🧵 Thread.

As a Medical Microbiologist (now retired) trained and experienced in working with Biological Safety Level 3 (BSL 3) pathogens, such as Hanta virus, I would strongly disagree with the WHO in their recommendation that a medical mask is sufficient protection! Need N95 as minimum, N99 or PAPR better.

OK but what if you are hardly ever home because you had a prolonged and intense boarding of your flight?

"Tedros said people who were aboard the ship should monitor themselves for symptoms for six weeks, the outer limit of the hantavirus incubation period. They do not have to self-isolate unless they are symptomatic." A cunning plan.

All those “global health security” conferences were a joke. At the one I went to (‘25) w Van Kerkhove & DBH, there were 4 people in respirators (no, none of them were the “pandemic experts”) this probably isn’t it but we’re truly cooked for the next one when we won’t even deal with this one

Publ*c health’s main job has become to tell people “don’t panic” and “trust us” without doing much to make those things possible and it’s really sad. But they won’t do better because too many people put saving face (and “the economy”) over saving lives.

The condescension and incompetence after six plus years...

Still writing the book on IPC. Been through every single IPC guideline involving hands - I can find no evidence that handwashing / hand hygiene is the single most important way to prevent HAI. More soon.

Reposting for no reason in particular.

How do these people not lose their licenses?

Watching a really old episode of ER. Unconscious sick kid comes in. DR 1: looks like measles. DR 2: have you ever seen measles? DR 1: no. Who sees measles? The mother says she gave her son no vaccines. Dramatic music. Shocked look on the DRs faces. Man. Old episode…

We live in a time dominated by deeply unserious people making deeply unserious arguments in support of tragically serious results that serious people would have both avoided and known to avoid.

The condescension and incompetence after six plus years...

How to Stop an Epidemic: There are some answers in the past. In March 2003, one SARS patient showed up in a Vancouver emergency room and another went to a Toronto emergency room. But two very different sequences of events unfolded.

Dr. Lyne Filiatrault was working in the Vancouver ER that day. Her team leapt into action and prevented SARS from spreading at the hospital using the precautionary principle: waiting for scientific certainty is not necessary to implement protections to reasonable threats.

The most important part: the SARS Report says if there is one thing to take away from reading it - and it really hammers this over your head - take this: the precautionary principle. Essentially, better safe than sorry.

Dr. David Patrick, an epidemiologist who was interviewed for the SARS commission (and who also taught me Control of Communicable Diseases in grad school) said to them: ”It’s much easier to contain something that has never spread than it is to contain something once it’s off the ground”.

"Spanish passenger on the 'Hondius': 'There are 23 people who got off on Saint Helena and have been wandering around'" "Health authorities only began contacting the passengers who left the ship on Tuesday."

"trusty credentialed clown car of media favourites"

If you’re wondering why public health is a disaster, it’s because they are just making shit up.

“Droplet transmission” is a figment of the imagination of people from 100 years ago who did not understand aerosol chemistry and physics. All respiratory infections are transmitted by aerosols. Yes, it is really that simple. See my pinned post for a tutorial.

Prolonged + close contact is not a mode of transmission

It's frustrating to watch the denial of aerosol science & precautionary principle AGAIN. While this HV is not likely to spread widely, it is *not unlikely* that a couple 2° cases emerge, with high odds of tragic consequences. And, it shows something more transmissible will indeed be bungled again.

Yes ... and cruises don't need to be. We have the tools. We have the responsible professions (e.g., mech engineers, aerosol scientists) to use them. We need to stop deferring to public health officials WAY OUT OVER THEIR SKIS on this. This is a physical sciences problem, not a medical one.

TLDR: the document does not take into account airborne transmission via exhaled aerosols. It is like the Diamond Princess and six plus years of globally failing to control SARS-CoV-2 never even happened.

The hantavirus outbreak is, at minimum, a reminder that typological thinking doesn't work in biology. Variability and change are the signal, not noise. That's something public health really needs to learn. www.cbc.ca/news/health/...

