“But while the need for better tests has been clear for years, there has been little investment to develop them because there is no high-income market, said Sonjelle Shilton, who works [] for the aid group Doctors Without Borders.” Great story on Ebola diagnostics in current outbreak 🧪 #giftlink

🎉 This year, we’re celebrating 125 years of Epidemiology & Infection! 🏛️🔬 Curious to know why the journal has endured for more than a century? 🎥 Watch our anniversary video to find out: 👉 https://cup.org/48DCdiD

On the year's hottest day, a thread on why this infographic misleads (1/n)

The Proximal Origin of the MV Hondius Andes virus outbreak. virological.org/t/potential-...

There's been some high profile criticism of test-negative method for vaccine effectiveness, as well as counter-criticism. Yet remarkably little in media saying what the method actually does, why it's useful, what the limitations are, and how we can improve it. Great that John Drake wrote this:

Someone brought up variable naming and it reminded me of how much fun I had writing this blog post #rstats #databs benharrap.com/post/2025-03...

We do not currently have a vaccine for Bundibugyo ebolavirus. BUT! There are vaccine candidates that have ben tested in animals and could go forward more quickly to human trials. Eg VesiculoVax doi.org/10.1093/infd... and another VSV-based vaccine journals.plos.org/plosntds/art...

A Canadian passenger from the cruise ship Hondius has likely tested positive for hantavirus, a health official told CBC. The patient, with mild symptoms, was hospitalized and is currently in stable condition. Again, this concerns a passenger.

How have UK social contact patterns changed post-pandemic? How assortative are they by age, ethnicity, and socioeconomic status? Pleased to share our new @plosmedicine.org paper, jointly led by @lucygoodfellow.bsky.social and myself, with @kevinvzandvoort.bsky.social and John Edmunds. #IDSky

A great Perspective piece from @joelmossong.bsky.social on the evolution of social contact surveys, from the POLYMOD study he led in 2008 (which became the template for all others), to CoMix during the pandemic, and now on to Reconnect: journals.plos.org/plosmedicine...

Bringing some of my thoughts together. And explaining why hantavirus is emphatically not COVID news.harvard.edu/gazette/stor...

"WHO’s assessment continues to be that the risk to health globally is low. So far, 11 cases have been reported, including 3 deaths. All 11 cases are among passengers or crew on the ship. 9 of the 11 have been confirmed as Andes virus, and the other two are probable", says @drtedros.who.int.

Join our live update on #hantavirus with Olivier Le Polain, Unit Head, Epidemiology & Analytics for Response, TODAY at 17.00 CEST [GMT+2] It will be livestreamed on WHO's X, Facebook, LinkedIn and YouTube

🔴 La passagère française symptomatique et rapatriée hier est positive à l'#hantavirus, annonce Stéphanie Rist sur France Inter. Son état de santé "s'est dégradé" dans la nuit, elle est hospitalisée à Bichat.

After 15 years of reporting on infectious disease outbreaks, what continues to fascinate me about them is the challenge of making high-stakes decisions under uncertainty. The hantavirus outbreak on the MV Hondius is a perfect example My story in @science.org is here (and a thread to come): 🧪 #IDsky

I am hosting a media briefing on #hantavirus today at 15:00h CEST. You can join and watch via @who.int and my social media channels across X, Facebook, LinkedIn and YouTube.

I've spent yesterday and today talking to researchers across the globe trying to understand the hantavirus outbreak aboard the cruise ship MV Hondius. My story in @science.org is here (and some threaded thoughts coming): www.science.org/content/arti... 🧪 #IDsky

Updates on the hantavirus situation from WHO (which we, beyond belief, are no longer part of). Seven suspected cases, three deaths. Case 1 boarded Apr 1, got sick Apr 6, died Apr 11. Likely Andes virus, given Argentina link. Consistent with infection before boarding. www.who.int/emergencies/...

The hantavirus outbreak is a stress test for WHO's IHR. Cape Verde should allow disembarkation if it has capacity The IHR requires a risk assessment, and there is no risk to the local pop. This happened during COVID & it's why the IHR were amended. We haven't learned our lesson

Not much information regarding lab results yet. I guess they meant pan-hantavirus PCR positive, rather than hantavirus positive.

demoscapes.org is a visual atlas of demographic surfaces hosted at @mpidr.bsky.social. It is also my passion project growing out of my 2016 human mortality database explorer. Did you publish something containing Lexis surfaces? Consider reaching out and having your work featured on the site.

Similar to what happened in Europe: no #Covid19 summer wave in 2025, but not any winter epidemic 2025/26 either. Flu levels were also lower than previous season. erviss.org A major wave only to be expected if new variant with large number of mutations were to appear. Not on the horizon yet.

