising to bring prices down. Instead, inflation remains a persistent drag on public sentiment, much as it was during Democratic President Joe Biden’s term. The poll closely mirrors an AP-NORC survey from December 2022, when inflation was running much hotter, but consumer frustration looked strikingly similar.

    Trump’s tariffs have added to inflationary pressures and heightened concerns about economic stability, keeping prices at levels many Americans say remain difficult to manage. The president has rejected those concerns, insisting the economy is strong.

    “When will people understand what is happening?” Trump said last week on Truth Social. “When will Polls reflect the Greatness of America at this point, and how bad it was just one year ago?”

    Still, 68 percent of U.S. adults describe the economy as “poor,” unchanged from December 2024, just before Trump returned to office.

    White House officials plan to send Trump traveling around the country in hopes of boosting confidence ahead of next year’s midterm elections. But comments he made this week in Pennsylvania, suggesting Americans buy fewer dolls and pencils for children because of tariff-related price increases, contrasted sharply with what many respondents described in the poll, including some who supported him in 2024.

    Sergio Ruiz, 44, of Tucson, Arizona, said he is relying more on buy-now-pay-later programs to spread out the cost of gifts for his children. Though not deeply political, Ruiz voted for Trump last year and hopes interest rates fall to help his real estate business.

    “Prices are up. What can you do? You need to make more money,” Ruiz said.

    The poll found that roughly half of Americans are more focused than usual on finding the lowest price when they shop, while about four in ten say they are tapping into savings more than at other times.

    Democrats are more likely than Republicans to say they are cutting back or bargain-hunting, but many Republicans are adjusting as well. About four in ten Republicans say they are searching for low prices more than usual, and a similar share reports buying fewer nonessential items.

    Public attitudes toward holiday shopping look much like they did in 2022, when inflation surged to a four-decade high. Although inflation has since cooled to about three percent, it remains above the Federal Reserve’s two percent target, and the job market shows signs of slowing.

    The survey suggests it is the absolute level of prices — not just the pace of inflation — that continues to strain household budgets. Nearly nine in ten adults say grocery prices are higher than usual, while about two-thirds report higher electricity and holiday gift prices. About half say gas prices also feel elevated.

    Consumer spending has held up despite widespread pessimism, but Trump’s tariffs have changed how some people shop. Andrew Russell, a 33-year-old adjunct professor in Arlington Heights, Illinois, said he now avoids online purchases from abroad.

    “This year, I only bought things that I can pick up in person,” said Russell, who voted Democratic and worries that heavy investment in artificial intelligence could be forming a bubble that might hurt markets next year.

    Looking ahead, few Americans expect meaningful improvement. About four in ten say the economy will be worse next year, roughly three in ten expect little change, and only about two in ten think conditions will improve. Republicans are more optimistic than Democrats, but overall optimism has declined from last year.

    Millicent Simpson, 56, of Cleveland, Ohio, said she expects the economy to worsen for people like her who depend on Medicaid and food assistance programs.

    “He’s making it rough for us,” said Simpson, who voted Democratic. “He’s messing with the government assistance for everybody, young and old.

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  • How families can save money this back-to-school season

