Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Thanks to your bullshit, we are now under siege.

Some judge needs to shut this circus down soon.

Too often we hand the biggest microphones to the cynics and the critics who delight in declaring failure.

🎶 Those boots were made for mockin’ 🎵

if you can’t see it, then you are useless in the fight to stop it.

With all due respect and assumptions of good faith, please fuck off into the sun.

Nothing says ‘pro-life’ like letting children go hungry.

The truth is, these are not very bright guys, and things got out of hand.

… pundit janitors mopping up after the gop

Only Democrats have agency, apparently.

Our job is not to persuade republicans but to defeat them.

How stupid are these people?

These are not very smart people, and things got out of hand.

I’m starting to think Jesus may have made a mistake saving people with no questions asked.

Damn right I heard that as a threat.

Jack Smith: “Why did you start campaigning in the middle of my investigation?!”

Never entrust democracy to any process that requires republicans to act in good faith.

Bark louder, little dog.

Everybody saw this coming.

Republicans seem to think life begins at the candlelight dinner the night before.

They punch you in the face and then start crying because their fist hurts.

I am pretty sure these ‘journalists’ were not always such a bootlicking sycophants.

Give the craziest people you know everything they want and hope they don’t ask for more? Great plan.

Not rolling over. fuck you, make me.

You are here: Home / Healthcare / COVID-19 / COVID-19 Coronavirus & H5N1 Updates: October 30, 2024

COVID-19 Coronavirus & H5N1 Updates: October 30, 2024

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A strain of H5N1 avian influenza virus found in a Texas dairy worker who was infected this spring was able to spread among ferrets through the air, although inefficiently, and killed 100% of infected animals in studies University of Wisconsin–Madison researchers performed with the strain earlier this year.

The good news: the dairy worker experienced mild symptoms and fully recovered, and the H5N1 strain that infected the worker does not appear to have continued spreading in the wild…

Kawaoka and his collaborators found that the H5N1 virus that infected the Texas dairy worker included a mutation that the team first identified in 2001 as important for causing severe disease. Luckily, Kawaoka says, the strain with that mutation seems to have died out.

“This isolate is unique among the H5N1 viruses circulating in cows,” he says…

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Good news for people who’ve been trying to get a booster:


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A team of engineers at the University of Houston has published a study in the journal Scientific Reports on how international air travel has influenced the spread of COVID-19 around the world. By using a newly developed AI tool, the team identified hotspots of infection linked to air traffic, pinpointing key areas that significantly contribute to disease transmission.

The analyses identified Western Europe, the Middle East and North America as leading regions in fueling the pandemic due to the high volume of outgoing international flights either originating or transiting through these areas…

To understand how air travel affects the spread of infections, Van Nguyen and graduate students Akash Awasthi and Syed Rizvi tested small changes in their model (perturbation analysis) to see how sensitive it is to different factors and examined flight connections between different regions and countries.

This helped them analyze which parts of air traffic have the biggest impact on the spread of the virus and which flight reductions in highly sensitive areas would efficiently reduce predicted global cases…

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During the COVID pandemic, many of us received multiple mRNA vaccines. New work by researchers at the VIB-UGent Center for Inflammation Research, Ghent University, and University Hospital Ghent, among others, has found that such repeated vaccinations lead to the presence of mucosal antibodies, for example, inside the nose. Their work appears in Science Translational Medicine.…

Ph.D. student Jozefien Declercq (VIB-UGent) explains, “We found that individuals who received multiple doses of mRNA vaccines exhibited a marked increase in neutralizing antibodies in nasal secretions, which are essential for blocking viral entry. Not only that, but the immune responses generated by mRNA vaccines may persist longer than previously thought, which provides hope for sustained protection against emerging variants of the virus.”

The findings suggest that repeated vaccinations not only bolster systemic immunity but also enhance mucosal antibody responses, providing a more robust defense against the virus…

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This week’s exotic virus don’t-panic scare:

Last week’s Marburg scare seems to have been successfully suppressed:

Reader Interactions

18Comments

  1. 1.

    NotMax

    Local Costco has resumed offering COVID shots. Dunno if it is system-wide, though. Check your nearest location.

    In most (all?) Costcos one needn’t be a member to make use of the pharmacy.

  3. 3.

    eclare

    Got my covid booster and flu shot about a week ago.  Kroger is giving away a $20 credit on your Kroger card if you get more than one vaccine, so I got paid for something that I was going to do anyway.

  4. 4.

    TF79

    Thanks for compiling these – interesting that US and Canadian cases seem to be moving in opposite directions

  5. 5.

    Scout211

    I read that an additional COVID shot was approved for people 65+ and for those who are immune compromised. From the link  in AL’s OP:

    The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) vaccine advisory group today recommended a second 2024-25 COVID-19 vaccine dose, spaced 6 months apart, for people ages 65 and older and for people in younger age-groups who have moderate or severe immunocompromising conditions.

