#CovidInKids Covid as Protective factor? Resilience? I thought resilience was a socio-cultural construct Precisely why I have reservations with evidence alone science, evidence constructed through statistical power @organicbotanic.bsky.social @elhopkins.bsky.social jamanetwork.com/journals/jam...

#Tuberculosis Malnutrition-known to be a risk factor for making TB symptomatic. But our recent experience using a case-control design saw that this & other known risk factors may actually be over exaggerated @organicbotanic.bsky.social @elhopkins.bsky.social @microlabdoc.bsky.social

#CovidInKid #CleanAirInSchools The mis-information that it doesn’t impact kids has been busted many times over, yet our effort to correct that is very limited or restricted @organicbotanic.bsky.social @elhopkins.bsky.social @drinfosec.bsky.social www.dimsumdaily.hk/hong-kong-re...

#CARCON #NeglectedTropicalDiseases #DogBite #OtherAnimalBite Come & join us as we explore the socio-cultural contextualisation of animal bite & the solutions there to @organicbotanic.bsky.social @elhopkins.bsky.social

#ClimateChange Is India witnessing it’s worst floods in the current century If we go by the situation in North & Northeast India, it may well be @organicbotanic.bsky.social

#Floods While climate science is the earliest to recognise “Outliers/extreme weather conditions” as critical, is it too late to prevent the impact of these? Have we moved so far ahead that preventing devastation is impossible? @elhopkins.bsky.social @organicbotanic.bsky.social

#Floods It continues to rain, it continues to flood www.youtube.com/live/iO356o9...

#Vaccination Show this to the those who say “vaccines are harmful” @organicbotanic.bsky.social @elhopkins.bsky.social @drinfosec.bsky.social www.bbc.com/news/article...

Covid-19 cases are rising nationwide in US fuelled by the Stratus variant, The CDC states that the national test +vty rate hit 9.9 % in the past week up 1.4 percent from last week. www.hindustantimes.com/world-news/u...

#Science It was never about “I” Unfortunately that is being challenged now @organicbotanic.bsky.social @brownecfm.bsky.social @drinfosec.bsky.social @microlabdoc.bsky.social

#ClimateChange India, the country that houses the most humans on this planet is expected to face twice as many heatwave days, 43% rise in extreme rainfall by 2030 @organicbotanic.bsky.social @elhopkins.bsky.social

#ClimateChange Extreme weather conditions r no more an outlier- the chances r higher now than before that they will happen every year @organicbotanic.bsky.social @elhopkins.bsky.social @njbbari3.bsky.social

#ClimateChange It is not just about rising temperatures or melting glaciers It is also about patterns/trends/prediction of rains, snow & sunshine Single-day rainfall for the month of August in nearly a century @organicbotanic.bsky.social www.greaterkashmir.com/latest-news/...

No one entity or person should have the powers to either own or destroy the collective knowledge of science @organicbotanic.bsky.social @elhopkins.bsky.social @njbbari3.bsky.social www.nature.com/articles/d41...

#Covid This infection is not just one-off event & we did underestimate it SARS-CoV-2 infection results in increased macrophage numbers & extensive formation of enlarged lipid-laden macrophages or foam cells @elhopkins.bsky.social @njbbari3.bsky.social www.nature.com/articles/s41...

No more the disease of poor & neglected @organicbotanic.bsky.social @elhopkins.bsky.social www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes...

#TB In very near future, public health resources will largely be directed towards reducing impact of drug resistance & #XDRTB will partake the largest share of these & yet the rewards will be far from satisfactory Time to act is now @organicbotanic.bsky.social @elhopkins.bsky.social

#TB Solutions r a product of Knowledge & Knowledge is widely distributed- in time, place & person At a given point in time #Community is the best representative of Knowledge & without it no knowledge ever existed @organicbotanic.bsky.social @elhopkins.bsky.social @njbbari3.bsky.social

#TB Finding Solutions Instead of asking “who is sick?” our solution asks “is transmission happening here?”—shifting the focus from individuals to locations where airborne spread occurs @elhopkins.bsky.social @njbbari3.bsky.social @drinfosec.bsky.social unpolitics.global/pubs/project...

Need more like him to help differentiate between Science & Propaganda www.nature.com/articles/d41...

#Covid is immune altering/damaging/dysregulating-Didn’t we know this before Hidden in the lungs of some breast cancer survivors r tumour cells that can remain dormant for decades- until they one day trigger a relapse @organicbotanic.bsky.social @elhopkins.bsky.social www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Remember Weakened Immune System is a risk factor for Legionnaires disease & there is no doubt that as individuals & as a “collective” we r living in an immune deficient state @organicbotanic.bsky.social @elhopkins.bsky.social @njbbari3.bsky.social www.local3news.com/local-news/e...

#TB Why solutions fail- Because people believe knowledge is uniformly distributed & confuse results obtained while dealing with variables as finite & unchangeable @organicbotanic.bsky.social @elhopkins.bsky.social @njbbari3.bsky.social

#TB It has for centuries been a health & Social issue only But now it is an environmental issue as well & with #MDRTB & #XDRTB, we can only imagine where it can go @organicbotanic.bsky.social @brownecfm.bsky.social @drinfosec.bsky.social @elhopkins.bsky.social @njbbari3.bsky.social

#TB I have said this before - we r dealing with a “ limited understanding of TB” TB will continue to have the most severe & long term impact on not just our health but our socio-cultural evolution as well @organicbotanic.bsky.social @elhopkins.bsky.social www.king5.com/article/news...

