Five years ago this month, some scientists were warning that Covid might be airborne–and they were ignored. Here's my story about researchers are raising similar questions about bird flu, as it gains some worrying mutations. [Gift link] www.nytimes.com/2025/02/03/h…
— Carl Zimmer (@carlzimmer.com) February 3, 2025 at 2:49 PM
#USDA confirmed 1 more #H5N1 #birdflu infected herd in California today, taking the state's total to 736 & the cumulative national total to 957 herds in 16 states. CA Dept of Food & Ag says 225 of the herds have recovered and cleared quarantine. www.aphis.usda.gov/livestock-po…
— Helen Branswell (@helenbranswell.bsky.social) February 4, 2025 at 9:49 AM
Antibody therapy shows promise in preventing severe H5N1 avian #Flu in monkeys, targeting a stable virus region for lasting protection. This could aid in controlling future outbreaks. @cellpressnews @sciencemagazine https://t.co/JfIS36XFov https://t.co/aIDzDIix25
— Medical Xpress (@medical_xpress) January 31, 2025
Avian flu strikes more Nevada dairy herds, leading to starling removal | @CIDRAP #Nevada #AvianFlu #H5N1 @USDA https://t.co/ggrp2rcRdG
— aponia_analytics (@AponiaAnalytics) February 3, 2025
Nevada says in its press release about the new #H5N1 #birdflu infections in dairy herds that "Preliminary results show this detection to be consistent with a strain that has also been detected in wild birds in all North American flyways."
Is this not the virus circulating in cows? Anyone know?— Helen Branswell (@helenbranswell.bsky.social) February 3, 2025 at 2:07 PM
Across the country, dairy producers have had to dump milk to avoid contamination. Infected chickens have been killed, including millions of egg-laying hens, causing egg prices to skyrocket. https://t.co/dzkDBwtgkA
— Texas Tribune (@TexasTribune) February 4, 2025
Bird flu outbreaks are driving up egg prices for families.
Now, Elon Musk wants to shut down USAID, the agency responsible for monitoring outbreaks in dozens of foreign countries.
With egg prices increasing grocery bills, why halt efforts to prevent a U.S. bird flu crisis?— Elizabeth Warren (@warren.senate.gov) February 3, 2025 at 1:05 PM
Last night's update: More than 172,000 new cases https://t.co/LBaCQ4sNwz
— BNO News (@BNOFeed) February 3, 2025
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The COVID Pandemic Probably Started In Wuhan Market Animals After All | American Council on Science and Health @ACSHorg https://t.co/7b0SYoNo6w
— Prof Peter Hotez MD PhD (@PeterHotez) February 4, 2025
Covid vs flu in the country of Denmark, among ~6 million people (just published today)
www.thelancet.com/journals/lan…
“COVID-19 represented a greater disease burden than influenza, with more hospital admissions and deaths, and more severe disease”— Eric Topol (@erictopol.bsky.social) January 29, 2025 at 7:12 PM
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Meta-analysis estimates 14% global COVID-flu coinfection rate
In @CIDRAP #COVID19 #influenza #fluhttps://t.co/NGJPhc3aDd
— APPRISE (@APPRISE_network) February 4, 2025
Long COVID impacting more than 1 million children: CDC study suggests. Also a reason why it was important to vaccinate kids vs COVID. It wasn’t only about deaths and hospitalizations. Covid vaccines reduce the risk of long Covid. Papers attached https://t.co/3PAUriWI6z
— Prof Peter Hotez MD PhD (@PeterHotez) February 4, 2025
#Paxlovid protects against hospital care, death, especially in older patients, study of outcomes of 703,647 patients with #COVID19 seen at 34 US clinics in 2022 and 2023
Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy – @CIDRAP#antiviralshttps://t.co/d3tt1iBxB3 pic.twitter.com/B1NtQ3eHuE
— APPRISE (@APPRISE_network) February 3, 2025
Plasma protein and brain structural imaging evidence that SARS-CoV-2 is associated with greater brain β-amyloid pathology in older adults, particularly those hospitalized or with hypertension.
nature.com/articles/s41… open-access— Eric Topol (@erictopol.bsky.social) January 30, 2025 at 8:59 AM
Worth highlighting the study excluded hospitalized patients and the accelerated progression was noted in people with mild Covid
"The finding that mild COVID-19 infection is associated with
plaque progression raises interesting questions about mechanism."
