So Much Is Going On – Worst Egg Shortage Ever, New Virus in Alabama, Possible Santorini Eruption, and Tensions With China and Iran Escalate

(The Economic Collapse Blog)—We live at a time when global events are moving at a blistering pace.  As Donald Trump and Elon Musk shake the very foundations of Washington D.C.’s giant bureaucracy, very alarming things are starting to happen all over the world.  Chaos is erupting all around us, and I am entirely convinced that it is only going to intensify during the months ahead.

Let me start by discussing the worst egg shortage in U.S. history.

All over the country, grocery stores and restaurants are having a really difficult time finding enough eggs right now…

American restaurants are falling victim to a national egg shortage that has already plagued grocery stores from New York City to San Francisco and sent prices to $7 a carton.

I never imagined that egg prices would reach such dizzying heights in 2025, and the year has just begun.

In the Big Apple, a dozen cage-free eggs will set you back $11.99…

In New York City, prices reached as high as $11.99 for a dozen cage-free eggs at Whole Foods Inc. The national retailer placed a three-carton purchase limit on customers at some locations in the city. Customers in Nassau County on Long Island found supplies of Vital Farms pasture-raised eggs and Nellie’s free range ones sold out at Whole Foods online in the past week.

Organic eggs have been in short supply too. Over the weekend, refrigerated shelves were almost completely bare at a ShopRite in Brooklyn. The few crates left were priced at about $1 per egg. A nearby Costco was out of everything except quail eggs, according to grocery delivery app Instacart, and a Wegmans had run out of some of its store brands.

This is nuts. A dozen eggs should be less than a dollar.

Or at least that was what life in America was like during the “good old days” prior to the pandemic.

But now it appears that those days are gone for good.

In fact, things are so bad that the Waffle House has decided to implement a “50 cent per egg surcharge”…

The Waffle House restaurant chain is putting a 50 cent per egg surcharge in place due to the biggest bird flu outbreak in a decade.

The 24-7 restaurant said that the resulting egg shortage has led to a dramatic increase in its costs.

Bird flu is forcing farmers to slaughter millions of chickens a month, pushing U.S. egg prices to more than double their cost in the summer of 2023. And it appears there may be no relief in sight with Easter approaching.

Once upon a time, the two egg breakfast at the Waffle House was one of the most affordable breakfast meals in America.

But now you will have to shell out $7.75 for it…

The Waffle House, a reliable source of a cheap breakfast, said that its egg surcharge became effective this week and that it applies to all of its menus. The restaurant’s two-egg breakfast, which comes with toast and a side, was listed at $7.75 on Tuesday.

“While we hope these price fluctuations will be short-lived we cannot predict how long this shortage will last,” the company said.

The bird flu pandemic that has been raging all over the world since early 2022 has not gone away.

In fact, over the last eight weeks it has been worse then ever…

“If you look at what’s happened the last eight weeks, the number of poultry operations that have gone down — and more recently, the duck operations — is absolutely stunning,” Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota told Axios.

Unfortunately, some experts are warning us that it is just a matter of time before the bird flu starts spreading among humans on a widespread basis.

When that happens, the panic that we will witness will be off the charts.

Are you ready for that?

Meanwhile, there is news that a different deadly virus has been discovered in the U.S. “for the first time ever”…

A potentially deadly virus has been detected in the United States for the first time ever.

Scientists identified the Camp Hill virus in shrews in Alabama, sparking fears it could find its way through animal reservoirs to humans and cause a potentially wide-reaching outbreak.

The Camp Hill virus belongs to a family of pathogens called henipaviruses, including the Nipah virus, a bat-borne virus that kills up to 70 percent of people it infects. The Camp Hill virus, however, has never been recorded in humans and scientists don’t know what symptoms are or the death rate.

That is certainly alarming.

And let us not forget about the outbreaks of Ebola, the Marburg virus, and a new strain of the monkeypox that are causing so much alarm in central Africa.

Yes, pestilences are certainly shaping up to be one of the major themes of 2025.

In Europe, another sort of a threat is making headlines.

Over the past week, more than 500 earthquakes have shaken the Santorini area…

Starting on January 28, the islands of Santorini and Amorgos have been rocked by near-constant tremors of magnitudes three to four.

According to the University of Athens’ earthquake monitoring tool, more than 555 earthquakes have hit the area since then.

