Mountain climber with LC "I want to share everything I can with others about my story. If there were a fairy that said "30/100 of the M&Ms in that bag are shit pebbles" I wouldn't have even stuck my hand in the bag. I'm the fairy. Avoid COVID. "

When it comes to vaccines, the words "safe", "immunity" and "prevent" have caused incredible confusion and sparked endless debates. @kmpanthagani.bsky.social 's recent article does a great job explaining how misunderstandings arise. Recommended! www.youcanknowthings.com/when-work-do...

RFK uses many of the same rhetorical tricks over and over again. It’s tempting to play whack-a-mole with every rumor, but research shows a better (and less exhausting) method: “prebunking” — or teaching people to recognize the patterns used to sell falsehoods. Today's post does just that 👇🏽

Australia: "Most flu deaths this century were recorded in 2025, ABS finds" Last Year (2025): 🔹COVID-19: ~2,161 deaths 🔹Influenza: ~1,701 deaths 🔹RSV: ~582 deaths

Surprisingly comprehensive article on recent research in Nordic countries showing health impacts of COVID-19 on cognitive problems, health care utilization, and rates of depression. www.sciencenorway.no/covid19-long...

www.cidara.com Cidara Therapeutics is currently in a Phase 3 trial of a long-acting anti-viral against all strains of influenza. In earlier human testing (n=5,000), the preventive medication was 76% effective with a single 450 mg sub-cutaneous dose.

GOOD NEWS! Researchers have shown Alzheimer’s disease can be REVERSED- not just prevented. Using a potent neuroprotective compound called P7C3-A20, they found RESTORING balance to a central cellular energy molecule (NAD+) not only PREVENTED disease features but REVERSED them, EVEN at late stages.

open.substack.com/pub/pauloffi... What do you do if someone offers you $1 million dollars to debate vaccine safety?

There is a new HHS web page about Lyme. www.hhs.gov/lyme/index.h...

Is COVID "mild"? In a study of 9,000 people who had COVID in 2024, COVID was so "mild" that 24-26% of people had at least one symptom lasting 84 days (fatigue, shortness of breath/respiratory distress, cough, or smell/taste disorder) that they don't have prior. www.shionogi.com/global/en/ne...

Shionogi press release: An observational study found a reduction in incidence of post-COVID condition (PCC) in those who took anti-virals (26% versus 24%). PCC defined as persistence of any of 5 specified symptoms on both days 28 & 84. www.shionogi.com/global/en/ne...

A nice summary article on remission/cures of autoimmune disease in these initial small trials. It seems like various ways of depleting B cells are all working. The article mentions teclistamab, which I was not familiar with. www.medpagetoday.com/rheumatology...

This seems like a significant breakthrough in understanding lupus pathogenesis. It connects EBV infection to the disease. Stanford has licensed the technology to a startup, EBVio Inc, founded by the scientists. med.stanford.edu/news/all-new...

Our randomized, placebo-controlled trial of tirzepatide (Zepbound) for #LongCovid has already enrolled 500 participants of 1000 planned in less than 2 weeks! longcovid.scripps.edu/locitt-t/

October 27, 2027 -- FlowFlex introduced first US-approved RSV+Flu+COVID home test. Product is made in their new San Diego, CA facility. Press release: www.aconlabs.com/acon-laborat... @danielgriffinmdphd.bsky.social

Healio: 'Antivirals reduce long COVID incidence at 90 days in patients with rheumatic diseases' www.healio.com/news/rheumat...

The rate of motor vehicle fatalities has return to pre-pandemic rates. www.nhtsa.gov/press-releas...

Wow. Incidence rate (IR) of POTS (Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome) over time. IR was 1.42 per 1 million person-years before COVID and 20.3 cases per 1 million person-years after COVID began.

I think this might be the first head-to-head trial of Paxlovid versus Xocova (Ensitrelvir). Seems randomized but open-label. They find faster viral clearance with Paxlovid. Similar viral rebound rates (7% versus 5%). www.thelancet.com/journals/lan...

Health-related absences from work are still elevated compared to pre-pandemic. There is an association between SARS-CoV-2 wastewater levels and absences from work. jamanetwork.com/journals/jam...

President Trump got flu and COVID-19 vaccines today. x.com/kaitlancolli...

Can’t stop staring at the prevalence of hypertension among young people. www.ahajournals.org/doi/epub/10....

Invivyd announces FDA clearance for new Phase 3 clinical trials for intramuscular monoclonals for prevention of COVID. investors.invivyd.com/news-release...

Percent of hospital and ICU beds occupied by RSV, Flu, and COVID patients remains the same as 2 weeks ago, except for COVID, where hospital beds decreased by 0.1%. There is also a new graph of new hospital admissions by virus. www.cdc.gov/nhsn/psc/hos...