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    With back-to-school season in full swing, families across the country are continuing to feel the sting of high prices.In May and June, before the latest round of the Trump administration’s tariffs, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce estimated that tariffs on back-to-school items had risen to 18% (up from 5% a year earlier). A new report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that prices of educational books and supplies increased 9.4% from May 2024 to May 2025.As costs pile up, over half of parents are planning to cut back on necessities to pay for school-related shopping, and 44% are planning to take on debt, according to a Credit Karma consumer survey. American families expect to spend an average of $570 per student on back-to-school shopping this year, according to a Deloitte survey released in July, and price pressures are pushing consumers to look for savings wherever possible.Track when (or if) your state has a back-to-school tax holidaySeventeen states have or had sales tax holidays in summer 2025. Each of those states has different policies on which items are included in the tax holiday, and the holidays are spread out, so it’s important to pay close attention to when your state’s holiday is, if it has one.These purchases don’t have to be in-store either — Amazon and other online retailers won’t charge taxes on eligible deliveries to states with these holidays on the books.Get library cards for the whole familyLibraries are a great way to save money not only on physical books, but also e-books, audiobooks and movies. Some public libraries also offer printing services, discounts for local attractions and cost-free tutoring services that can be used year-round.Shop localDeloitte found that over 2 in 3 shoppers will be looking to online retailers to do at least part of their back-to-school shopping.Shopping online can be a convenient and efficient way to directly compare prices between retailers and makes buying items in bulk (which can take your dollar further) easier. But consumers who do most of their back-to-school shopping online actually spent $100 more than families who relied on in-person shopping, Deloitte reported.Finding great local deals in person, may mean going beyond traditional retailers.Tina Marie Barnes, the manager of one of the Chatham PTA Thrift Shops in central North Carolina, said the stores — which raise money for local schools — started stocking up on “any back to school, items, backpacks, lunch boxes, pencils, crayons, notebooks, notebook paper, anything that a child could use” in January. The shops see hundreds of people a day, from families to college students, looking for find deals on clothes and school supplies.Repair instead of replacingA growing number of Americans live in states with “right to repair” laws that make it easier for consumers and independent businesses to repair electronics without having to go through manufacturers.These laws are relatively new – New York, the first state to enact one of these laws for consumer electronics, only did so in 2023, and Texas’s governor signed a right to repair law in June. An advocacy organization that supports these laws estimates that they might save families upwards of $300 a year.Take advantage of tax laws529 plans have traditionally allowed families to save money for college, but recent changes might allow families to increase savings before their kids graduate high school.Included in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act is a change to 529 plans that allow parents to withdraw money from the accounts to pay for expenses related to K-12 schooling, including books, standardized test prep and other “instructional materials.”While contributions cannot be deducted from federal income taxes, most states allow residents to deduct contributions to these plans from their state income taxes. But importantly, “the earnings are not subject to federal or state tax when they’re used for qualified education expenses,” says Alexander Maged, an employee benefits lawyer at Ivins, Phillips & Barker. Withdrawals for qualified educational expenses are not subject to federal income taxes.When withdrawing money from these 529 plans, it’s important to maintain good records for purchases, balance current spending with future savings goals, and consult with an IRS representative if you’re unsure about what expenses qualify.Make budgeting a teaching lesson for kidsImpulse buying can quickly add up costs, especially when kids want the newest sneakers or an expensive first-day-of-school outfit. Setting a firm budget for back-to-school costs and giving kids a role in the discussion can help save money in the short term and teach kids an invaluable life lesson.”Families that include kids in back-to-school budgeting often find the process less stressful as children are incentivized to work within limits instead of pushing against them,” Julia Perez, a wealth manager at Crux Wealth Advisors, told CNN in an email.Kids are often tempted by immediate gratification, she said, so explaining what’s worth saving for can help “develop critical longer-term perspectives that can re-direct impulses and shape behavior.””Over time those habits compound. By the time they’re managing rent, student loans, or saving for a first home, saving isn’t an afterthought… it’s second nature.”

    CNN —

    With back-to-school season in full swing, families across the country are continuing to feel the sting of high prices.

    In May and June, before the latest round of the Trump administration’s tariffs, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce estimated that tariffs on back-to-school items had risen to 18% (up from 5% a year earlier). A new report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that prices of educational books and supplies increased 9.4% from May 2024 to May 2025.

    As costs pile up, over half of parents are planning to cut back on necessities to pay for school-related shopping, and 44% are planning to take on debt, according to a Credit Karma consumer survey. American families expect to spend an average of $570 per student on back-to-school shopping this year, according to a Deloitte survey released in July, and price pressures are pushing consumers to look for savings wherever possible.

    Track when (or if) your state has a back-to-school tax holiday

    Seventeen states have or had sales tax holidays in summer 2025. Each of those states has different policies on which items are included in the tax holiday, and the holidays are spread out, so it’s important to pay close attention to when your state’s holiday is, if it has one.

    These purchases don’t have to be in-store either — Amazon and other online retailers won’t charge taxes on eligible deliveries to states with these holidays on the books.

    Get library cards for the whole family

    Libraries are a great way to save money not only on physical books, but also e-books, audiobooks and movies. Some public libraries also offer printing services, discounts for local attractions and cost-free tutoring services that can be used year-round.

    Shop local

    Deloitte found that over 2 in 3 shoppers will be looking to online retailers to do at least part of their back-to-school shopping.

    Shopping online can be a convenient and efficient way to directly compare prices between retailers and makes buying items in bulk (which can take your dollar further) easier. But consumers who do most of their back-to-school shopping online actually spent $100 more than families who relied on in-person shopping, Deloitte reported.

    Finding great local deals in person, may mean going beyond traditional retailers.

