This is a long overdue development. Bulk milk testing is the primary way we are finding H5N1 outbreaks on farms and, by extension, able to offer antivirals to exposed or infected farmworkers. I am glad to see this extended to more than a handful of states. https://t.co/rVBFDFe2CT
— Jennifer Nuzzo, DrPH (@JenniferNuzzo) December 6, 2024
The U.S. Department of Agriculture announced that it is instituting a mandatory milk testing program that should provide a much clearer picture of how widespread the virus is in the country’s dairy industry.
#USDA confirmed 22 more #H5N1 #birdflu infected dairy herds today, 21 in California & 1 in Nevada, its first.
The cumulative national total is 742 in 16 states.
www.aphis.usda.gov/livestock-po…— Helen Branswell (@helenbranswell.bsky.social) December 10, 2024 at 9:30 AM
Genetic analysis finds H5N1 in California child most similar to cattle genotype
Sequencing didn't show any mutations that hint at greater infectivity, transmissibility, or resistance to neuraminidase inhibitors.https://t.co/sqUfatCid2 pic.twitter.com/V84qhMUVEp
— CIDRAP (@CIDRAP) December 10, 2024
Thread:
If an #H5N1 pandemic starts tomorrow or in three months, there will be little mystery as to how it happened. The conditions are all there. They have been for a while.
So in some ways the more interesting question to me at the moment is: Why aren’t we in a pandemic yet?
Story here, 🧵 to come:
🧪#IDSky— Kai Kupferschmidt (@kakape.bsky.social) December 6, 2024 at 7:54 AM
A new study suggests #H5N1 #birdflu circulating in cows might have an easier path to adapting to humans than previous versions of the virus. One mutation changed the receptors to which the virus binds from those in birds to those found in human upper airways. www.statnews.com/2024/12/05/h…
— Helen Branswell (@helenbranswell.bsky.social) December 5, 2024 at 2:18 PM
Nevada reports its first avian flu detection in dairy cattle as virus hits Iowa layer farm
Nevada is the 16th state to report avian flu in dairy cattle. Iowa's poultry outbreak is its first since June. https://t.co/4zcoaahzHA pic.twitter.com/Dybm3dfSlB
— CIDRAP (@CIDRAP) December 9, 2024
[email protected] reports a new human #H5N1 #birdflu case, in a person exposed to infected cows. This is the 32nd case CA has detected since its outbreak in cows was first spotted in late Aug.
Confirmed national total = 58 cases this year. www.cdph.ca.gov/Programs/CID…— Helen Branswell (@helenbranswell.bsky.social) December 4, 2024 at 1:00 PM
"The UK government has bought more than 5 million doses of bird flu vaccine to fight a potential pandemic as cases among animals increase.
The move comes amid an increase in the spread of the virus among birds, according to the UK Health Security Agency"https://t.co/oJrNnbKot0
— Kit Yates (@Kit_Yates_Maths) December 3, 2024
Raw milk recall in California expands after tests detect more bird flu virus
— Associated Press ?? (@asssociatedpress.bsky.social) December 4, 2024 at 12:12 PM
This raw-milk producer sounds nutty. What say Virus Experts? www.latimes.com/environment/…
— Gretchen Donart (@gbdonart.bsky.social) November 29, 2024 at 11:18 PM
Nutty as squirrel poop, and even less nutritious:
2/ Source of above quote: https://t.co/Z1unCwuAli
— Jennifer Nuzzo, DrPH (@JenniferNuzzo) December 6, 2024
Wuhan lab samples hold no close relatives to virus behind COVID
Shi Zhengli, the virologist at centre of COVID lab-leak theory, reveals coronavirus sequences from Wuhan institute.