pubs.rsna.org/doi/full/10….— Eric Topol (@erictopol.bsky.social) February 4, 2025 at 11:19 AM
Nursing homes used unproven #COVID measures and didn't use vaccines, antivirals enough, review finds
Using scarce resources and staff on questionable measures could distract from evidence-based methods such as vaccination and antivirals, the authors say.https://t.co/P9G2fV1lim pic.twitter.com/8Oi1NOrT7W
— CIDRAP (@CIDRAP) February 4, 2025
A benefit of prior vaccination when there's a breakthrough infection: putting the brakes on a maladaptive innate immune response
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/…— Eric Topol (@erictopol.bsky.social) January 29, 2025 at 2:18 PM
NIH has an historic opportunity to transform post-viral illness research by bringing ME/CFS into its long Covid RECOVER Initiative. https://t.co/WRQmM2fqX8
— STAT (@statnews) February 4, 2025
How portable air cleaners and ventilation in outpatient clinics can backfire, promote aerosol spread
www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10…. open-access— Eric Topol (@erictopol.bsky.social) February 1, 2025 at 11:06 AM
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Will scientists stand up and reject this? Or will they shrug and throw their hands up in the air?
Eliminating the words flagged from research and grants makes whatever is produced no longer research but rather propaganda aligned with the EO of POTUS.
Do not obey in advance!— BK. Titanji (@boghuma.bsky.social) February 4, 2025 at 6:41 AM
Keep applying pressure, silence is complying in advance.
— BK. Titanji (@boghuma.bsky.social) February 3, 2025 at 4:17 PM
As a virologist who specializes in outbreaks, Angela Rasmussen writes that having Kennedy at the helm of HHS during an outbreak of a lethal virus is the worst pandemic scenario she can conceive—and it’s a worryingly real possibility. https://foreignpolicy.com/2025/01/30/rfk-jr-rfk-confirmation-bird…
— Foreign Policy (@foreignpolicy.com) January 30, 2025 at 5:30 PM
40% of Republicans think it’s “Probably True” or “Definitely True” that more people died from the COVID-19 vaccine than from the virus itself. This is what news media need to adapt to: consensus on basic reality in the US is dead. We’re dealing with radical ignorance. pic.twitter.com/zfk5LCszEq
— Christian Christensen (@ChrChristensen) February 1, 2025
Anticipating that #vaccine policy might be under threat from the Trump administration, outgoing HHS secretary Becerra stacked a key advisory committee to try to preserve its scientific integrity. #ACIP www.statnews.com/2025/01/31/v…
— Helen Branswell (@helenbranswell.bsky.social) January 31, 2025 at 7:30 AM
A bunch of "doctors" wrote a letter in support of RFK Jr's nomination as HHS secretary.
Some weren't doctors. Some were doctors who'd lost their licenses.
Smart reporting by The AP. apnews.com/article/trum…— Helen Branswell (@helenbranswell.bsky.social) February 1, 2025 at 3:32 PM
I know there's huge concern about the material on the #CDC site that went dark last night.
For those looking for the #ACIP recommendations on vaccinations, that page is live here: www.cdc.gov/acip-recs/hc…— Helen Branswell (@helenbranswell.bsky.social) February 1, 2025 at 10:45 AM
Bruce K in ATH-GR
The Talibangelicals are already on course to get people killed. They’ll probably kill more before they’re done than the Taliban have, by several orders of magnitude.
MomSense
It’s a great time for the CDC pause in communication.
MomSense
@Bruce K in ATH-GR:
They believe in and want the end of the world. Their endgame is literally the end.
Ohio Mom
Eh, Trump will just disband that vaccine advisory committee. I hope they get to meet once to trade personal contact information, assuming they all didn’t know one another already.
I did not know USAID played a role in monitoring disease outbreaks. And why would I, I knew we gave aid to poor foreign countries and that was it. Didn’t know the name of the agency, I had no reason to.
This follows a rule of thumb I made up. At this point in my life, most of what I learn has to do with things going wrong. I didn’t know anything about basement engineering, until we bought a house with a bad basement; didn’t know anything about various health conditions until a family member acquired one of them; and I could go on.
And now I’m learning details about the administrative state I was previously happy to be ignorant of.
Professor Bigfoot
When I murmur, “we’re SO fucked,” I don’t mean we’re dead yet. Or that it’s hopeless. Yet.
But goddamn, we are gonna go through some things.
Professor Bigfoot
@Bruce K in ATH-GR: To update Asimov’s observation, “their Bible is better than your scientific expertise.”
lowtechcyclist
@Professor Bigfoot:
Oh, it’s got nothing to do with the Bible anymore. Well, maybe a few carefully selected verses (“clobber texts” as Fred Clark calls them) that back up what Faux News has told them to believe.
