Two conventional sequences (not wastewater) of this new variant showed up in New York City today, with collection dates June 30 and July 4. New phylogenetic tree (S:S31Y is an artifact): @solidevidence.bsky.social Still waiting for @corneliusroemer.bsky.social to give it an official Pango name.

New post, on why people shouldn't 'never-skill' themselves with AI: kucharski.substack.com/p/dont-never...

Finish him, Count Binface.

Still to early to make any confident predictions. We've seen somewhat similar scenarios with various outcomes. A few examples below: 1/10

I see uncle Donald said in his speech that the US was the country with the most freedom in world, so I thought I'd put this here. The US is in 15th place in the ranking US based Cato institutes freedom index. The Human Freedom Index 2025 | Fraser Institute share.google/QhpQUnu64jR7...

A school, office, restaurant or train operator usually does not pay the cost when poor air spreads disease, the whole society does. So costs and benefits are not aligned. So the market underinvests, even when the tools are cheap and available.

The main bottleneck is not that we lack ways to improve indoor air. Ventilation, filtration, CO₂ monitoring and maintenance already get us a long way. The bottleneck is that nobody is required to use them properly and that bad indoor air is a negative externality with many typical market failures.

Imperial boomerang: for centuries, Europeans have framed tech to protect against cold (fire, furnaces) as noble and good, while they’ve framed the warm climates they colonized as full of lazy people (Asians, Africans) and, thus, the need to use AC or fans as frivaloues, wasteful & unnecessary

I especially love this diagram.

We treat respiratory infections like the cold and flu as minor nuisances. The evidence increasingly suggests they’re anything but. I'm excited to be an advisor for Intercept, a $500M bet to make them a thing of the past. interceptfund.substack.com/p/e9438538-4...

I've been out the loop. Are you genuinely telling me that Trump signed his surrender agreement in Versailles and that this really truly happened.

New research from me and @antonspisak.bsky.social – we identify how much Brexit has reduced goods and services trade with the EU, and what’s responsible: leaving the customs union or the single market? Answers: large hit to trade, mostly due to single market exit 🧵 www.cer.eu/insights/cos...

Truly impressive. Amazing what vaccines are already doing, and think about all the cancers that can be prevented in future by another generation of vaccines if we continue to fund this research appropriately.. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

A discussion about the social media ban on under 16s. BBC: “You’re gong to have a lot more time to fill. What will you do?” Student: “Stare at a wall.”

Bluesky overrun by British teenagers at night because it's the one place the Labour government will never check.

We released our latest metagenomics preprint. I’m really excited about this study. The unofficial title is ‘conquer the dark matter, volume 1’ 1/ www.medrxiv.org/content/10.6...

Dear epidemiologists and climate geographers. There is a curious one year period to Covid waves in Singapore. Positivities start to rise around calendar week 9, for the third time now. To what tropical seasonal pattern or other pattern could that fit?

For medical information, general AI frontier models (Google, OpenAI, Anthropic) outperformed specialized @openevidence.bsky.social and UptoDate AI Assessed by 12 US clinicians, randomized & model blinded w/extensive testing/benchmarks. This was not anticipated nature.com/articles/s41...

In our latest substack, @ruthcurtice.bsky.social takes a closer look at the 'defence versus welfare spending' debate, and explains why it's important we have a clear picture of how we spent the peace dividend while it was around⤵️

More interesting stuff from the Dutch corona enquiry. This time from Dick Schoof who was one of the top civil servants at the time talking about how many deaths you'd accept to keep schools open. To me it sounds very much like a linear thinking. Schools open = x extra deaths, sportclubs open = y ...

Love this as a prevention case study: - Low cost, even revenue raising in the short term - Improves health outcomes and reduces costly hospital admissions Shows political leadership is key: - Politically costly for Khan to implement - Did it despite cost savings landing outside GLA

I've never seen the goal of the ECB reported accurately in the Netherlands. For the record: the goal is 2% inflation IN THE MEDIUM TERM. That means 2% in about 18 months, not today. It really doesn't matter what inflation is today if they expect it to be 2% in 18 months. nos.nl/artikel/2618...

BA.3.2 - a "forever" variant? I've always wondered why BA.3.2 has persisted for such a long time. Now we know that it mainly targets the 0-4-year age group, and we know why. Could that explain its persistence?

I’m so excited. Our secret (not so secret) observational experiment is about to begin. This is a once in a lifetime opportunity for wastewater surveillance. FIFA World cup. 1/ @securebio.org www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-...

Fascists in Belfast set fire to buildings with people inside them. People of colour left work early to stay indoors. This is being actively encouraged by the world’s richest man whose openly pro-white nationalist platform X is still used by the UK government www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026...