www.nature.com/artic…
1/5— Marc Veldhoen (@marcveld.bsky.social) December 7, 2024 at 5:08 AM
Smriti Mallapaty, a scientific writer for Nature @nature, kindly wrote an article about an important study presented by Angie @angie_rasmussen at our meeting in Awaji, Japan???? #CSHApandemichttps://t.co/d7JafpMdJA
— The Sato Lab (Kei Sato) (@SystemsVirology) December 4, 2024
Most #COVID vaccine–hesitant Dutch adults later changed their mind, report suggests
In total, 86% of those reluctant to receive a vaccine and 34% of those who were unwilling said they either were vaccinated or intended to be. https://t.co/6caNGpimCK pic.twitter.com/TXODwTcj6x
— CIDRAP (@CIDRAP) December 9, 2024
======
The XEC variant continues to show growth advantage in the latest US genomic SARS-CoV-2 surveillance, accounting for 44% of new cases
covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-t…— Eric Topol (@erictopol.bsky.social) December 6, 2024 at 10:33 AM
Almost a third of preteens, teens with #LongCovid still not recovered at 2 years, study shows
In @CIDRAP #COVID19https://t.co/Mh9nmZgtbz
— APPRISE (@APPRISE_network) December 9, 2024
Studies describe vaccine efficacy against long COVID
The risk reduction in developing long COVID was largely linked to reducing the risk of COVID infection in the first place. https://t.co/6fOrhbfgrg pic.twitter.com/HZIcPnl9tz
— CIDRAP (@CIDRAP) December 10, 2024
Vaccination significantly reduced #LongCovid in children and adolescents among ~300,000 kids and teens
www.thelancet.com/journals/ecl…— Eric Topol (@erictopol.bsky.social) December 7, 2024 at 9:39 AM
======
I legit think the cynical promotion of this this is one of the most brazen acts of public evil I’ve ever seen because there is *no tradeoff* in any way that counts, there’s no complicated externality, it’s just fucking letting people, mainly children die for the hell of it.
— William B. Fuckley (@opinionhaver.bsky.social) November 28, 2024 at 1:18 AM
House Subcommittee on the COVID Pandemic sheds no new light, just conjecture & politicization of science. It's conclusion of a lab leak flies in the face of evidence. In @NEJM, @ggronvall & I found that most evidence points to a natural event, still true.https://t.co/SwxRrvTlTd
— Lawrence Gostin (@LawrenceGostin) December 3, 2024
Summary of levers the incumbent administration could take to weaken national vaccination programs. It's important that we walk the next 4 years with open eyes. Science will be challenged, vaccines will be undermined. To protect vaccines we must understand the challenges.
www.npr.org/sections/sho…— BK. Titanji (@boghuma.bsky.social) December 8, 2024 at 10:15 AM
Column: With final report on pandemic, House GOP fully embraces COVID conspiracy-mongering https://t.co/p3qOFQ0F5d
— Michael Hiltzik (@hiltzikm) December 10, 2024
The motto for the incoming maladministration should be #SSDD:
Over the last two years, the Republican-dominated House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic conducted 38 interviews and depositions, held 25 hearings and meetings, and examined more than 1 million pages of documents.
Chairman Brad Wenstrup (R-Ohio), a podiatrist, called it “the single most thorough review of the pandemic conducted to date” in his introduction to its final report, issued Dec. 2.
Wenstrup and his colleagues must be hoping that nobody actually reads the 557-page report, which is notable for its reliance on cherry-picked data, misrepresentations and flagrant fabrications…
We’ll start with its first headline “finding,” which is that “SARS-CoV-2, the Virus that Causes COVID-19, Likely Emerged Because of a Laboratory or Research Related Accident,” specifically at the Chinese government’s Wuhan Institute of Virology, or WIV.
In fact, the hypothesis heavily favored by the epidemiological and virological scientific communities is that the source wasn’t a lab leak, but zoonosis, a natural spillover from wildlife, which was actively farmed and sold — illicitly — throughout Southeast Asia, encompassing the region of China that includes Wuhan, the teeming city where COVID first emerged…
The report does mention six scientific studies of COVID’s origin in peer-reviewed journals. Every single one supports the zoonosis theory. The Republicans cite assessments by some U.S. intelligence agencies favoring a lab leak, but no agency has ever disclosed what made it think so. A declassified report issued in June 2023 by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, or ODNI — which oversees the entire intelligence community — found no evidence that a “research-related incident” at WIV “could have caused the COVID pandemic.”…
In a supreme irony, the GOP asserts that arguments favoring the zoonosis theory of COVID’s origin rest on “assumptions rather than facts.” That would be a more appropriate description of the majority report, which advances no “facts” but rests on fabricated and tendentious assumptions.