But they don’t give a shit about Jesus or the Gospels.
Princess
Just checked and as of Jan 31 no Canadian dairy herds have been infected at all and a relatively minor number of chicken producers, mostly n BC. I don’t know why. Different rules? Weather? Distance between producers? Since wild birds cross borders, you’d think the difference would not be so stark.
lowtechcyclist
@Professor Bigfoot:
All too true.
Suzanne
Thanks for sharing that link to the study about the portable air purifiers. I need to dive into it more, especially with my mechanical engineering colleagues. I’ve been really suspicious of the efficacy of those Corsi-Rosenthal boxes, as well. The way air conditioning works in commercial buildings, with varying pressure relationships, I think both of those technologies are just recirculating the same little bit of air over and over. Imagine a 50-gallon fish tank with a 5-gallon-capacity filter…. one little bit gets really clean and the rest stays nasty, and then, if you wait long enough…..it all gets nasty again.
Ohio Mom
It’s not funny at all, but I could see an office-type pool, betting on what catastrophe happens to us first: a second pandemic; financial crisis (several possibilities here, such as depression, U.S. default); we go to war (in the Middle East of course); widespread civil unrest with our own version of Tiananmen Square.
It goes without saying that all this is preceded by the current dismantling of our democratic republic, these catastrophes are just cherries on top that maybe, just maybe, will get through to the MAGAs that they fucked up.
I haven’t eaten breakfast yet, maybe it’s my low blood sugar talking.
NotMax
@Princess
Bird is the word.
;)
p.a.
Elizabeth Warren
Stopping X THERE before we have to stop X HERE only applies to killing dark-skinned people.
Matt McIrvin
@lowtechcyclist: Clark really likes to talk about how US white evangelical Biblical hermeneutics as we know them were pretty much entirely invented to provide moral justifications for slavery. So I’d say it was ever thus.
Soprano2
That keyword list is mega-stupid, and shows that whoever made it doesn’t understand science or scientific research at all. The word “biased” can have many uses and meanings in research, it isn’t a word that’s inherently about race or anything that could be labeled “DEI”. These people are going to destroy scientific research.
Matt McIrvin
@Soprano2: Some of this is the sadistic dynamic O’Brien the torturer talks about in “1984”: the stupidity is part of the intended effect, as a show of power. The bit along the lines of “The stars are small holes in a dome over the flat Earth. We’re going to force you to believe that, not for any particular reason but just to demonstrate that we can.”
Kay
RFK Jr is a lazy grifter who hasn’t worked a day in his life but instead has been a D list celebrity living off his name, much like Donald Trump.
He’s going to use public money to fund the woo woo miracle cures of his idiot cronies. The damage he does will be opportunity cost – a wasted four years and hundreds of millions of dollars wasted funding Dr Joe Rogan’s nutritional subsidies.He has no work ethic, so is less dangerous.
noncarborundum
@lowtechcyclist:
Kay
@Matt McIrvin:
The RAGE of male, white “public intellectuals” on the Center and Right at any effort by Black people and women to encroach on what they think they are entitled to is truly amazing.
They have actually convinced themselves that ANY of their personal failures are the fault of others.
Scout211
Are you sure about that? I hear he had a successful small business in his dorm room supplying pharmaceuticals to his fellow classmates. ::wink emoji::
TBone
@Kay: I have other descriptors besides amazing.
Jeffg166
When the bird flu does become airborne it will hopefully take out the felon, Elmo and all the other GQP enablers.
Avalune
@Princess: I wonder if migration and migration time tables have anything to do with that – and if it will spike in a month or two when the birds start heading back up north.
Soprano2
@Kay: They are angry that they have to compete with people who they believe are their inferiors.
Another Scott
Thanks for continuing to provide these updates, AL. They’re greatly appreciated.
@Ohio Mom:
I hope smart Democrats in the House and Senate are gaming out the real implications of a (temporary) default.
(The US has had a temporary, technical, default a handful of times in the past. Interest rates kicked up a little, but most people didn’t notice.)
We cannot allow Musk and Donnie and the monsters in the GQP to gut the social safety net. That has to be a hard line. If it takes a (temporary) default to stop them, then I think we have to be willing to do that. Every alternative must be considered, even ones that were too horrible to contemplate in the past, IMHO.
Yes, a default this time would have much bigger consequences than in the past, but we have to consider every policy path and the implications.
FWIW.
If anyone has seen any reputable gaming out of the consequences and implications now, I’d appreciate a pointer.
