Good to see the near doubling of Covid booster vaccine uptake among Americans age 65+ compared with 2023 booster (vs XBB.1.5)
www.cbsnews.com/news/seniors…— Eric Topol (@erictopol.bsky.social) November 14, 2024 at 9:55 AM
Bird flu in Canada may have mutated to become more transmissible to humans
The teenager hospitalized with bird flu in British Columbia, Canada, may have a variation of the virus that has a mutation making it more transmissible among people…
— SARS‑CoV‑2 (COVID-19) (@COVID19_disease) November 19, 2024
Genetic sequencing of the #H5N1 #birdflu virus from the Canadian teenager shows worrying changes. It doesn't mean H5 is taking off — but it's a reminder that it might, says @scottehensley.bsky.social. "This is exactly the scenario that we fear.” www.statnews.com/2024/11/18/b…
— Helen Branswell (@helenbranswell.bsky.social) November 18, 2024 at 4:30 PM
Flu pandemics can be weird. The last big one in 1918 mainly killed young, healthy adults (avg age 28 vs. 75 for Covid). IFR in the 30-40 year old age range was ~30x higher than during covid.
It would be a rude wake up call for young adults if they're on the block this time.
— JPWeiland (@jpweiland.bsky.social) November 18, 2024 at 7:56 PM
That's not always the case with flu pandemics, they can take on a U shape as well with kids and elderly most at risk. Covid was J shaped with the vast majority of deaths above 65.
— JWeiland (@JPWeiland) November 17, 2024
The US confirmed #H5N1 #birdflu count is now 52, from 7 states. 58% due to exposure to infected cows, 40% to infected poultry. The mystery Missouri case rounds out the mix. To date all cases have been mild. www.cdc.gov/bird-flu/sit…
— Helen Branswell (@helenbranswell.bsky.social) November 15, 2024 at 5:02 PM
#USDA confirms another dairy herd in California is infected with #H5N1 #birdflu. This brings the state's total to 336 infected herds, and the cumulative national total to 550 herds in 15 states. www.aphis.usda.gov/livestock-po…
— Helen Branswell (@helenbranswell.bsky.social) November 19, 2024 at 5:39 PM
Watch CDC’s Dr. Denisse Vega Ocasio answer commonly asked questions about the current #H5N1 bird flu situation.?More: https://t.co/c6B5etCYQR pic.twitter.com/0K2pbMrePi
— CDC Flu (@CDCFlu) November 14, 2024
❄️ Holiday Season Forecast:
🔹The wildest forecast I've ever made was for Dec 2021, predicting multiple millions of daily infections. This one is easily second place. A very muted holiday wave relative to all prior years, due to weak evolution and large summer numbers.— JPWeiland (@jpweiland.bsky.social) November 19, 2024 at 6:25 PM
Source:https://t.co/63JujcjQUN
— SARS‑CoV‑2 (COVID-19) (@COVID19_disease) November 19, 2024
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Source:https://t.co/EAt1T1LXH5
— SARS‑CoV‑2 (COVID-19) (@COVID19_disease) November 17, 2024
United Kingdom:
Reuters: Many long COVID patients adjust to slim recovery odds as world moves on
In the UK, two million people self-reported LC symptoms this past March. Roughly 30.6% said they first experienced symptoms at least three years previously.
Reutershttps://t.co/Od6Xclprxv
— CoronaHeadsUp (@CoronaHeadsUp) November 19, 2024
UK: More than three hundred people have died of Covid in the past 7 days https://t.co/A2w3C0X4MH
— CoronaHeadsUp (@CoronaHeadsUp) November 16, 2024
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COVID vaccines protect frontline workers from long COVID data suggest
The study was based on outcomes seen among essential workers with COVID-19 infection between June 2021 and September 2022.https://t.co/WgCX5oAAF4
— CIDRAP (@CIDRAP) November 13, 2024
Study: COVID Omicron deaths 3 times higher than for flu, but risks for severe cases similar @CIDRAP #COVID #omicron #flu #epidemiology https://t.co/zDxEK0O77X
— aponia_analytics (@AponiaAnalytics) November 14, 2024
Advancing our knowledge base on Long Covid
a new dedicated issue of ScienceTM with papers on sex-differences, kids, potential therapies, and more
www.science.org/toc/stm/curr…— Eric Topol (@erictopol.bsky.social) November 13, 2024 at 2:26 PM
Two studies describe economic burden, sex differences of long COVID
Long COVID has been known to significantly diminish quality of life, increase disability, and result in economic loss in workdays lost to illness.https://t.co/IYdz3Nkyp6 pic.twitter.com/NMSlWZNsGg
— CIDRAP (@CIDRAP) November 15, 2024
Health care database analysis highlights lingering symptoms long after COVID-19 infection A new international study has shed light on the significant burden of post-acute COVID-19 symptoms across North America, Europe and Asia. For an article published in eClinicalMedicine,…
— Medical Xpress (@medical_xpress) November 15, 2024