If one seeks a guide to how not to perform oversight over the work of scientists, this report sets a dismal standard. It’s a disservice to anyone who lives in the real world, not in a partisan fantasy.
On The Road – Captain C – Road Trip, April 2024 Part 12: National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum Part 4
Baud
The Anne Laurie permanent unpaid employment initiative is firing on all cylinders.
Anne Laurie
@Baud: Yeah, I saw the stories. Latest update: It’s probably malaria, exacerbated by multigenerational malnourishment, and we’ll know more by next week.
I figure we have enough bad news right here in our own commonwealth, without panicking over ‘mystery illnesses’ that have yet to break out of their initial hot spots.
Elizabelle
Thanks, Anne Laurie.
I miss Michael Hiltzik of the LA Times. Cannot read anything since cancelled my subscription. They don’t even give you a free article or three each month
Of course, my desire to read more about Republican perfidy is just not there.
Princess
Much like Kay is saying we can’t break Trumpism until Americans are faced with the consequences of their votes for him, I think we won’t break the back of this anti-science pro-raw milk, anti-vaxx nonsense until a bunch of children die because of their parents’ choices. Feeding raw milk to your kid is a choice. I hope those parents are terrified right now and telling all their friends. (I obvs do not hope this kid dies but if I had my choice, the child wouldn’t even be ill.)
WereBear
@Anne Laurie: Poorly nourished people fall the hardest, and develop problems that throws off diagnosticians. It’s not part of the disease syndrome, but it’s there because of the stress of disease.
WereBear
The truly sick irony is that science deniers still use science. Or try to: they throw around terms like “herd immunity” and such without knowing what it means.
What they really want is faith healing, because then they will have something we don’t.
And don’t ask me to make sense of them. There is none, except ruthless “othering” of everything since the Reformation, which Alito was still butthurt about this century.
New Deal democrat
I have been writing comments on these weekly COVID threads for going on four years. What I am writing below is easily the most optimistic take I have ever written.
To put it bluntly, the concensus right now is that the “winter wave” of COVID this year is going to be a dud.
The most recent updates by both the CDC and Biobot for the week ending November 23 are that wastewater particles were virtually unchanged. The CDC’s number is 1.69 particles per mL, down from 1.80 the week before, and vs. the all time low in the entire last four years of 1.12. By contrast, last year at this time parts per mL were 7.53, and the week before Thanksgiving was 5.94. In other words, the current level only about 30% of the level at the equivalent time last year, at the most.
The CDC’s most recent update on weekly deaths showed there were only 517 during the week of November 2, the last week for full reporting, vs. 1,246 in the same week last year. For the most recent week of November 30, the preliminary estimate was 179, which forecasts a final number of roughly 360 – 450, vs. 1,791 for the same week last year. This suggests that this year’s “wave” is going to be between 25%-40% of last year’s.
Estimates by forecasters of what this winter’s peak might be have been coming down weekly. J.P. Weiland, who has been very good, now estimates that at peak the winter wave this year will be only 20%-35% of last winter’s peak:
https://bsky.app/profile/jpweiland.bsky.social/post/3lcw6izzxzs2y
Last year deaths peaked at 2,582 in the second week of January. 20% of that would be 520. 35% would be 900.
For the entire period of November 15 through February 15 (roughly the period of the “winter wave”) one year ago, there were 25,200 deaths. 20% of that would be 5,040 deaths. 35% would be 8,820.
Cumulatively for the last 52 weeks there have been 55,600 deaths. The above suggests that by the middle of February this number could be down to 35,000-40,000. Per the CDC, in a typical year the flu causes between 14,000 – 50,000 deaths.
In short, within just a couple of months COVID deaths might be reduced to typical annual flu deaths.
I’ve lost the cite, but the speculation seems to be that the BA.2.86 lineage, of which almost all current subvariants are direct descendants, has “evolved itself into a corner,” together with the fact that the summer wave was late this year, and so the recently infected continue to have good resistance.
