The California Department of Public Health respiratory virus prevention communication in 2025 feels like from a different strand of the multiverse.

The Covid epi presentation at the CDC ACIP meeting is interesting: Look at the high Covid burden of disease. The period is October 2024 - September 2025. I.e., the mildest Covid season since the pandemic started. A severe influenza season. The sane conclusion would be to vaccinate everybody.

Österreich hat ein tolles SARI-Dashboard, leider mit mühsam auszuwertendem .csv. Ich habe jetzt liebevoll die Zahlen von der Inzidenzfigur direkt abgeschrieben. Hier die SARI-Covid-Aufnahmen (entsprechen SARI-Diagnose im Endbericht nach Entlassung, vor Entlassung der Aufnahmediagnose).

Perth / WA, data until Sept 14: BA.3.2* continues to be present in the Perth metro area wastewater. Sustained community transmission at the local prevalence minimum. No new clinical samples since Aug 31. Don't make too much of the % differences between weeks. bsky.app/profile/domi...

Schätzung für Zürich aufgrund Kalibrierung der Abwasserprävalenzen Werdhölzli, Daten bis 14. September: Inzidenz ~1'300. Ca. jede 75. Person infiziert sich pro Woche. Läuft weiterhin parallel mit Österreich. bsky.app/profile/domi...

Wow, the sane try to save what's left to save of public health. bsky.app/profile/luck...

We had great talks at this year's Global Microbiome Network symposium. Many thanks to the speakers and our partners @microbiomevif.bsky.social! You can find the talks on our Youtube channel: www.youtube.com/playlist?lis...

Schätzung für die Schweizer aggregierten Abwasserprävalenzen aufgrund Kalibrierung der Abwasserprävalenzen Werdhölzli, Daten bis 14. September: Inzidenz ~1'200. Ca. jede 85. Person infiziert sich pro Woche. Von 4: 4↑, 0→, 0↓. Läuft weiterhin parallel mit Österreich. bsky.app/profile/domi...

The killing of Charlie Kirk is part of a grim pattern of political violence in America. This is what the data show econ.st/4nqZysO

Lugano geht steil. Daten bis 14.09. Sommerferien 2024: 14.06.24 - 01.09.24 Sommerferien 2025: 16.06.25 - 01.09.25

Singapore, data until week 36 2025. Flu wave continues. Lowest SARS2 positivity among ARI (2%) since I follow this (wk 9 2024).

Excess mortality (65+) in Switzerland in 2025, data until Sept 7. The August heat wave event remains stable in the less-extrapolated data. No effects of rising Covid prevalences discernible (yet). bsky.app/profile/domi...

I plotted the available RKI ARI/ILI and SARI data, including SARI Covid and SARI Influenza data. The ARI & ILI data are from RKI Grippeweb, the SARI data are from the RKI SARI sentinel (main diagnosis SARI and concomitant Covid or Influenza diagnosis).

"Die Veränderung der Welt durch Internetkultur betrifft mittlerweile nicht mehr nur Einzelersonen, die einfach mal Gras anfassen sollten. Internetkultur ist keine Nische mehr, die man wahlweise ignorieren oder als obskuren Quatsch verlachen kann..."

Perth / WA, data until Sept 7: BA.3.2* continues to be present in Perth metro area wastewater per Sept 7, at low absolute viral load, suggesting sustained community transmission. Also, per Aug 31, BA.3.2* made up about 40% of sequenced clinical specimens. www.health.wa.gov.au/Articles/F_I...

Interesting Linkedin profile

Another US doctors' group breaks with federal policy, recommends COVID-19 vaccines for all adults reut.rs/47ACvqS

🎉🎉🎉Shout out to Kaiser Permanente - they recently updated their website to say that they WILL be covering COVID-19 vaccines all of their members 6 months old and up!! 🎉🎉🎉🎉 Thank you KP - let's hope their announcement kicks off more like it kp.org/covidvaccine

The RKI IfSG hospitalisation data is available only from start 2023. Here are the respective case data from the former "klinische Aspekte" table converted to 7d incidence, light blue, until wk 22 2023. It perfectly overlaps. Confirms the massive downshift in relation to SARI data.

Schätzung für Zürich aufgrund Kalibrierung der Abwasserprävalenzen Werdhölzli, Daten bis 7. September: Inzidenz ~1'200. Ca. jede 85. Person infiziert sich pro Woche. Von 4 Anlagen mit Daten 2↑, 2→, 0↓. Läuft weiterhin parallel mit Österreich. bsky.app/profile/domi...

The German SARI data are interesting. Why is the summer 2024 SARI level 50-100% higher than the other summers? Why is SARI with influenza diagnosis overrepresented during the 2023/2024 winter wave? Compare to CH-SUR. Could it be that concomitant Covid diagnoses do under-occur?

There is a low quality of statistics reasoning in some widely shared critiques of the small number azelastine study. Like sensationalized and weird interpretations of the tipping point analysis w/o relating to *expected* numbers of infections among dropouts.