Needless to say, these quakes have created quite a stir, and people have been evacuating from Santorini in droves…

Hundreds of people left Santorini on ferries and planes on Tuesday to reach safety in Athens as a series of quakes kept shaking the famous Greek tourist island.

Hundreds of quakes have been registered every few minutes in the sea between the volcanic islands of Santorini and Amorgos, in the Aegean Sea, in recent days, prompting authorities to shut schools in Santorini and the small nearby islands of Ios, Amorgos and Anafi until Friday.

Scientists are trying to assure us that everything is just fine and that a full-blown eruption of Santorini is not likely to happen.

Hopefully they are correct about that, because an enormous eruption of Santorini that occurred many centuries ago was absolutely catastrophic…

However, geologists believe a vastly more powerful eruption occurred around 1620 BC which destroyed a large part of the island, blanketed the region with ash, and is even believed to have contributed to the downfall of the mighty Minoan civilisation.

We have been witnessing unusual seismic activity here in the United States as well.

In fact, during the month of December there was a very alarming swarm of earthquakes along the New Madrid fault zone…

It has been an active week on the New Madrid fault line.

There have been ten small earthquakes in the Bootheel this week alone, with magnitudes ranging from 1.8 to 3.0.

I don’t think that a major quake is going to hit the region immediately.

But it is interesting to note that officials do intend to update the emergency plan for that area of the country…

State officials are teaming up with federal offices to plan for one of the most unpredictable disasters, earthquakes.

The Arkansas Department of Emergency Management along with FEMA, Region 6, and 30 counties have teamed up to update the New Madrid Seismic Zone plan.

Before I end this piece, there are two more things that I wanted to mention.

First of all, the Chinese have just announced that they will be imposing retaliatory tariffs on U.S. imports…

China unveiled a series of retaliatory measures against the U.S. on Tuesday, shortly after U.S. tariffs on Chinese goods took effect, raising concerns of a broader trade war between the world’s two largest economies.

China’s Finance Ministry said Tuesday it will impose additional tariffs of 15% on coal and liquefied natural gas imports from the U.S. and 10% higher duties on American crude oil, agricultural machinery and certain cars, starting Feb. 10.

U.S. relations with China are heading downhill very fast.

This will be something to watch very closely in the months ahead.

Also on Tuesday, Donald Trump signed an executive order that is intended to exert “maximum pressure” on Iran…

President Donald Trump will sign executive order on Tuesday restoring “maximum pressure” on Iran, Reuters is reporting, citing a US official. This is with the intended aim of thwarting all paths of the Islamic Republic toward a nuclear weapon.

The US official also cited Iran’s “malign influence” in the Mideast region and de facto state of war with Israel, including support for regional militants who attack Israeli territory and interests.

“The official told Reuters that Trump’s directive orders the US Treasury Secretary to impose ‘maximum economic pressure’ on Iran, including sanctions and enforcement mechanisms on those violating existing sanctions. The directive is aimed at denying Iran ‘all paths to a nuclear weapon’ and countering ‘Iran’s malign influence’ according to the official.”

Of course economic pressure alone is not going to stop Iran from developing nuclear weapons.

In recent months they have really been ramping up their program, and it is being reported that they have actually been working on delivery systems “with a 1,800‑mile range that could reach Europe”…

Iran has allegedly been covertly developing nuclear weapons with a 1,800‑mile range that could reach Europe using North Korean designs, according to the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI).

The Telegraph in Britain reported Sunday that details provided by the NCRI indicate that the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) is expanding its warhead program at two sites disguised as communication satellite launch facilities. The facilities, controlled by Iran’s nuclear weapons division – the Organisation for Advanced Defence Research (SPND) – are reportedly expediting missile production.

The Trump administration is not going to allow Iran to produce nuclear weapons.

Likewise, the Israeli government is not going to allow Iran to produce nuclear weapons.

But Iran has already almost reached a point of no return.

So I am expecting to see military action against Iran in the not too distant future.

When that happens, the Iranians will go absolutely ballistic, the price of oil will go through the roof, and the entire region will be thrown into a state of chaos.

At this moment, the media is focusing on so many other things.

But it won’t be too long before war with Iran makes really big news, and once we reach that stage everything will change.

Michael’s new book entitled “Why” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can subscribe to his Substack newsletter at michaeltsnyder.substack.com.