Princess
“Wuhan lab samples hold no close relatives to virus behind COVID Shi Zhengli, the virologist at centre of COVID lab-leak theory, reveals coronavirus sequences from Wuhan institute.”
I mean, that’s what they would say. Took them long enough. I mean, maybe it’s true, maybe it’s not but I’m not going to believe it on their say so, and they sure waited long enough to make this claim.
WereBear
@New Deal democrat: I’m sure other cities have similar stats:
“Upstate” (anything past Westchester County to the north) is a different story, but still, I had trouble getting quick appointments because so many of our seniors are getting their shots.
Maybe blue states are just going to do better because we have more citizens seeing doctors and have the chance to listen, instead of getting all their horse worming medicine advice from Facebook.
Hildebrand
My nephew contracted pertussis (he is in high school). Thankfully, he is immunized, but it was miserable and he missed over a week of school. The doctor surmised that the number of anti-vaxxers has definitely been increasing on the west side of Michigan where they live, and thus they need to be ready for more of this.
Matt McIrvin
@New Deal democrat: The post-Thanksgiving COVID bump in our local wastewater numbers did happen but appears to have been quite small, below the level of the summer wave, and is already dissipating. In previous years since 2020 the winter wave has been visibly under way by now.
Matt McIrvin
@Princess: From the beginning, the consensus of the scientists who have looked into this, in and out of China, has been that everything points to a natural origin without a lab leak involved, and the consensus of the security/intelligence/police community has been that it’s a lab leak and somebody is hiding some terrible secret. I know which side I’m inclined to think knows what they’re talking about.
WereBear
@Hildebrand: THIS is ridiculous. I hope we don’t have to bring back all those schools for the deaf-blind.
That’s what the unvaccinated are risking. Serious organ and neurological damage.
WereBear
@Matt McIrvin: Some people are only motivated by fear. Which they do their best to deny.
After a little over a century, therapy actually treats these issues. But they won’t get “vaccinated” that way, either.
I got a grip on my lifelong perfectionism problem (and it is) with therapy. DId years of alone work in one, with a good guide.
New Deal democrat
@Matt McIrvin: Thanks.
I’m annoyed with Biobot, because after a delayed report for November 23 a week ago Monday, they promised the November 30 update by the end of last week. Instead, there’s been radio silence.
Princess
@Matt McIrvin: Neither side has a lot of actual evidence in part because the Chinese destroyed a lot of what could have served as evidence and prevented any real investigation. So I’m agnostic. Honestly, when I started digging into the evidence from science I was shocked and surprised at how thin it also is. I think it’s problematic that taking a “side” on this has become such a litmus test.
Princess
@WereBear: Recently I’ve seen my blue state lefty friends sharing Covid remedies on FB that are essentially no different from horse worm pills — based on studies of a dozen people with no control group. Very disturbing.
ColoradoGuy
@Princess: I’m surprised the Chinese government took a side in the Wet Market/Lab Leak controversy. Both explanations make them look bad … filthy, grossly unsanitary wet markets in every city, versus a slip-up in lab safety at one location.
Both outcomes are policy failures on a Chernobyl scale, considering the worldwide loss of life and economic damage. And still, at this late date, nobody in the CCP/CPC taking responsibility for the catastrophe.
HinTN
@Princess: You can’t fix stupid.
WereBear
@Princess: I think it’s the thousands of Influencers the first Trump admin unleashed: FCC hamstrung and ads that didn’t look like ads, from actors who pretended they weren’t, conned people suffering from health anxiety.
Something we can control will always beckon. Even if it’s a lie. I see the crunchy granola mom trend turn into trad wife propaganda in a blink of an eye.
And people fall for it. Of course, they likely grew up on drive-through food and never did much housework, as kids or now, so how do they know how intensive this stuff really is?
We moved from subsistence farming to the city and jobs on purpose. But easily romanticized for fools.
narya
@Princess: I’m not even convinced that that will work, honestly. As with any cult, I suspect at least some of those affected will conclude that they were somehow doing it wrong–in a way OTHER THAN not getting their kids vaccinated. It’s maddening and saddening.
sentient ai from the future
@Princess: I thought something similar before Sandy Hook.