Health care database analysis highlights lingering symptoms long after COVID-19 infection A new international study has shed light on the significant burden of post-acute COVID-19 symptoms across North America, Europe and Asia. For an article published in eClinicalMedicine, NDORMS researchers analyzed data from 10 large health care databases in 7 countries, covering more than 932 million individuals, including more than 3 million individuals diagnosed with COVID-19. They found that post-COVID symptoms listed by the World Health Organization (WHO) are commonly experienced by those who have recovered from COVID-19 infection, the most frequently reported symptoms being #jointPain, abdominal discomfort, gastrointestinal issues, cough, and anxiety. Some symptoms like #muscleSpasms and cognitive dysfunction were found to be less common. Co-first author of the study Junqing Xie said, “#IncidenceRates for specific symptoms varied widely across different health care settings, but compared to the general population, those who had COVID-19 had a 40% higher incidence of developing any post-acute symptom. “Notably, we found that the incidence of these symptoms generally increased with age, and women exhibited higher rates of several post-acute symptoms compared to men. “Yet, these patterns could differ or even completely reverse for some specific symptoms, which stresses the possible heterogeneous manifestations of post-acute COVID-19 between individuals.” The findings underscore the substantial and prolonged burden that many COVID-19 survivors continue to face and highlight the challenges in characterizing and managing the condition in health care settings. “This is the first truly international study to systematically evaluate the epidemiology of post-acute COVID-19 symptoms using the WHO’s clinical case definition,” said Kim López-Güell, co-first author. “As COVID-19 continues to affect global health, the findings from this study provide critical insights into the long-term consequences of the virus and the challenges it presents for health care systems worldwide. “By addressing these findings through enhanced treatment strategies, resource allocation, and ongoing research, health care providers can better support the millions of individuals navigating life after COVID-19.” @UniofOxford @TheLancet
https://doi.org/g8q5tz https://medicalxpress.com/news/2024-11-health-database-analysis-highlights-lingering.html?utm_source=twitter.com&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=v2
Cardiac inflammation markers show role of long-COVID symptoms
People reporting long-COVID symptoms had elevated levels of cytokines, which are proteins the body makes to fight inflammation.https://t.co/KOg1bsIGgn pic.twitter.com/1vq2iou79J
— CIDRAP (@CIDRAP) November 12, 2024
COVID-19 spreads via #mucus in airways, reaching lower lungs, as shown by Northwestern Medicine's live imaging study published in Nature Communications. @northwesternu @NatureComms https://t.co/QrwfMSOvdY https://t.co/APjpD3SmGC
— Medical Xpress (@medical_xpress) November 19, 2024
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the media won't cover it like this, because they like Trump, but anti-vax shit is like seriously, seriously unpopular, in every poll. Deeply toxic opinion. Vaccine requirements for school kids are 70% for vs 28% against incl. majority of GOP voters www.pewresearch.org/science/2023…
— Michael Tae Sweeney (@mtsw.bsky.social) November 14, 2024 at 5:06 PM
The only reason anti-vax attitudes were able to take root in the modern era is because vaccines are so fucking good at their job people forgot why we need them
— Dave Levitan (@davelevitan.bsky.social) November 14, 2024 at 6:49 PM
A lot of people have memory holed this, but Trump and most red state governors initially made sure their top loyalists went to the front of the line to receive the COVID vaccine before they made it available for the rest of us. https://t.co/LJi5n3e0ny
— Ragnarok Lobster ?? (@eclecticbrotha) November 16, 2024
Here is RFK Jr. last year claiming that COVID-19 was “ethnically-targetted” and genetically engineered to spare “Jews and Chinese people”.
The man is a crank and conspiracy theorist – and will shortly lead the US Department of Health.
(???Credit: The Intellectualist via X)— News Eye (@newseye.bsky.social) November 14, 2024 at 4:32 PM
While Trump crows about his great COVID record, remember this, from the COVID Crisis Group (a bipartisan collection of scientists and public health experts), in a study published last year.
Excerpt from The Death of Expertise, second edition. pic.twitter.com/pV53bhszuW— Tom Nichols (@RadioFreeTom) November 19, 2024
On The Road – frosty – Key West Part 4 – Dry Tortugas National Park
rekoob
Anne Laurie, thank you for continuing these updates. We all benefit from your hard work.
stinger
@rekoob: Seconded.
TBone
What Rekoob said. I am in the muscle spasms group of long haulers (one of many weird, long term, horrid symptoms the worst of which is multi-system inflammation that will just not quit).
Hope is not easy to maintain but I have to cultivate it to stay in the game. Thanks for your assistance, AL.