Best wishes,
Scott.
Matt McIrvin
@Jeffg166: They’ll all get the vaccine, they’ll just withhold it from us with some antivax argument.
Bruce K in ATH-GR
I may be whistling past the graveyard here, but I’m actually starting to get this creeping sensation that it’s all going to blow up in the Trumpists’ faces very soon … which would be a lot more comforting if it weren’t also about to blow up in our faces.
Meanwhile, I plan to continue to get my vaccinations courtesy of the Greek government and my tax euros. (I’m not eligible for a COVID shot, but I suspect that’s because my last shot was on October 29. On which date I got my shot, and no money whatsoever changed hands.)
No Nym
I can see a future in which our nation has become a weakened and poor state full of nasty and very contagious diseases and no ability to contain them. Maybe some day more charitable nations will be sending aid to us, and the moronic masses will suddenly understand why helping others is a good thing.
narya
@Another Scott: If I were gaming out consequences and responses, I wouldn’t be doing it publicly at this point . . .
lowtechcyclist
@Matt McIrvin:
Maybe so, but as someone who spent the first few decades of his Christian life at least evangelical-adjacent, not to mention actively fellowshipping with them at different times, it just seems like it’s much more so now than it was thirty or fifty years ago.
I think a couple of things have changed it: one is the Left Behind books, which put the End Times crap much closer to the center of their cosmology. Other than that one oddball charismatic fellowship I was involved with in the early 1970s, I really didn’t encounter much interest in the whole Rapture/Tribulation stuff among the evangelicals I knew and/or fellowshipped with. Oh sure, they believed in it, but it was back-burner stuff to them. And sure, there were always preachers during that time saying “the Lord is coming back for us in 19xx, be ready!” but they never seemed to me to represent the mass of evangelicalism.
The thing about an End Times obsession is that it gets its adherents to concentrate on a relative handful of Scriptures that supposedly give clues to the approach of the End Times, and does this or that event in the Middle East match up with this or that prophecy.
The other thing, of course, is Trump. As they’ve gone from seeing him as a Cyrus analogue (he may personally be bad, but he’s going to liberate us from the Babylonians/libs!) to a savior, they’ve pretty much had to ignore all but a handful of outlier verses in the entire New Testament.
lowtechcyclist
@noncarborundum:
Bingo!
Like the couchfucker was saying the other day:
Good luck finding that in the New Testament.
satby
Only in this country.
Matt McIrvin
@lowtechcyclist: yeah, that End Times shit kicked into high gear with Hal Lindsey’s stuff in the 1970s and ’80s, but Left Behind made it huger still.
Matt McIrvin
@lowtechcyclist: “So, Jesus, in this love-my-neighbor stuff, who really counts as my neighbor? Just asking questions.”
p.a.
@Another Scott: Reluctantly coming to the same opinion. No longer politically viable to protect them and their voters from themselves.
Matt McIrvin
@satby: That’s also why I’m actually more sanguine than you might think about the effect of Trump’s “liquid gold, drill baby drill” obsession on global efforts to combat climate change: this stuff is out of the US’s hands by now anyway. They’ve already learned we’re not reliable helpers on this, but at the same time, the US’s own carbon emissions have been dropping for a while and that probably isn’t going to stop unless Trump literally builds giant furnaces that do nothing but burn fossil fuels to own the libs. The market is speaking. The big story is if China can manage to decarbonize, and they’re working on it.
What Trump’s delusion does is hurt us. We can cede any hope of leadership on the technology.
Soprano2
@satby: Yeah, but that’s a lot of research.
Formerly disgruntled in Oregon
@Matt McIrvin: Yeah, what if they live three houses down the street?
Do I still have to treat that “neighbor” with respect and acknowledge their humanity? Aww, dang – I do? Well, maybe this Jesus fella is a little fruity. Gimme a mega-masc savior instead. Maybe Rambo.
Another Scott
@narya: True.
Thanks.
Best wishes,
Scott.
lowtechcyclist
@Matt McIrvin:
I’ve always loved the way Jesus flips the question inside out after telling the story of the Good Samaritan: “Who was neighbor to this man? Do like he did.”
Matt McIrvin
@lowtechcyclist: “Let me answer that question with a story…”
Matt McIrvin
@p.a.: The thing is, to follow the Good Samaritan thread, they *are* still our neighbors. Politically speaking, at least by the standards that Democrats are held to by voters and the media, it’s harder to say afterward that you were against the thing unless you actually opposed the thing (this is the problem with overt “heighten the contradictions” strategies). So we can’t really be actively malicious, we have to make the effort to save them and fail.
noncarborundum
@lowtechcyclist: I hadn’t seen that. It’s certainly not like any Christian teaching I’ve ever encountered (and I was raised in the faith).