The way people work, the fact that it is indeed a choice means very few parents in such a scenario will do anything other than double down on rationalizations and seek other scapegoats.
CaseyL
I wasn’t due to get my next MMR and Tdap boosters until 2029 (they’re good for 10 years) but in light of, well, everything, I decided to get both right now – while the vaccination pipeline still works, and its quality is trustworthy.
I think anyone who can do likewise, should.
(Needless to say, I’m also up to date on the latest Covid boosters. FSM knows what’s going to happen to Covid jabs in the US from now on, though.)
Gretchen
@Anne Laurie: I’m grateful that you’re staying on top of this to keep us informed. Thank you, Anne Laurie.
Nelle
@Anne Laurie: Im following this closely as my sister, a nurse, and my BIL, a PhD in public health, live in Kinshasa. They were talking the other day about how the corruption of the post-Mobutu years, under the two Kabilas, stripped tge educational and health infrastructure of the DRC. As it became worse, people tried to find opportunity in the city. Kinshasa exploded from around 9 million in 1999 to about 17 million today (numbers rough, from my sister’s impressions). I fear that while it may not be as dire here, we are trotting on the same, wide, downward road of corruption.
Chris T.
Pneumonia update: saw my regular (well, substitute-regular) doc on Tuesday. Lungs are clear, all looks good, lingering cough and laryngitis-type symptoms are just leftover crud and should go away on their own. Meanwhile it looks like I was not given the pneumococcal vaccine (it’s not in their records anyway and I would not have gotten it when I was younger) so he’s recommending I get it after my regular physical at the very end of the year.
artem1s
@ColoradoGuy:
True, but the reality is, TCF decided to toss aside the playbook that the Obama administration built with Chinese scientists on how to handle a pandemic scenario. TCF taking a preemptive hostile stance based on ‘who is to blame’ instead of ‘how do we keep it from spreading and work together to mitigate risk’ is exactly why the US should share the blame no matter what the source was. Right now we’re all set up to the base for the next pandemic just like the ‘Spanish’ flu. But millions will die on their crosses just to prove American Exceptionalism! Say it ain’t so Joe!
We can never hope to get cooperation on transparency when it comes to keeping pandemics under control or tracking potential biological weapons if the ignorant are leading the investigations into how pandemics start and how to react to them. This is only one example of why foreign policy experience is so important for candidate for high office and why TCF failed so spectacularly in his first four years. The GOP still believes the US can take an isolationist stance and continue to dominate as a economic power. The MAGAt voters are still buying that the US isn’t dependent on anyone for anything even though COVID showed them all how fragile our supply chain is. The whole wishful thinking of anti-vaxxers that superior genes will prevail is part of this will ignorance and dismissal of the importance of an educated populace that is required to have a basic level of STEM training – not just marketing and business classes or how to be an “influencer”.
TF79
@Princess: “It’s probably X but could be Y and we won’t know for sure until we learn Z” is probably the correct scientific formulation, but folks have a hard time with applying uncertainty and probabilistic thinking to binary outcomes
lowtechcyclist
@New Deal democrat:
This made me wonder: when did AL go from doing daily posts to doing multiple times a week to weekly? Looks like her Covid posts were daily until early 2022, then it’s hard to tell exactly when she went from most days to three days a week, but she started doing them twice a week around August 2022, then weekly since March 2023.
She was doing absolutely heroic work with these threads during those first few years. And I’m still amazed at all she does with the Covid/H5N1 threads, the morning threads, and frequently the late night/gray dawn threads.
So a huge THANK YOU for all you do, Anne Laurie!
lowtechcyclist
@TF79:
Someone can correct me if I’m wrong, but AIUI, there’s no actual evidence supporting the lab leak theory – it just can’t be ruled out because it’s extremely difficult to prove a negative.
MazeDancer
@Princess: Children dying from guns hasn’t moved the parental needle. Not sure children dying from preventable diseases will either.
lowtechcyclist
@MazeDancer:
Children dying from guns moved the parental needle a long time ago; the problem is that the opposition is well dug in and has one of our two political parties (and now SCOTUS as well) fully on its side.