Day 4 of my first symptomatic respiratory infection since 2019 and I'm glad I haven't had any for 7 years. I'm guessing it's a rhinovirus since I've done a few on these 9in1 selftests that don't include rhinoviruses, and they've been negative for everything.

Another fantastic preprint on BA.3.2's propensity for children, this time from Yunlong Cao & co. They not only confirm David Ho's lab findings (that kids have ~0 Ab response to BA.3.2) but dig into the details of exactly why kids are so vulnerable to BA.3.2. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... 1/6

It’s funny how notable Americans (you know who I mean) are quick to critique the UK and even incite action over isolated incidents of tragic violence in UK yet strangely quiet when there is a mass attack event in the USA.

It would be extremely helpful to national life if the BBC did not treat crucial economic questions as mere political debate.

The basis for the last sentence below: New data from David Ho's lab showing that while adults & kids have ~equal antibody responses to XFG & NB.1.8.1, children have essentially no neutralizing antibodies to BA.3.2. This seems to solve the BA.3.2 + kids mystery. 1/14 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

This has been my assumption, but I realise I'm long on future UK governments sticking to renewables targets.

Paris air pollution is down 50% after its radical bike-friendly transformation Cars have been banned from more than 100 streets. Tens of thousands of parking spots have been eliminated. Hundreds of miles of bike lanes have been added. And air pollution is plummeting

Ik vroeg me af waarom n ( nu 56) zo laag is. Maar op zich gunstig: men neemt ongeveer 20% steekproeven bij mensen die klachten melden zonder test. Er is 3,1% postief, dat is bijna 300. Dan eorden er ongeveer 60 geselecteerd om een test in te sturen.

It would be no surprise at all to see this year and next breach 1.5C - quite possibly by a significant margin - and never again drop back

My favorite Pratchett story was a piece of advice he gave at a talk I was at. His first career was in journalism, in which he said his Editor-in-Chief told him "all news needs a local angle" which is why his headline on July 21, 1969 was "Men Land on Moon Over High Wycombe"

Happy Pride Month. If you're a gay man, please remember your power. People often think that gay men are innately fashionable, which means if you wear some stupid shit for long enough, straight people, including homophobes, will copy you and then you can laugh at them.

The epidemiological influenza year has ended in Denmark, and for the second year in a row influenza deaths (680 in 2025/26) outnumbered Covid-19 deaths (314 in 2025/26). It may look like covid deaths are flattening out, but... 1/

📉 Wastewater numbers are currently incredibly low, about *7 times* lower than the spring lulls in years past. We're approaching flu-in-the-summer style prevalence.

One thing I wasn't expecting in Burgos was the street art. Lots of shops and garage doors had stunning artwork on.

Just arrived in Bilbao for the last leg of our holiday. I think I've probably put on a couple of kilos on holiday already, but having looked at the restaurants here I'm starting to wonder what's the most you could gain in 4 days. A kilo per day?

Good. I want every country to have successful drug development research programs. The more, the better. It's a sign of pathological xenophobia that one country's success in producing products to improve global public health is regarded here in the US as a grave danger.

Look, plantar fascitis sucks but I think this guy has bigger issues going on

I’m a climate scientist. Let me fix this headline. “Nearly a century ago, scientists showed that burning fossil fuels warms the planet. Today, we know human emissions account for over 100% of the warming. Yet dark money and disinformation still work to keep Americans addicted to fossil fuels.”

Hopefully it'll be covered in week 2 of the covid enquiry, but for me, the second wave is the biggest issue. By the end of the summer of 2020, we knew vaccines were coming, we knew how few people had been infected, how many had died, we were starting to get an idea about long covid incidence, ...

There would be swear words and "I'm going home" if I had to work in temperatures over 35°C - don't get me started on 53°C... www.bbc.com/news/article...

#LongCovid has not decreased from 2020-2024. Prevalence is 13-23% of US population, increasing 0.4%-1.5% every 3 months. Incidence was 10-29%, but began increasing in 2023. "These findings indicate an accumulating rather than resolving disease burden." jamanetwork.com/journals/jam...

Everyone should read this.

So use the state to provide insurance, by way of (progressive inheritance) tax on everyone: this means everyone covers the risk.

More painful stuff from the Dutch parliamentary enquiry into the handling of the pandemic - this time about facemasks. Apparently in April 2020 the employer's association for firms in the elderly care industry were arguing that facemasks were "proven to be useless" against covid.

TIL that some people get prescribed antibiotics for low back pain jamanetwork.com/journals/jam...