continuing this morning's health theme... here's Robin McKie on the likely next pandemic...
Might be flu, might be SARS-COV2, might be H5Ni related...
but the one thing we can be pretty sure of is it will come & we will not be prepared as we have already forgotten most of the lessons of the lockdown years.
The USDA is doubling down on mythical milkborne spread:
"The USDA said cows shed the virus in milk at high concentrations, so anything that comes in contact with unpasteurized milk may spread the disease. Respiratory transmission is not considered a primary way for the virus to spread in cattle, the department added."
No explanation given. Flu is a milkborne pathogen now. Total fucking clownshow
Authors of the paper that demonstrated immune dysregulation at least 8 months following mild-to-moderate SARSCoV2 infection have published a followup study demonstrating improvements after 2 years, controlling for reinfection (who wants to bet masks were an integral part of that):
Des chercheur·es rattaché·es aux laboratoires EVS (CNRS, ENS de Lyon) et Territoires vous proposent un questionnaire sur les expériences, pratiques et connaissances (ou méconnaissances) relatives à la pandémie de #covid19
So instead of a global #pandemic agreement (because that'd thwart ⚚aglithacultural IP harvest of global illness), U.S. is gonna expand international aid programs—that can then be unilaterally curtailed or held hostage at any time in future, for whatever (geo)political reason seems appropriate at the time.
'Cause that couldn't possibly go wrong.
(Meanwhile U.S., having shut down last of own domestic programs, continues to lead the world in reported deaths per capita during an ongoing pandemic.)
Okay, the NIH director admitting in an interview with MedPage Today that persistent live virus is causing chronic outcomes definitely wasn't on my 2024 bingo card:
We are at the "evidence is undeniable" stage, where you can keep denying it if you are a committed-enough delusion-artist, but it's less and less of a good look from here
"What if you could track public health like the weather?"
In our latest blog post, Stamen designer Caroline Carter talks about our work with WastewaterSCAN to make epidemiological charts more usable in our day-to-day lives, like checking a weather report.
Not looking forward 😒 to world 🌎 governments 🧐 underreacting 🙈 🙉 🙊 & memory-holing 🕳️ another pandemic 😷 sandwiched 🥪 on top of the never-ending #Covid#pandemic. 🫥
#H5N1 spreading from 🐦 to 🐮, 🐮 to 🐮, and from 🐮 to🧍is worrisome 😬.
I don't know -- maybe all of the shit the #covid prevention community is already doing. But that would be too embarrassing, wouldn't it? Good thing you can't die of embarrassment
Highly pathogenic avian flu, H5N1 Bird Flu, has infected a worker in Texas, only the 2nd known human infection in the U.S. since the pandemic began, in 2022.
This directly follows an outbreak of H5N1 in Texas dairy cattle that has already spread to other states. Already, billions of birds have died in this pandemic, both domestic chickens & turkeys, as well as wild birds. It has not yet mutated into a form that is transmissible from human to human. However, gaining the ability to transmit between mammals, particularly farm animals, could be a step in that evolutionary direction. And its case fatality rate may be as high as 50%
Losing my mind that this is in a 2013 issue of the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Hygiene:
"The growing threat of an influenza pandemic presents a unique challenge to healthcare workers, emergency responders, and the civilian population. [OSHA] recommends [NIOSH]-approved respirators to provide protection against infectious airborne viruses in various workplace settings."
Mon équipe scientifique brillante a tout donné mais hélas nous n'avons pas réussi à empêcher la pandémie. Vous êtes tous trépassés dans d'atroces souffrances, le monde entier y est passé. Nous sommes désolés, ça a merdé, on a même triché un petit peu mais on a quand même perdu la bataille. Dommage, je vous aimais bien ! #Pandemic
We appear to be having the best break from the #covid19#pandemic in a year, with #wastewater levels in my region lower than they’ve been for probably 95% of the past two years.
But I’m having a hard time feeling great about it. The damage to my social life has been done. I don’t trust or respect most people anymore, and I’m not sure when I’ll ever again walk around breathing unfiltered indoor lung exhaust.
And we all know it’s just a matter of weeks before that line goes back up,
“Name a force or impulse that threatens the stability of the American political system – distrust in the fairness of elections, conspiracy theorizing, the embrace of authoritarianism – and it is always more prevalent among rural Whites than among those living elsewhere."
~ Tom Schaller and Paul Waldman, White Rural Rage: The Threat to American Democracy (New York: Random House, 2024), p. 5
“The excess coronavirus deaths in rural counties should be classified as suicides by scientific skepticism. By rejecting proven vaccines, conspiracy-addled rural Americans, though living in communities where social distancing was easier than in densely populated cities, squandered their geographic advantage."
"All told, premature deaths from reduced healthcare access and facility closures, healthcare ignorance and scientific skepticism, and a fatal devotion to guns and drugs are killing rural white Americans—especially downscale rural whites.”