@laurenpelley.bsky.social please note the importance of track record. Sources like Dr Van Kerkhove who participated in the "widespread failure" identified by the UK COVID Inquiry do not have any remaining credibility, which reflects badly on any story quoting them without addressing that. 🧵:

11/ To do this, governments incrementally removed - ▶️ access to COVID PCR tests; ▶️ mask mandates; ▶️ remote work options; ▶️ & now access to #COVID vaccines.

10/ It's odd how governments focused more on controlling the narrative of a pandemic, rather than actual infections.

9/ It's odd how much, in the Before Times, governments fretted about & invested in pandemic preparedness, & then ignored & denied an entire pandemic of an injurious #AirborneVirus, in plain sight for 6 years, all because votes...

5/ ❗️Only getting vaccinated after an infection has made you immunocompromised, makes about as much sense as people only wearing masks after they get sick. Which, because of egregious #PublicHealth messaging, happens all the time.

"Evacuating the two others suffering respiratory and gastrointestinal symptoms, one of them the ship’s doctor, is now top priority..." The. Ship's. Doctor. 🙎‍♀️. The. Ship's. Doctor. 🙎‍♀️. If only there was protective equipment and some field of science and a principle guiding its use 🤷‍♀️

I have no idea who is doing these but they are absolutely nailing it...

So recent research shows that the female reproductive system basically has its own nervous system, which is understudied to the point of absurdity, so I’m sure it’s cool that we’re just tearing chunks of it out and burning pieces of it off without pain meds.

Everyone who doesn't have a uterus needs to read this.

I think about this old WHO graphic from the start of the pandemic a lot - on the right-hand side they are debunking obvious misinfo. But on the left they counter with more misinfo. Public health institutions aren't immune to it Covid is spread through the air

Since the pinnacle of disease control is to drive something to be human endemic so it can be ignored, are we sure that hantavirus isn't endemic on cruise ships? 🙃

"These sites were first hit in early March, a few days after the U.S. started its bombing campaign on Iran. A few weeks after that, AWS Bahrain was hit once more, this time by drone strikes, further disrupting operations. The last reported strike happened in early April"

We have no screening, no testing, just denial.

1/ Tomorrow is World Press Freedom Day, & Reporters Without Borders ( #RSF) report that its World Press Freedom Index has hit a '25-year low,' with more than half of the world’s countries currently falling into the 'difficult' or 'very serious' categories": gijn.org/stories/2026...

And it’s still not a mistake… to be infecting people in hospitals. Now, it’s *by choice*. Sit and think on that one. We have the technology. We refuse to use it.

Nope. Not a mistake. A calculated strategy to cope with a lack of PPE is my most charitable interpretation… Letting rip, in that context, was utterly evil.

It will never not make me 😡 to know we can prevent 'seasonal' sickness AND DEATHS in children, but don't. Clean. The. Air. Ventilation + filtration (incl respie masks). Mid-term impact of COVID-19 NPIs on hospitalizations for severe asthma in children www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1...

Same logic behind curtailing covid testing and ending wastewater tracking. What gets measured gets managed, so no covid tracking means no covid right?

"The pandemic continues to pose a risk to workers. Indoor air quality, ventilation, & infection prevention are fundamental workplace safety issues. Yet the federal public service has largely failed to implement consistent standards for air quality monitoring, filtration, or transparent reporting..."

Great to hear from others who see the variety of issues surrounding this trial & potential for issues with similar ones. Rigour is always important, but esp when results are disseminated during a global public health crisis, potentially impacting the health and well-being of those who heed them.

"But this is not the real source of undesirable similarity. It’s the other 16 hours per day, and the significant likelihood that subjects in either group contracted Covid at home, at restaurants, and elsewhere."

When you are investigating a government in power, and you give them so much time that they can pass legislation effectively gutting the investigation you've been doing ... it's not an accident.

The obsession with hand washing whilst completely ignoring other routes of transmission of major pathogens is infuriating. Thought you were quite restrained.