    Tina Marie Barnes, the manager of one of the Chatham PTA Thrift Shops in central North Carolina, said the stores — which raise money for local schools — started stocking up on “any back to school, items, backpacks, lunch boxes, pencils, crayons, notebooks, notebook paper, anything that a child could use” in January. The shops see hundreds of people a day, from families to college students, looking for find deals on clothes and school supplies.

    Repair instead of replacing

    A growing number of Americans live in states with “right to repair” laws that make it easier for consumers and independent businesses to repair electronics without having to go through manufacturers.

    These laws are relatively new – New York, the first state to enact one of these laws for consumer electronics, only did so in 2023, and Texas’s governor signed a right to repair law in June. An advocacy organization that supports these laws estimates that they might save families upwards of $300 a year.

    Take advantage of tax laws

    529 plans have traditionally allowed families to save money for college, but recent changes might allow families to increase savings before their kids graduate high school.

    Included in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act is a change to 529 plans that allow parents to withdraw money from the accounts to pay for expenses related to K-12 schooling, including books, standardized test prep and other “instructional materials.”

    While contributions cannot be deducted from federal income taxes, most states allow residents to deduct contributions to these plans from their state income taxes. But importantly, “the earnings are not subject to federal or state tax when they’re used for qualified education expenses,” says Alexander Maged, an employee benefits lawyer at Ivins, Phillips & Barker. Withdrawals for qualified educational expenses are not subject to federal income taxes.

    When withdrawing money from these 529 plans, it’s important to maintain good records for purchases, balance current spending with future savings goals, and consult with an IRS representative if you’re unsure about what expenses qualify.

    Make budgeting a teaching lesson for kids

    Impulse buying can quickly add up costs, especially when kids want the newest sneakers or an expensive first-day-of-school outfit. Setting a firm budget for back-to-school costs and giving kids a role in the discussion can help save money in the short term and teach kids an invaluable life lesson.

    “Families that include kids in back-to-school budgeting often find the process less stressful as children are incentivized to work within limits instead of pushing against them,” Julia Perez, a wealth manager at Crux Wealth Advisors, told CNN in an email.

    Kids are often tempted by immediate gratification, she said, so explaining what’s worth saving for can help “develop critical longer-term perspectives that can re-direct impulses and shape behavior.”

    “Over time those habits compound. By the time they’re managing rent, student loans, or saving for a first home, saving isn’t an afterthought… it’s second nature.”

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  • GoFundMe Is a Health-Care Utility Now

    GoFundMe Is a Health-Care Utility Now

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    GoFundMe started as a crowdfunding site for underwriting “ideas and dreams,” and, as GoFundMe’s co-founders, Andrew Ballester and Brad Damphousse, once put it, “for life’s important moments.” In the early years, it funded honeymoon trips, graduation gifts, and church missions to overseas hospitals in need. Now GoFundMe has become a go-to for patients trying to escape medical-billing nightmares.

    One study found that, in 2020, the number of U.S. campaigns related to medical causes—about 200,000—was 25 times higher than the number of such campaigns on the site in 2011. More than 500 campaigns are currently dedicated to asking for financial help for treating people, mostly kids, with spinal muscular atrophy, a neurodegenerative genetic condition. The recently approved gene therapy for young children with the condition, by the drugmaker Novartis, costs about $2.1 million for the single-dose treatment.

    Perhaps the most damning aspect of all this is that paying for expensive care with crowdfunding is no longer seen as unusual; instead, it is being normalized as part of the health system, like getting blood work done or waiting on hold for an appointment. Need a heart transplant? Start a GoFundMe in order to get on the waiting list. Resorting to GoFundMe when faced with bills has become so accepted that in some cases, patient advocates and hospital financial-aid officers recommend crowdfunding as an alternative to being sent to collections. My inbox and the Bill of the Month project (run by KFF Health News, where I am the senior contributing editor, and NPR) have become a kind of complaint desk for people who can’t afford their medical bills, and I’m gobsmacked every time a patient tells me they’ve been advised that GoFundMe is their best option.

    GoFundMe itself acknowledges the reliance of patients on the company’s platform. Ari Romio, a spokesperson for the company, said that “medical expenses” is the most common category of fundraiser it hosts. But she declined to say what proportion of campaigns are medically related, because people starting a campaign self-select the purpose of the fundraiser. They might choose the family or travel category, she said, if a child needs to go to a different state for treatment, for example. So although the company has estimated in the past that a third of the funds raised on the site are medical-related, that could be an undercount.