I looked at the RKI ICOSARI hospital sentinel data (github.com/robert-koch-...) and have some interesting results. Here the Covid all age group data calibrated to other metrics:

Hyperendemie: Beispielbild

Behold the limits of variant-only thinking: XFG* ("Stratus") everybody (in the West) connects to currently rising prevalences (in the West), rose very quickly and replaced NB.1.8.1* in Singapore. All the while the Covid wave ebbed out. bsky.app/profile/domi...

Singapore, data until week 35 2025. As evident last week: Influenza wave. Covid XFG* fraction continues to hover around 2/3 of specimens, at low absolute prevalence. The wave was over in week 31.

All of Russia's largest oil companies reported a collapse in profits for the first half of 2025, The Moscow Times writes.

One often reads "a couple of weeks" until a Covid (mRNA) vaccine affords protection. However, AB levels go to max quite fast with booster doses. www.nature.com/articles/s41... pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/39876790/

So I decided to take the histamine / #SARSCOV2 / #COVID19 literature for a ride after the astelazine nasal spray randomized trial that showed that application of the spray for 3 times a day may cut the risk of COVID19 PCR confirmed infection by 71% jamanetwork.com/journals/jam...

Study about healthcare consultations in Norway: "Deviations from expected pre-pandemic trends worsened dramatically from 2022, coinciding with the Norwegian government’s lifting of all COVID-19 preventative measures. Increases typically occurred 3–6 months after COVID-19 waves." What a surprise.

Thanks, that's great data! It was most present when incidences were lowest. So let's hope Perth is similar (and not adapted) and will fizzle out. bsky.app/profile/domi...

Anyone who asks in NL if you can translate the wastewater number to the number of infections is told: "No, the data is too noisy." Or something like that. But this data for Austria lines up better than most economic data do...

RKI Grippeweb in KW35 zum ersten Mal dieses Jahr bei 300.

Wastewater seq data until August 9, prevalence data until August 31. XFG* (beige) is almost completely dominant since end of July, in Switzerland. bsky.app/profile/domi...

BA.3.2 is again detected in the Perth wastewater (combined catchment size covers about 80% of the population), likely demonstrating local community transmission. bsky.app/profile/domi...

The next Global Microbiome Network symposium (GloMiNe 2025), dedicated to the preservation of microbial diversity, will be held in partnership with MVIF in September. You can register here: www.microbiome-vif.org/en-US/-/futu...

Schätzung für Zürich aufgrund Kalibrierung der Abwasserprävalenzen Werdhölzli, Daten bis 31. August: Inzidenz ~1'000. Ca. jede 100. Person infiziert sich pro Woche. Von 5 Anlagen mit Daten 3↑, 2→, 0↓. bsky.app/profile/domi...

Using summer median based long term mortality trends, a consistent picture emerges regarding the contributions of Covid and heat in the summers since 2022. In the linked thread I use results from the FOEN/FOPH monitoring of heat-related deaths, performed by Ragettli et al.

Excess mortality (65+) in Switzerland in 2025, data until August 24. The August heatwave event is clearly delineated. bsky.app/profile/domi... 1/3

So this was quite a pronounced heatwave peak. I will supply the the amended baseline data later. bsky.app/profile/domi...

I love looking at this graph, showing it to my students, and sharing it on social media, even though it unerringly brings out the trolls. This is the efficacy curve of Pfizer's mRNA COVID vaccine. This, people, is what ended the emergency phase of the COVID pandemic. Despite what RFK Jr says.

Covid in Singapore until week 34 2025. Currently needs to be called "influenza in Singapore". SARS2 positivity among ARI very low (4%), influenza positivity among ILI (23%) highest since Feb. Rising ARI cases will likely be due to influenza, not Covid.

The left scale is viral load, not cases. Incidence minima are likely around 100-250 infections per 100k in a week. I'd estimate a 7 d infection incidence of <500 at the right end of the curve. Don't know if the 15% BA.3.2 are from the same date, but that would be <75. 1/3 bsky.app/profile/mike...

Sommerzeit, Grippezeit. www.idlprocycling.com/cycling/viru...

Unschöne Abwasserdaten aus Perth: bsky.app/profile/mike...

Sanctions, drones, Nord Stream- how the war collapsed Russia’s oil and gas revenues As in any resource-dependent economy,the main source of replenishing the Russian treasury was revenues from the export of natural resources, primarily oil and gas⤵️

Fuck you auf wissenschaftlich, lmao www.cell.com/cell-reports...

Antivaxxers, ignoramuses and vulgarians are in the process of destroying the CDC. I have copies of the January 2025 vaccination schedule, as approved by ACIP in October 2024, and the respective MMWR publication, i.e. the status before things get altered.

Full resignation letter from Demetre C. Daskalakis, a CDC leader, does not hold back. "The recent shooting at CDC is not why I am resigning. My grandfather, who I am named after, stood up to fascist forces in Greece and lost his life doing so. I am resigning to make him and his legacy proud."