RL
Thank you for these updates! As an immune compromised person who feels utterly abandoned by all official health organizations, it means a lot.
TBone
It’s encouraging that Lyme Disease is highlighted in that long Covid special edition of Science Magazine. My OG nemesis made worse by viral intruder.
Quantum man
Agreed….thank you so much. First thing I read in the morning. So very informative.
kalakal
Needed a slight adjustment
Suzanne
The artist Egon Schiele, arguably the greatest depictor (in paint and ink) of the human figure in the 20th century, died in the flu pandemic at age 28.
I sometimes think about what we lost.
TBone
@kalakal: I hope thousands of fleas nest in the hair of his armpits, and that a relentless scourge of bedbugs interrupts his sleep and anyone else trying to sleep at any of his espionage fulfillment centers.
And I hope the insects all carry pestilence.
New Deal democrat
The COVID update this week remains very good.
Both Biobot and the CDC report continued very low concentrations in wastewater, at 1.66 per million vs. 1.33 at the late spring lows and 8.26 at this past summer’s peak. This is also by far the lowest ever recorded this late into the autumn.
The above wastewater levels are consistent with about 400-450 deaths per week by one month from now.
The CDC’s preliminary death count from the week of November 9 was 250. This suggests a final count for that week will be about 500-600 once it is reported, based on a very well established relationship I have been tracking all this year.
For the entire past year, there have been 57,600 deaths. If this winter’s Holiday wave stays in line with the recent readings, by March 31 the annual deaths might be down to roughly 45,000, which really would put this in the upper range of annual flu deaths.
Another Scott
My J’s grandfather was a young physician in the “Spanish flu” days, and it killed him.
My mom had a spontaneous abortion in the ’70s, probably caused by Rubella that was going around at the time.
There are always little bits of life out there trying to find ways to survive, and having no concern at all about the effect of them trying to live on ourselves. It’s not a morality play. We spent untold billions, and years, and lives figuring out disease prevention and how to enhance public health, and various stupid horrible monsters out there want to burn it all down for stupid reasons that come down to personal power, punching down, and sticking it to the libs.
Keep a candle lit, fight the monsters as you can, and keep pressing forward.
Thanks very much, AL, for your efforts.
Best wishes,
Scott.
TBone
Our medical system here sweeps Covid under the rug on the regular. Stop the counting! is a PA mantra.
Differential diagnoses are used.
TBone
Remembering when John Oliver took on Dr. Oz:
Video at link 🔥
https://crooksandliars.com/2024/11/trumps-latest-cauldron-sht-cabinet-pick-dr
Thanks again, Oprah! Can’t wait for Dr. Phil to be on the Supremacists Court.
Link to YouTube video:
https://youtu.be/WA0wKeokWUU
It makes me feel better.
H.E.Wolf
Thank you to Anne Laurie for steadfastly keeping on with the epidemiology reporting beat.
p.a.
Right on time: God hates us and will punish us for reelecting tRump. Forward to your “Natural disaster X is because of gay rights” acquaintances.
Soprano2
@New Deal democrat: Our wastewater testing shows this, too. What I notice more than anything is how many fewer plants in Missouri are reporting results now than did a year ago. I’m wondering if this data will be available in another year. I hope we’ve learned that it’s important to keep doing this.
Professor Bigfoot
@TBone: I find all these white people who blame the Black woman for what these white men do and say to be… well, frankly racist as fuck.
Soprano2
@Professor Bigfoot: Oprah isn’t responsible for what these men do, but she did promote and platform them. She lent her massive credibility to them, so she bears some responsibility for making what they were promoting seem normal and reasonable.
Man, the arm where I got my Covid shot on Sunday still hurts! Maybe that guy wasn’t a good shot giver.
New Deal democrat
@Soprano2:
I suspect it will be gone within six months. All the signs are that the cranks are being tasked with dismantling all public goods – by malice if possible, but incompetence will do.
In the likely event of such a cessation, I will try three work-arounds:
1. Lobby Biobot to resume their numerical reports as they did up until earlier this year.
2. extrapolate from data from Blue States, and lobby them to re-introduce more comprehensive data.
3. extrapolate from Canada.
Professor Bigfoot
@Soprano2: Baby, that was YEARS ago, long before they got themselves involved in politics, when they were both considered mainstream.
No, the Black woman does not have ANY responsibility for what these white men do; and blaming Black people for what white people do is just what white people DO.
hrprogressive
Good to see the scientific people who were super active on Twitter before Elon are on Bluesky.
With H5N1 seeming to be a more incipient threat, gonna need somewhere good to get actual news again.
Quinerly
Thanks for these posts every morning, Anne. I try to read them every day. I should acknowledge them more often. Much appreciated.
TBone
@Professor Bigfoot:
https://www.lipstickalley.com/threads/oprah%E2%80%99s-legacy-in-propping-up-white-men.3446986/
Professor Bigfoot
@TBone: Yes, and?