    Andrea Coy of Fort Collins, Colorado, turned to GoFundMe in 2021 as a last resort after an air-ambulance bill tipped her family’s finances over the edge. Her son Sebastian, then a year old, had been admitted with pneumonia to a local hospital and then transferred urgently by helicopter to Children’s Hospital Colorado in Denver when his oxygen levels dropped. REACH, the air-ambulance transport company that contracted with the hospital, was out-of-network, and billed the family nearly $65,000 for the ride—more than $28,000 of which Coy’s insurer, UnitedHealthcare, paid. Even so, REACH continued sending Coy’s family bills for the remaining balance, and later began regularly calling Coy to try to collect, enough that she felt the company was harassing her, she told me.

    Coy made multiple calls to her company’s human-resources department, REACH, and UnitedHealthcare for help in resolving the case. She applied to various patient groups for financial assistance and was rejected again and again. Eventually, she got the outstanding balance knocked down to $5,000, but even that was more than she could afford on top of the $12,000 the family owed out-of-pocket for Sebastian’s actual treatment.

    That’s when a hospital financial-aid officer suggested she try GoFundMe. But, as Coy said, “I’m not an influencer or anything like that,” so the appeal “offered only a bit of temporary relief—we’ve hit a wall.” They have gone deep into debt and hope to climb out of it.

    In an emailed response, a spokesperson for REACH noted that they could not comment on a specific case because of patient-privacy laws, but that, if the ride occurred before the federal No Surprises Act went into effect, the bill was legal. (That act protects patients from such air-ambulance bills and has been in force since January 1, 2022.) But the spokesperson added, “If a patient is experiencing a financial hardship, we work with them to find equitable solutions.” What is “equitable”—and whether that includes seeking an additional $5,000, beyond a $28,000 insurance payment, for transporting a sick child—is subjective, of course.

    In many respects, research shows, GoFundMe tends to perpetuate socioeconomic disparities that already affect medical bills and debt. If you are famous or part of a circle of friends who have money, your crowdfunding campaign is much more likely to succeed than if you are middle-class or poor. When the family of the former Olympic gymnast Mary Lou Retton started a fundraiser on another platform, *spotfund, for her recent ICU stay at a time when she was uninsured, nearly $460,000 in donations quickly poured in. (Although Retton said she could not get affordable insurance because of her preexisting condition—dozens of orthopedic surgeries—the Affordable Care Act prohibits insurers from refusing to cover people because of their prior medical histories, or charging them abnormally high rates.)

    And given the price of American health care, even the most robust fundraising can feel inadequate. If you’re looking for help to pay for a $2 million drug, even tens of thousands is a drop in the bucket.

    Rob Solomon, the CEO of the platform from 2015 to March 2020, who was named one of Time magazine’s 50 most influential people in health care, has said that he “would love nothing more than for ‘medical’ to not be a category on GoFundMe.” He told KFF Health News that “the system is terrible. It needs to be rethought and retooled. Politicians are failing us. Health-care companies are failing us. Those are realities.”

    But despite the noble ambitions of its original vision, GoFundMe is a privately held for-profit company. In 2015, the founders sold a majority stake to a venture-capital investor group led by Accel Partners and Technology Crossover Ventures. And when I asked about medical bills being the most common reason for GoFundMe campaigns, the company’s current CEO, Tim Cadogan, sounded less critical than his predecessor of the health system, whose high prices and financial cruelty have arguably made his company famous.

    “Our mission is to help people help each other,” he said. “We are not, and cannot, be the solution to complex, systemic problems that are best solved with meaningful public policy.”

    And that’s true. Despite the site’s hopeful vibe, most campaigns generate only a small fraction of the money owed. Almost all of the medical-expense campaigns in the U.S. fell short of their goal, and some raised little or no money, a 2017 study from the University of Washington found. The average campaign made it to just about 40 percent of the target amount, and there is evidence that yields—measured as a percent of their target—have gotten worse over time.

    Carol Justice, a recently retired civil servant and a longtime union member in Portland, Oregon, turned to GoFundMe after she faced a mammoth unexpected bill for bariatric surgery at Oregon Health & Science University.

    She had expected to pay about $1,000, the amount left in her deductible, after her health insurer paid the $15,000 cap on the surgery. She didn’t understand that a cap meant she would have to pay the difference if the hospital, which was in-network, charged more.