Warning: if you search for this quote and find it on Reddit, you may want to avoid reading the comments. Some of them are quite disheartening.
Barbara
@Princess: Not all wild birds cross borders. I don’t think starlings are migratory in that sense. Canada is much less densely populated than the U.S. and there could be other things going on as well — proximity between dairy and poultry farms alluded to in one of the articles, with workers that have jobs at both being a vector for transmission.
It’s hard for me to think that it’s totally weather related, unless “absolutely colder average temperatures” provides some protection — the bird flu pandemic has been going on for at least one complete year, so seasonal fluctuations should have been observed if they were consequential.
Matt McIrvin
@noncarborundum: There’s a specifically *Catholic* notion of subsidiarity, which is that you take care of everything on the most local level you can. Of course conversion from hard-right Protestantism to hard-right Catholicism (and occasionally from there to hard-right fringe Eastern Orthodoxy) has been a big thing among prominent conservative figures for decades.
Bill Arnold
@lowtechcyclist:
Uncomfortably accurate satire: Ruben Bolling, 1991 Human Morality Made Simple
Many of us are outliers, with many more Ys in the left colum and many more Ns in the right three columns.
Another Scott
@lowtechcyclist: @Matt McIrvin:
I’m no expert, but my understanding is the point of the story is that the Samaritans were considered dangerous heretics and worse. They weren’t just people from the next town over.
The high and mighty people in our tribe refused to help, but this guy that we disagree with and regard as the worst and lowest of the low did the right thing.
It’s a much richer message than one gets if one doesn’t know anything about the Samaritans, etc.
Thanks.
Best wishes,
Scott.
lowtechcyclist
@Another Scott:
Definitely. But the thing that usually gets lost (much more so IME than the bad blood between Jews and Samaritans at the time) is that Jesus says being a neighbor is something you do – it isn’t, as people would say in my academic discipline, set-theoretic.
H-Bob
There is a tuberculosis outbreak in Kansas City. Residents of that region will be going to the Super Bowl in New Orleans, probably partying in the French Quarter with fans from all around the country, yet nobody seems concerned.
WTFGhost
@lowtechcyclist: The one thing that makes me think “Hey, this Jesus person, *if* he said the stuff he did, was one wise-ass emeffer,” is, he sets out that challenge. It’s *hard* to love other people who are different, and loud, and have obnoxious opinions.
You have to try to learn, and accept, differences that rub you *completely* the wrong way. You have to learn to forgive little grievances that make you want to hurt someone back. You have to accept weird little quirks about other people when you’d rather make up hateful stories about them (like that childless cat ladies are bad policy makers).
Now, is it *normal* that first you learn loving from family, then from larger circles? Sure. But anyone who says that one should love one’s country, before caring about the other citizens of the world, they want to explain why it’s okay to kill a few dozen civilians to protect on golden-thewed AMERICAN WARRIOR, because, hey, love your COUNTRY first, then learn to love the other, lesser people.
That’s *insane* from a Christian perspective, but, throw a “-nationalist” on the end, “Christian Nationalist,” someone who wants to use Christianity to kill the people they don’t like? Yeah, now it makes perfect sense.
Another Scott
@lowtechcyclist:
Indeed.
I think the story also has (probably uncomfortable, to many) implications to many in the faith vs. works debate, also too.
;-)
Thanks.
Best wishes,
Scott.
dnfree
@lowtechcyclist: Yes, it was Paul who came up with the idea that faith ALONE was sufficient. Jesus said works.
Kayla Rudbek
@lowtechcyclist: he’s a fucking heretic by Catholic standards (rahaeli over on Bluesky has a great thread on this) and I am now in the position of hoping that Pope Francis goes medieval on him and the other Opus Dei Catholics and excommunicates them all for starters, and puts the possibility of interdict (aka shutting down all the sacraments at the Catholic Churches in the country) on the table as well.
Vance has always reminded me of the joke about the Catholics converting a Protestant because they didn’t like him barbecuing steak every Friday, when the holy water hit him, they all told him, “congratulations, you’re now a Catholic” Then the next Friday the new convert is out barbecuing steak and sprinkling the steak with water, saying “congratulations, you’re now a fish”
Kayla Rudbek
@satby: if I were running a university or a pharmaceutical company or any R&D in another country, I would be actively recruiting people out of the USA.