The same can’t yet be said for the anti-vaxxers.
TF79
@lowtechcyclist: Right, it’s essentially circumstantial, but the “wet market” theory is also mostly circumstantial. The “Z” in the formulation is something like they had for SARS 1 and MERS (and many other infectious diseases) where the zoonotic reservoir was identified as civets/camels. Absent that Z, it’s comparing “well there’s a 1/150 chance it’s this” vs “well there’s a 1/50 chance it’s that”
lowtechcyclist
@New Deal democrat:
My rule of thumb since the early days has been that when Covid deaths drop below the level of deaths caused by motor vehicles, I’ll be ready to let Covid become background noise AFAIAC.
The preliminary count of motor vehicle deaths in 2023 is just under 41,000. So if we do indeed have the very modest winter wave that they’re predicting, we could be there.
TF79
@TF79: Adding to my own comment – I think there is evidence to rule out the more uhhhh exotic lab-leak theories about gain-of-function/bioweapon or whatever. If it was some lab-related mechanism, it would presumably be more of a Marburg “we didn’t know what we were handling was dangerous” sort of pathway.
Chris Johnson
@TF79: I thought the whole point of the lab leak thing was to insist OOOO BOOGA BOOGA BOOGA the Chinavirus is biowarfare and the bad nonwhite people are attacking us, be scared!
I thought that was the whole idea, was to insist the baddies were running a James Bond mass murder plot on us all.
Which, given these assholes’ predilection for projection, makes me damn worried about the chances THEY have been up to no good, and are now trying to use RFK to remove all our defenses and hit us with something. But it would be Russia doing this, China has a symbiotic economic relationship with us and wouldn’t be doing that and I don’t think would be supplying it to Russia, and I don’t think Russia is up to it though I wouldn’t doubt they WANT to.
I’m guessing it’s Russia just wanting to seize on any available sickness that’s around, and while they’re at it, freak people out and propagandize them for maximum damage? ‘cos that much is obvious. I think they’re behind antivaxx crap all over the world.
Jacel
On that chart tracking infected herds by state, I notice the absence of Wisconsin, which has the second largest dairy cattle population after California. Is that state somehow absolutely infection free? Or is there a lack of reporting from there (which I suppose the Republican state legislature might have mandated)?
Nelle
@Hildebrand: My friend’s granddaughter, vaccinated, got a rather mild case of pertussis, but still missed two weeks of school. Apparently, though, they later found out that one can be contagious for up to two weeks.
Long term consequences of other people’s choices: Twenty-four years ago, my daughter caught strep throat from her Christian Scientist lab partner in chemistry. She went through antibiotics and seemed better, but still, I checked with her oral surgeon before she had her wisdom teeth removed. Sure, bring her in. A week after that, her kidneys shut down from strep in the kidneys. The nephrologist noted a rash on her arm. Strep in her skin. Which will never be gone. Sometimes it covers more than half her body. At one point, she was given shots ($10,000 a shot, thank insurance for covering it) once a month. Twenty-four years of this.
TF79
@Chris Johnson: Oh for sure, from a propaganda perspective, for the “lab leak” term, there was plenty of the bioweapon stuff, plus the attempts to connect Fauci to the lab as part of some “Grand Plandemic”.
But from a science perspective, there are still other Marburg-like pathways that haven’t been ruled out. There’s still some debate on whether “lab-leak” is even the right term for what happened with Marburg, and I generally tend to prefer “lab-related” as opposed to “lab-leak” for the non-wet market pathway (to distinguish it from the ruled-out coocoo stuff)
glc
Interesting round-up. “Interesting” may or may not be a good thing, but understanding is better than not understanding …
Also noted –
WHO Director General
“We cannot talk about COVID in the past tense. It’s still with us, it still causes acute disease and long COVID, and it still kills.
DRC (Helen Branswell) As AL has already mentioned, waiting for lab results
Changing the subject: insurance claims. Also, Propublica has a tool.
dnfree
@WereBear: The science deniers I know say that abortion is murder because “science” says that life begins at conception. I try to explain that when that life is inside of and sustained by another life, so the two come into conflict, but no—“science” proved that abortion is murder.