    And it did, leaving her with a bill of $18,000, to be paid all at once or in monthly $1,400 increments. “That’s more than my mortgage,” she told me. “I was facing filing for bankruptcy or losing my car and my house.” She made numerous calls to the hospital’s financial-aid office, many unanswered, and received only unfulfilled promises that “we’ll get back to you” about whether she qualified for help.

    So, Justice said, her health coach—provided by the city of Portland—suggested starting a GoFundMe. The campaign yielded about $1,400, just one monthly payment, including $200 from the health coach and $100 from an aunt. She dutifully sent each donation directly to the hospital.

    In an emailed response, the hospital system said that it couldn’t discuss individual cases, but that “financial assistance information is readily available for patients, and can be accessed at any point in a patient’s journey with OHSU. Starting in early 2019, OHSU worked to remove barriers for patients most in need by providing a quick screening for financial assistance that, if a certain threshold is met, awards financial assistance without requiring an application process.”

    This particular tale has a happy-ish ending. In desperation, Justice went to the hospital and planted herself in the financial-aid office, where she had a tearful meeting with a hospital representative who determined that—given her finances—she wouldn’t have to pay the bill.

    “I’d been through the gamut and just cried,” she said. She told me that she would like to repay the people who donated to her GoFundMe. But so far, the hospital won’t give the $1,400 back.

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    Elisabeth Rosenthal

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  • Get Used to Expensive Eggs

    Get Used to Expensive Eggs

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    Over the past week, my breakfast routine has been scrambled. I have had overnight oats, beans on sourdough, corned-beef hash and fried rice, and, on a particularly weird morning, leftover cream-of-broccoli soup. Under normal circumstances, I would be eating eggs. But right now, I’m in hoarding mode, jealously guarding the four that remain from a carton purchased indignantly for six dollars. For that price—50 damn cents each!—my daily sunny-side-up eggs will have to wait. The perfect moment beckons: Maybe a toasted slab of brioche will call for a luxurious soft scramble, or maybe I will cave to a powerful craving for an egg-salad sandwich.

    Eggs, that quintessential cheap food, have gotten very, very expensive in the United States. In December, the average price for a dozen eggs in U.S. cities hit an all-time high of $4.25, up from $1.78 a year earlier. Though the worst now seems to be behind us, there’s still a way to go before consumer prices hit reasonable levels, and now Americans are starting to crack. Online, the shortage has recently hatched endless memes: In some posts, people pretend to portion out eggs in plastic baggies, like drug dealers (Pablo Eggscobar, anyone?); another recurring bit suggests painting potatoes to hunt at Easter. The high prices have even led to egg smuggling, and raised the profile of “rent-a-chicken” services where customers can borrow hens, chicken feed, and a coop for a couple hundred bucks.

    Surging egg prices are partly a familiar story of pandemic-era inflation. Producing eggs costs more because fuel, transportation, feed, and packaging are more expensive now, Jada Thompson, an agricultural economist at the University of Arkansas, told me. And it doesn’t help that there are no great substitutes for eggs. But a big reason that prices are so high right now is because of the avian flu—a virus that infects many types of birds and is deadly for some. Right now, we’re facing the worst-ever wave in the U.S., which has decimated chicken flocks and dented America’s egg inventory. Just over the past year, more than 57 million birds have died from the flu. Some much-needed relief from sky-high egg prices is likely coming, but don’t break out the soufflé pans yet. All signs suggest that avian flu is here to stay. If such rampant spread of the virus continues, “these costs are not going to come down to pre-2022 levels,” Thompson told me. Cheap eggs may soon become a thing of the past.

    This isn’t the first time American egg producers have encountered the avian flu, but dealing with it is still a challenge. For one thing, the virus keeps changing. It has long infected but not killed waterfowl and shorebirds, such as ducks and geese, but by 1996, it had mutated into the “highly pathogenic” H5N1, a poultry-killing strain that is named for the nasty versions of its “H” and “N” proteins. (They form spikes on the virus’s surface—sound familiar?) In 2014 and 2015, H5N1 ignited a terrible outbreak of avian flu, which gave U.S. poultry farmers their first taste of just how bad egg shortages could get.

    But this outbreak is like nothing we’ve seen before. The strain of avian flu that’s behind this wave is indeed new, and in the U.S. the virus has been circulating for a full year now—far longer than during the last big outbreak. The virus has become “host-adapted,” meaning that it can infect its natural hosts without killing them, so wild waterfowl are ruthlessly efficient at spreading the virus to chickens, Richard Webby, the director of the World Health Organization Collaborating Center for Studies on the Ecology of Influenza in Animals and Birds, told me.