Only a rise from $100 to $600 is a 500% rise, not a 600% rise. And when you drop the price back down from $600 to $100 that’s not a 600% reduction, that’s an 83.3% reduction.

Avoiding infections is good But some simply cannot be avoided - multiple exposures over the life course are inevitable In which case, when is the best time to get infected for the first time? 🤔

(Potentially) unpopular opinion. Too long for BlueSky so please read on Substack. jdrakephd.substack.com/p/in-praise-...

@forbes.com picking up the recent work by @carlbergstrom.com & Kevin Gross in @plosbiology.org on the future of peer review. www.forbes.com/sites/johndr...

This is a remarkable study. A simple sanitary pad could transform cervical cancer screening. Researchers enrolled 3,000+ women (age 20–54) & compared 2 approaches: Standard clinician-collected cervical HPV test HPV testing from menstrual blood collected on a sanitary pad www.bmj.com/content/392/...

Great reminder why we need conferences.

Every year I get to 're-live' the pandemic thanks to FB memories. Re-examining my posts with increasing time is always interesting. This one though - this one never fails to send a shiver down my spine. When do make a post like this? When are you sure enough? What if you regret it?

COMP360 could be the first psilocybin-based medicine to win approval. www.statnews.com/2026/02/17/c...

The battle to save South America’s skull-crushing big cat www.economist.com/the-americas... From The Economist

Five years after the rollout of Covid-19 vaccines started, it seems the mystery of why the Astra-Zeneca and J&J vaccines led to a rare but deadly side effect of unusual blood clots and bleeding has finally been solved. 
 It's a fascinating case of molecular mimicry that may help make vaccine safer.🧪

Reassuring to see no difference in clinical illness between clade Ib and IIb cases in the same population.

Indicating ongoing local transmission: between Oct-Nov 2025, 8 people were diagnosed with #mpox caused by infection with monkeypox virus (MPXV) clade Ib in the Netherlands - with now multiple #MPXV clades co-circulating in #Europe #IDsky #EpiSky #MedSky #MicroSky #STISky 🛟🧪 @flahless.bsky.social

People who oppose #vaccines often claim that doctors push them because they're paid to by Pharma or that vaccine administration is a big revenue source for doctors. The reality: Delivering vaccine puts an economic strain on many pediatric practices. www.statnews.com/2026/01/29/p...

AI weather models are helping make forecasts more accurate for longer ranges than meteorologists have long thought possible.

First evidence in Europe of highly pathogenic avian influenza virus H5N1 infection in a dairy cow. Antibodies against H5N1 detected in a cow with mastitis and respiratory signs on a Dutch dairy farm at the end of December. A cat on that farm had died from H5N1. www.tweedekamer.nl/downloads/do...

Aluminum adjuvants in vaccines. Finally an NYT article that doesn’t try to spin a “both sides” narrative. This is one of the most studied ingredients in vaccines, and they have a terrific safety record in all species (except cats). Great #OneHealth trivia—adjuvants were invented by a vet! 1/7

*New paper in Nature Health* Why did the 2022 mpox outbreak in Paris decline so abruptly? rdcu.be/eZ24H

She was absolutely right. And she would have been an amazing President.

The Carney speech is worth reading in full: globalnews.ca/news/1162087...

Longer version with more detail: www.npr.org/sections/kru...

We've got ISSUES. Literally. We scraped >100k special issues & over 1 million articles to bring you a PISS-poor paper. We quantify just how many excess papers are published by guest editors abusing special issues to boost their CVs. How bad is it & what can we do? arxiv.org/abs/2601.07563 A 🧵 1/n

I just finished a three-year term as an editor at an international relations journal. I began at the start of the LLM era but ended right in the middle of it. Our volume of submissions tripled and our desk reject rate rose to 75%. I have some thoughts. open.substack.com/pub/hegemon/...

Want to get the data out of a PDF figure? As in, the actual data – not a rough trace-along-the-lines version? I made an app you might like: adamkucharski.github.io/pdf2plot/ It all started a few years ago... 🧵

Please stop calling the circulating sub-clade K strain of H3N2 a "super flu". It is a strain that drifted through a normal evolutionary process from the strains included in this year's vaccine. It means we are seeing more cases of flu and the vaccine may not work as well in preventing infections.

Why are virologists thinking and talking about this year's strain of influenza? We are dealing with a version of H3N2 that is unusual compared to what we might expect year on year. At the same time, it is not as unusual as, say, a novel pandemic strain, far from it.

🧵 Is it a super flu year? Who knows, but I think the current reporting is stupid. A pissed off thread using data. Firstly - here are today's headlines and some from the last 3 years... spot the difference. 1/10