Sept 28th update: Wastewater daily inf estimate are cratering, just as anticipated via the model. This trend should continue for at least the next month. 🔸510,000 new infections/day 🔸1 in 66 currently infected 🔸1 in 165 highly infectious

I heard somewhere recently that if you want your child to excel in math and science, all you have to do is pop a bunch of Tylenol? Big if true

Get ready for late October! Comet "Lemmon" is forecasted to reach an apparent magnitude of 5 to 2, which suggests it could be brighter than last year's comet! And it's green! This is due to the presence of a molecule you'll never find on earth: C2 (diatomic carbon)

Happy Pythagoras day to all you nerds! (9/16/25) 3^2 + 4^2 = 5^2

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Sept 12th update: Wastewater daily inf estimate increased to 600k this week. Positivity and ED data have both peaked and begun to retreat, and I expect wastewater will soon follow. 🔸600,000 new infections/day 🔸1 in 55 currently infected 🔸1 in 140 infectious out of household

The CDC quietly neutered the best Covid data on the planet yesterday. ED data visualization has been stripped of age stratification, and state-by-state trends. ED data has been far better for state by state trends than WW. Poof.

Sept 5th update: Wastewater data is trending reasonably closely to the Aug 1st model, which predicts a peak this week. High levels in the south/wetst, but it's the smallest wave since 2020. 🔸480,000 new infections/day 🔸1 in 70 currently infected 🔸1 in 180 infectious out of household

A fascinating new preprint w/one very unexpected finding suggests, I believe, that a large proportion of Long Covid may be due to chronic infection in a particular bodily niche, which could be crucial for finding effective LC treatments. It requires some explaining. 🧵 1/33

Awe, I always really appreciate these kinds of responses. I'm glad to help (for free) and I'll continue doing what I'm doing as long as people find value in it

It's hard to say for sure with the holiday weekend interruption, but we might be close to the peak for the summer. Let's see if Friday's data confirms the slowdown. For comparison, last summer peaked at 2.6%. A peak this week would match my forecast on both timing+intensity.

Terrible luck so far on this CME, with the magnetic orientation almost fully pointing the wrong way. We want this in the red, not green. Maybe It'll turn around, but I'm a lot less hopeful. That'd be two in a row with everything lining up but poor mag orientation.

Direct hit! We have a good chance of some northern lights tonight across the northern US, especially given we are close to the equinox (improves magnetic connection with the plasma) Protons are already rising ahead of the storm... now we just need Bz (field orientation) to cooperate!

The XFG vs NB.1.8.1 blunder by the CDC isn't of a lot of consequence. Here's an example of a very consequential blunder: How does one miss forecasting the Omicron tsunami only days in advance? Our models were seeing it weeks earlier. (Note: CDC is in cases/wk vs ours in cases/day)

Not keeping score here, but add another tally to Weiland vs CDC for accuracy. They finally fixed their variant proportions today to reflect what I've been saying for 2 months. ❌️CDC ✅️Weiland 😄

🧵 on awesome 🥼🔭 My favorite new scientific tool to observe the universe does what no other telescope can. It *LISTENS TO THE SOUNDS OF THE UNIVERSE* LIGO, (Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory) are 8km long L shaped detectors that measures mirror length change to 1/10,000 of a proton

It'll always be interesting to me that you can tell exactly when school starts up.

The funniest things about painting the walls black is that a) Dark iron has one of the highest temperatures in sunlight and b) Black paint will actually feel cooler because of a much lower *heat transfer coefficient*

Aug 22nd Update: WW having technical issues, but I can fill in the gap reasonably with ED data. South and West are ~60% higher than other regions, all regions increasing. 🔸️430,000 new infections/day 🔸️1 in 77 currently infected 🔸️1 in 190 infectious out of household

#Erin has a really strange setup at the moment, with Category 2 Hurricane wind speeds at the outer bands and only tropical storm winds near the core.

Incidence of Covid is increasing throughout the country, though at lower levels than past summers. Happy to have my work referenced by @huffpost.com I'll add that while the model suggests a peak near the start of Sept, late August is also plausible. www.huffpost.com/entry/covid-...

What the heck just happened with the CDC's wastewater calibration⁉️ They just remade it and now it makes no sense. Their previous calibration matched ED data well (as usual), but as of today the winter wave looks like a jumbled bunch of nonsense. Unreal. Crude estimate of 370k infections a day

I don't see any variants growing at any significant speed behind XFG, which is good news for the early fall. ➡️XFG leads the pack and is still growing up to ~60-65% of US domestic seqs of late July, where NB.1.8.1 stayed relatively stable between 10-15%.