#Metformin And this is how the obituary of a cheap & safe drug is written url:https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/fullarticle/2836528?utm_source=bluesky&utm_campaign=content-shareicons&utm_content=article_engagement&utm_medium=social&utm_term=080525 @organicbotanic.bsky.social

#LongCovid Vulnerable suffer more irrespective of the disease Participants with social risk factors at the time of SARS-CoV-2 infection had greater risk for subsequent long COVID than those without @organicbotanic.bsky.social @elhopkins.bsky.social www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/...

#Polio Not over Pakistan: 3 WPV1 & 1 +ve environmental sample Côte d’Ivoire: 1 cVDPV & 2-+ve environmental sample Ethiopia: 1 cVDPV2 Nigeria: 5 cVDPV2 Papua New Guinea: 6 cVDPV & 2 +ve environmental samples Yemen: 43 cVDPV2 @organicbotanic.bsky.social polioeradication.org/about-polio/...

#TB Imagine having a cheap point-of-care self-administered tests for tuberculosis (TB) available with us which is sensitive enough to be useful (like we have for DM) @organicbotanic.bsky.social @elhopkins.bsky.social @njbbari3.bsky.social

#TB #TBTPT Why pause - we might be reaching a situation where our extreme efforts r pushing the disease spectrum towards #MDR & #XDR Tb TB treatment has almost 100% good outcomes MDR has around 50% & for XDR still worse @organicbotanic.bsky.social @elhopkins.bsky.social @njbbari3.bsky.social

#TB #MDRTB #XDRTB Probably we need to pause & reflect, why despite extreme efforts we r not able to make a significant change in TB situation & also pause interventions that have not been tested in real life situation- I fear we may aggravate the situation to no return @organicbotanic.bsky.social

#Tuberculosis Mycobacterium tuberculosis (MTB) exhibits significant genetic diversity in India,with various lineages & spoligotypes circulating throughout the country- different lineages exhibit different drug resistance profiles & transmission patterns @elhopkins.bsky.social @njbbari3.bsky.social

#Tuberculosis #CertificationIsNotElimination Applying 20th century public health logic to TB is illogical TB is not Smallpox & definitely not Polio TB is an airborne infection with huge stigma travelling freely in highly mobile world @organicbotanic.bsky.social @elhopkins.bsky.social

#Tuberculosis #CertificationIsNotElimination Imagine a situation, if TB is certified “Eliminated” & yet we continue to have a substantial pool of infected individual & Add to it TB is an airborne infection @organicbotanic.bsky.social @elhopkins.bsky.social @njbbari3.bsky.social

#CertificationIsNotElimination #TB #Leprosy India met the WHO criteria for leprosy elimination (< than 1 case per 10,000 population) at the national level in 2005 Cut to 2024: India reported a total of 107,851 new leprosy cases & importantly complicated cases @organicbotanic.bsky.social

#Tuberculosis The estimated pool of TB infection in community (upon which current strategies r based) is much smaller than the actual pool We continue to miss a lot of active cases @organicbotanic.bsky.social @brownecfm.bsky.social @drinfosec.bsky.social @microlabdoc.bsky.social

#Tuberculosis TB is a complex situation Solutions grounded in linear relationship will prove counterproductive- Probably why we r witnessing a large percentage of TB cases reported now belonging to non-vulnerable groups @organicbotanic.bsky.social @elhopkins.bsky.social @microlabdoc.bsky.social

#Tuberculosis Anyone who says that TB can be eliminated by using current strategies by 2030, is either plan lying or has not been on the ground A word of caution: Certification is not elimination & remember Leprosy @elhopkins.bsky.social @brownecfm.bsky.social @microlabdoc.bsky.social

What makes Science Great- Funding or Intent I believe without curiosity, science is not science

A day full of rains today, an evening filled with beauty & nature - a view from my window at 7:10 pm

#Pigeons Day 5

#PublicHealth For last 3 days we have been debating on “how to reclaim public health” We need to shift it from Service Delivery to structural determinants aspect & the best way to do that is to make it a part of public life @organicbotanic.bsky.social @elhopkins.bsky.social @njbbari3.bsky.social

#ClimateChange The moral-ethical dilemma @organicbotanic.bsky.social @elhopkins.bsky.social

#VaccinatingKids Are we entering an era where vaccinating kids will cease to be a public health priority @organicbotanic.bsky.social @elhopkins.bsky.social @drinfosec.bsky.social @njbbari3.bsky.social @brownecfm.bsky.social

#PublicHealth Our tendencies to identify “Risk” as the foundation to deliver public health is largely driven by the idea of medicalisation of Public Health Reclaiming Structural Determinants of Public Health is necessary @organicbotanic.bsky.social @elhopkins.bsky.social @njbbari3.bsky.social

#Tuberculosis If u want to sustain reduction in TB cases, Public Health has to be the default setting in all situations- Geographic, racial, gender or risk groups Selective public health won’t help @organicbotanic.bsky.social @elhopkins.bsky.social journals.plos.org/globalpublic...

As Collaborator on this paper, I realised that more children continue to miss key vaccines @organicbotanic.bsky.social @njbbari3.bsky.social @elhopkins.bsky.social www.thelancet.com/journals/lan...

#Tuberculosis For those who think we r at a stage where we can end TB need to have a relook TB has outlived many of our generations & for a reason- the very nature of it’s transmission is vastly misrepresented @organicbotanic.bsky.social @elhopkins.bsky.social academic.oup.com/ofid/article...

#Pigeon If it (life) has to, it will begin in the strangest of places I reached back after a month & saw this in my balcony The second one comes into this world @organicbotanic.bsky.social @njbbari3.bsky.social