    Many of these wild birds are migratory, and during their long journeys between Canada and South America, they descend on waterways and poop virus from the sky over poultry farms. Chickens stand no chance: The fleshy flaps on their heads may turn blue, their eyes and neck may swell, and, in rare instances, paralysis occurs. An entire poultry flock can be wiped out in 48 hours. Death is swift and vicious.

    Everything about this current wave has aligned to put a serious dent in our egg supply. Most eggs in the United States are hatched in jam-packed industrial egg farms, where transmission is next to impossible to stop, so the go-to move when the flu is detected is to “depopulate,” the preferred industry term for killing all of the birds. Without such a brutal tactic, Bryan Richards, the emerging-disease coordinator at the U.S. Geological Survey, told me, the current wave would be much worse.

    But this strategy also means fewer eggs, at least until new chicks grow into hens. That takes about six months, so there just haven’t been enough hens lately—especially for all the holiday baking people wanted to do, Thompson said. By the end of 2022, U.S. egg inventory was 29 percent lower than it had been at the beginning of the year. The chicken supply, in contrast, is robust because avian flu tends to affect older birds, like egg layers, Thompson said; at six to eight weeks old, the birds we eat, known as broilers, are not as susceptible. Also, she added, wild-bird migration pathways are not as concentrated in the Southeast, where most broiler production happens.

    Egg eaters should be able to return to their normal breakfast routines soon enough. New hens are now replenishing the U.S. egg supply—while waterfowl are wintering in the warmer climes of South America rather than lingering in the U.S. Since the holidays, “the price paid to the farmers for eggs has been decreasing rapidly, and usually, in time, the consumer price follows,” Maro Ibarburu, a business analyst at Iowa State University’s Egg Industry Center, told me.

    Still, going forward, it may be worth rethinking our relationship with eggs. There’s no guarantee that eggs will go back to being one the cheapest and most nutritious foods. When the weather warms, the birds will return, and “it’s highly likely that upon spring migration, we could see yet another wave,” said Richards. Europe, which experienced the H5N1 wave about six months before the Americas did, offers a glimpse of the future. “They went from being in a situation where the virus would come and go to a position where essentially it came and stayed,” Webby told me. If we’re lucky, though, birds will develop natural immunity to the virus, making it harder to spread, or the U.S. could start vaccinating poultry against the flu, which the country has so far been reluctant to do.

    Omelets aside, curbing the spread of avian flu is in our best interest, not just to help prevent $6 egg cartons, but also to avoid a much scarier possibility—the virus spilling over and infecting people. All viruses from the influenza-A family have an avian origin, noted Webby; a chilling example is the H1N1 strain behind the 1918 flu pandemic. Fortunately, though some people have been infected with H5N1, very few cases of human-to-human spread have been documented. But continued transmission, over a long enough period, could change that. The fact that the virus has recently jumped from birds into mammals, such as seals and bears, and has spread among mink, is troubling because that means that it is evolving to infect species that are more closely related to us. “The risk of this particular virus [spreading among humans] as it is now is low, but the consequences are potentially high,” said Webby. “If there is a flu virus that I don’t want to catch, this one would be it.”

    More than anything, the egg shortage is a reminder that the availability of food is not something we can take for granted going forward. Shortages of staple goods seem to be striking with more regularity, not only due to pandemic-related broken supply chains and inflation but also to animal and plant disease. In 2019, swine fever decimated China’s pork supply; the ongoing lettuce shortage, which rapper Cardi B bemoaned earlier this month, is due to both a plant virus and a soil disease. Last September, California citrus growers detected a virus known to reduce crop yields. By creating cozier conditions for some diseases, climate change is expected to raise risk of infection for both animals and plants. And as COVID has illustrated, any situation in which different species are forced into abnormally close quarters with one another is likely to encourage the spread of disease.

    Getting used to intermittent shortages of staple foods such as eggs and lettuce will in all likelihood become a normal part of meal planning, barring some sort of huge shift away from industrial farming and its propensity for fostering disease. These farms are a major reason that these foods are so inexpensive and widely available in the first place; if cheap eggs seemed too good to be true, it’s because they were. Besides, there are always alternatives: May I suggest cream-of-broccoli soup?

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    Yasmin Tayag

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