It follows the now apparently standard trend of an increase in 0-11 year olds, and will impact the teenage groups harder in the coming weeks as school returns.

Summer wave is accelerating, as seen here in the ED data:

Aug 1st Update + Forecast 📈 Wastewater jumped this week, and is now increasing in most locations. Current model forecast suggests a peak in early Sept at around 500-600k. This would imply a step down from last summer. 🔸️290k daily infections 🔸️1:280 currently infectious

July 19th update: An upswing in the wastewater is apparent in the new data. This is mainly being driven by about a dozen states (next post), while the remainder are still low&flat. 🔸209,000 new infections/day 🔸~1 in 160 currently infected 🔸~1 in 400 are reasonably infectious

Many simple-minded love conspiracy theories, as it makes them "feel" smarter than those who are actually intelligent. They think they know important things all the smart people don't. It's a coping mechanism.. Napoleon syndrome of the mind.

I'm honestly more offended that they were this into Coldplay

Florida is seeing the largest increases in transmission of any state right now. Almost 3x higher than any time in the past 9 months. Other southern and west coast states are rising too but not as quickly. Everywhere else is staying low+flat.

We're now at the part in the Idiocracy documentary where people destroy weather radars because they think radars create the weather. Can we just fast forward to watering crops with Gatorade because "it's what plants crave"? www.news9.com/story/686c14...

Based on national positivity rates, ED, and the wastewater forecast, it looks like we are at the lowest transmission on a July 4th holiday since 2021

Current modeled prevalence estimates for growing variants in the US: XFG: ~42% NB.1.8.1: ~15%

I agree with @erictopol.bsky.social here that the data looks promising. Very likely a better summer than last year and a decent chance infections remain lower than any of summers since 2020. Some of the southern and western states are still expected to see waves, considering the immune..

June 27th update: A bit of a surprise low post from NWSS, recording what looks to be the lowest wastewater levels since March 2022. XFG growth estimate reduced from 62➡️48% per week 🔸148,000 new infections/day 🔸~1 in 225 currently infected 🔸~1 in 560 are reasonably infectious

Throwback to my first two tweets (March 7, 2020) with only 1 like

I don't know what the CDC is up to these days, but this variant proportions chart is *really* inaccurate. Here is the the reality: 🔹XFG currently has a higher proportion than NB.1.8.1 🔹XFG is growing faster 🔹NB.1.8.1 was nowhere close to 37% on June 1st (maybe 4-10%?)

Can the world slow down a minute

June 20th update: Slight uptick this week, as XFG and NB.1.8.1 grow. Still at low/very low levels across the US, but that is expected to change in the next month, especially in the South and West. 🔸169,000 new infections/day 🔸~1 in 200 currently infected 🔸~1 in 500 are reasonably infectious

No evidence exists that "Razor blade throat", also known as a bad sore throat, is any more common with new variants vs all the others. It's also a common symptom in many other viral and bacterial infections such as strep. Silliest kind of click-bait

That parade yesterday was something else. It looked like hundreds of people from across the country came to attend.

Covid deaths and %ED visits are currently the lowest on record in the US. 8 month running wastewater totals (infections) are the lowest since 2021. Not a bad place to be relative to where we've been, if you ask me.

June 13th update: Wastewater dipped a bit this week, and NWSS corrected down last week. About tied for lowest in 3 years, though a summer wave is still anticipated. 🔸153,000 new infections/day 🔸~1 in 219 currently infected 🔸~1 in 545 are reasonably infectious

Can the world slow down a minute

With a larger and more complete data set through spring 2025thaf includes flu, we can see the excess caused by Covid last summer and Flu+Covid last winter. Modeling out Covid and flu, I arrive at 62,000 Covid deaths in the past 12 months, vs 36,000 recorded.

Yunlong Cao and his team one again knocked it out of the park. This lab study shows: ➡️XFG has good immune evasion, poor ACE binding ➡️NB.1.8.1 has weaker immune evasion but better binding Very interesting set we have here.

Jonathan Toews, former star Blackhawks player left the NHL almost 3 years ago due to Long Covid that he's suffered from since 2020. He's now looking at a return to hockey. Very happy for him! www.cbssports.com/nhl/news/jon...

Roughly plotting XFG and "Nimbus" contribution in New York City shows the start of an effect, right around 50% prevalence as anticipated

June 6th update: A slight uptick this week. This is probably the lowest it'll be nationally for a few months, as XFG and "Nimbus" are forecasted to drive a summer wave. 🔸167,000 new infections/day 🔸~1 in 201 currently infected 🔸~1 in 502 are reasonably infectious

My May 20th model suggests we're right now at about the lowest numbers that we'll see for the next few months. ED data appears to agree, I think.