    The group also recommended an extra dose, three or more, in people with immunocompromising conditions, based on shared decision-making between patient and doctor.

    The recommendation replaces a vaguer “additional doses” wording that the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) used in its advice over the summer for at-risk groups for the 2024-25 vaccines. The group made the change to simplify and standardize language used for its routine immunization schedules.

    Being in the age 65+ group, we have been getting COVID shots every six months the whole time COVID shots have been available so that doesn’t seem new.  But it’s good that it has been announced.

    I had not heard about three or more doses for immune compromised people, though.  That seems very good.

  7. 7.

    TBone

    @TF79: I don’t see how that’s truly possible…(of course, I could be wrong!) but is the population there doing something we’re not or vice versa?

    ETA data collection methods, prolly.

  8. 8.

    Yarrow

    @eclare:  To clarify Kroger’s $20 incentive – you have to get flu and one other vaccine. It can be tetanus or Covid or any other vaccine but they MUST be given at the same time and one has to be flu.

    I got my Covid vaccine over a month ago and then went back for the flu vaccine. They told me when I got the Covid vaccine that they’d put a note on my account so when I got the flu vaccine I could get the $20 and not just the $5 you get for one vaccine. Nope. It doesn’t work that way. You have to get both at once.

    My body doesn’t like getting too many vaccines together so I spread them out. Seems a bit unfair to people like me, but oh well. I still got the $5. The $15 difference isn’t that big of a deal.

  9. 9.

    Kristine

    Happy to see news of antibodies showing up in nasal mucosa. Hoping it continues to build over time since I read that a nasally administered vaccine could be expected in 2027 at the earliest.

    Apparently survived my first post-pandemic hotel stay unscathed. I did mask in crowded rooms and gathering spots, one of the very few who did so.

  10. 10.

    New Deal democrat

    The news on COVID this week is very good. Both Biobot and the CDC show wastewater counts close to their all time lows. The CDC shows a decline of over 75% from the summer wave’s peak, and 85% below last winter’s peak. All four Census regions are participating.

    Deaths for the latest week for final numbers, September 28, were the lowest in nearly two months at 958. The latest preliminary data, for the week of October 19, is 341 deaths, just above the prior week’s 327, and the second lowest preliminary number since August 3, suggesting a final number of about 750-900.

    Last Friday’s variant update continued to show the summer’s KP.x variants waning, and XEC increasing to 17%. There’s also a newer variant, MC.1, at 5%. Remember that a big % increase for a lower total number translates into a slow absolute increase, which is good news showing only a wavelet of transmissibility.

    In short, we are in the best position yet by far heading into the peak Thanksgiving through New Year’s Day season.

  11. 11.

    Weftage

    was able to spread among ferrets through the air, although inefficiently, and killed 100% of infected animals

    (My bold.) Given that 100% mortality rate, I’m now wondering, with some alarm, what an efficient transmission would look like.

  12. 12.

    jonas

    Had scheduled a Covid boost the other day, but was still fighting off an annoying cold, so that got postponed. Blech. Everyone where I work (and the kids at the local school) seems to have caught this (non-Covid) respiratory virus that doesn’t make you really sick, but leaves you with a hoarse voice and lingering cough for weeks on end.

    Also, I can’t even with these dairy farmers, whose response to bird flu is “If we don’t test or talk about it, it doesn’t exist! Just like that ‘Covid’ scare a few years back!” These are also the same people who will vote for Trump because of his promise to deport undocumented workers that constitute, you know, the bulk of their workforce. The leopards will definitely spare our faces, they figure.

  13. 13.

    Scout211

    @Weftage: I’m now wondering, with some alarm, what an efficient transmission would look like.

    LOL.  Yeah, that was confusing.  Having not clicked through to the article, I assumed that it meant many ferrets were exposed but very few of those exposed were infected. But being lazy, I did not click through.

  15. 15.

    lowtechcyclist

    Long COVID Is Harming Too Many Kids

    Pediatric long COVID is more common than many thought, and we keep letting kids be reinfected with new variants

    There were pundits who were complaining for years afterwards about the harm caused to kids by shutting down the schools in 2020-2021.  If I could remember which pundits were doing this (I think Yglesias was one, but I’m not sure), I’d be sending them links to this article.

    In March and April 2020, there were refrigerator trucks full of bodies parked outside of NYC hospitals.  Of course we shut down the schools.  We didn’t know jack shit about this plague, other than it was killing lots of people.  We wanted to keep our kids safe, knowing full well how easily germs spread in classrooms.  And even now, we’re still learning about its long-term effects.  Maybe erring on the side of caution is a good idea in general, y’know?

  18. 18.

    Mart

    @Scout211: Wife and I were essential workers so we got in line early. Had our ninth shot this fall. Funny when we say that folks look at us like we are nuts, even the ones administrating the shots. But I know we are following the best health science per Anne Laurie. We got like fierce mucosal immunity man.

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