So it’s her fault that these white men turn out to be the vile despicable bastards they are?
Thanks.
Even here, white people just gotta white people.
Chief Oshkosh
@TBone: I did not know that muscle spasms are a symptom of long Covid. Thanks for bringing that up.
TBone
@Chief Oshkosh: they are especially scary and painful when they constrict the muscle wall in my chest around my heart. 😔
The thanks belongs to AL for posting the article reminding me about that symptom being a Covid symptom!
Soprano2
@Professor Bigfoot: That’s quite a brush you’re painting with there.
Soprano2
@Professor Bigfoot: You drove a long way from the point that the author of the posted comment was making. A comment that was written BY A BLACK WOMAN.
TBone
@Soprano2: 💋😘
Freemark
@Professor Bigfoot: Oprah shares a lot of the blame. She had an outsize presence in daytime TV and she really pushed and supported both Oz and Phil. They were charlatans then. I was disappointed in Oprah then because I thought of her as a decent human being but she pushed these quacks. Not a white thing it’s an Oprah thing. I blame Reagan for the destruction of unions and many other things and he’s been dead for quite some time.
She did not use her power wisely.
Fair Economist
I’ll be pleasantly astonished if we have such a mild holiday season.
jonas
@Suzanne: Gustav Klimt as well.
jonas
@Freemark: I never watched Oprah a lot back in the day, but my recollection is that the times Oz and Phil were on that show, they were pretty mainstream and anodyne. It was later after they had been catapulted to greater fame that they started getting their kook and grift on.
evodevo
Re: MAGA vs normie vaxxed vs unvaxxed – a good friend of ours lost her husband to covid. I later found out he was a fundie preacher and unvaxxed, of course. A lot of fundies in KY died because of the insane anti-vaxx/NO MASKS!! positions of Rethug pols and online “influencers”. I was sorry for her, but not sorry for the loss of nutjobs…
jonas
I got my updated booster (Pfizer) yesterday in preparation for some international travel in a few weeks. Little tenderness at the injection site, but otherwise nothing to report. In NY, uptake of the new booster is under 10%, which is pretty depressing.
jonas
Not enough apparently to make them rethink their cult-like adoration of Trump. Denial’s not just a river in Egypt, as they say…
TBone
My intention was to highlight John Oliver, and the great work he does. The video of his show I posted, where HE takes on Dr. Oz, is now ten years old!
I apologize for mentioning Oprah at all since it was ultimately counter-productive.
John Oliver is a national treasure and takes on much more than Dr. Oz!
https://youtu.be/WA0wKeokWUU
Lyme patients have been particularly vulnerable to snake oil salesmen.
WereBear
Getting my Covid Update tomorrow AM. And I can eat first, so I will get in a visit to a killer new coffee shop for breakfast.
Uncle Cosmo
Um, what the heck does “IFR” mean?? Yes, I googled it** but all I found was “instantaneous wave-free ratio” – a cardiological term that makes no sense in the COVID context.
** Not that anyone should have to – any use (or copying) obscure acronyms should require immediate definition in the text (standard practice in most technical writing). As Robert P. Abelson put it in his classic tome “Statistics As Principled Argument:” Don’t speak Greek if you (or your audience) don’t know the English translation. (#4 of Abelson’s eight laws, q.v.)
Professor Bigfoot
@Freemark: She was supposed to know the future?
Again, the expectations and demands placed on Black people by white people beggar the imagination.
Professor Bigfoot
@Soprano2: Nonetheless, I said what I said.
Y’all are demanding that the Black woman know TEN YEARS IN ADVANCE that these two men would turn out to be shitheels.
Back when they were very much “mainstream.”
This is a WELL EARNED “broad brush.”
TBone
@Professor Bigfoot: they were always shitheels. It’s the money, not the skin color.
glc
Current mpox situation
—
@Uncle Cosmo: Infection fatality rate
frosty
@Soprano2: i got both shots awhile ago. The guy hit too low on the shoulder for the flu shot and I had a bruise that lasted three weeks. No more than the usual pain though.
frosty
@Uncle Cosmo: Seconded
Juliet
Another thank you for keeping this information up to date. My mother in law’s mother died of Spanish flu leaving behind a 1 year old and a newborn. We get every vaccine available!
Mark von Wisco
I’m extremely pro-vaccine. This past spring I got the shingles and RSV vaccines. Last week, I got the current flu vaccines and the latest COVID booster. I supposed to get the COVID booster through the local clinic I go to, but they were out, and had the vaccines on back order. I ended up getting the booster at the local grocery store pharmacy. All they had was the Pfizer version. All of my prior shots were Moderna.
I remember reading somewhere that it’s good to switch up which vaccine you get. The side effects were pretty mild this time around.