CDC seems to think 3x to 4x more Flu illnesses than COVID ? This was the first season CDC attempted to make in-season estimates of disease burden of the "big 3" RSV, Flu, and COVID. RSV and Flu updates went through May, but COVID estimates continued all year. www.cdc.gov/covid/php/su...

Study of vaccine effectiveness against Long COVID finds rates of Long Covid (self-reported symptoms persisting >12 weeks) of ~10-20% after first infection and ~10% of re-infections. pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/41021660/

Deaths involving COVID-19 in preceding 52 weeks Rolling 52-week cumulative deaths dropped below 100,000 for the first time the week of December 21, 2024. 52 weeks preceding 9/20/2025 had 60,891 COVD deaths. Source: National Center for Health Statistics data.cdc.gov/National-Cen...

Science is how we learn new things. Like a treatment for a disease that has never been treatable in all human history. www.bbc.com/news/article...

For the first time in 5 years, COVID-19 is not among the Top 15 leading causes of death. Here is 2024 (whole year) versus 2025 (partial year). This is the CDC wonder query link that will run the Top 15 leading causes of death query with up-to-date provisional data. wonder.cdc.gov/controller/s...

Hospital bed occupancy did not change this week for any of the three monitored illnesses (COVID-19, Influenza, and RSV). A leveling-off/peak is probably occurring. www.cdc.gov/nhsn/psc/hos...

The 2024 BRFSS questionnaire removed questions about COVID & Long COVID. BRFSS is a large (>200K) live telephone survey about health and health conditions. I am not aware of any recurring survey measuring self-reported Long COVID any more. www.cdc.gov/brfss/annual...

Chronic illness can be caused by breathing contaminants in airplane cabin air. (Professor Marr made this a gift link so all can read.)

UAB: “SARS-CoV-2 drives lung foam cell formation linked to long-COVID damage, study finds” “Approximately 15 million to 20 million Americans who have acquired COVID-19 experience persistent symptoms lasting over three months, known as long COVID” www.uab.edu/news/researc...

In 2023, there were 770 traffic fatalities in children <=14 years in the USA. crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/V...

ICU bed occupancy for COVID increased 0.1% in the last week. Hospital bed occupancy increased 0.2%. This level of COVID hospitalization was last seen March 1, 2025. Flu and RSV were unchanged from previous week. www.cdc.gov/respiratory-...

Covid has killed ~5-6x the number of people this year as those who died in 9-11. Both are heartbreaking, ❤️‍🩹 but only one is grieved publicly. The other is barely noticed & declared over

If the same thing happened in the USA, I wonder if we would be as quick and efficient as the National Biomedical Research Institute (INRB) of the Democratic Republic of the Congo was in releasing this detailed information about a new ebola spillover.

ICU bed occupancy for COVID increased 0.2% in the last week. Hospital bed occupancy increased 0.1%. Flu and RSV were unchanged from previous week. www.cdc.gov/nhsn/psc/hos...

BLS tracts disability in the workforce overall but also in subpopulations. I think the women with disability graph might show the most devastating increase. Graphs for all populations: fred.stlouisfed.org/tags/series?...

COVID inpatient hospital bed occupancy was up slightly to 0.9%. RSV & Influenza are 0.0% and 0.1%. www.cdc.gov/nhsn/psc/hos...

On the marked age differences for susceptibility to Covid, the role of interferon rewiring www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

"The CARTESIAN study makes the case that COVID-19 has aged our arteries, especially for female adults."

ACTIV-6 trial: 14-days of metformin didn't significantly reduce self-reported or doctor-diagnosed risk of Long COVID at 90-, 120-, or 180-days. The 2,983 subjects had outpatient COVID from September 2023 to May 2024. (table reformatted for readability) www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1...

Unfounded Speculation: Sometimes rhinovirus/enterovirus and SARS-CoV-2 have moved in opposite directions. When rhino/entero increases, SARS-CoV-2 decreases, and vice versa. Rhino/entero just started an uptrend. Does that suggest SARS-CoV-2 will peak soon? syndromictrends.com

After reaching a low of 0.4% in June 14 to July 5, the % of hospital beds occupied by patients with COVID-19 has increased to 0.6% on Aug 2. Flu is at 0.1% and RSV at 0.0%. www.cdc.gov/nhsn/psc/hos...

Portable air cleaner lowered blood pressure for those living near highways!

DecodeME: “X marks the spot where ME/CFS biology can be discovered” “DecodeME looked at the DNA of 15,579 people with an ME/CFS diagnosis…the analysis revealed eight genetic ‘signals’ for ME/CFS from the nine million variants studied” #DecodeME www.decodeme.org.uk/x-marks-the-...

open.substack.com/pub/pauloffi... RFK Jr.'s wants to eliminate vaccines. Here is how he will do it.

Small study finds significant benefit to Larazotide in treating MIS-C in children. Although only 12 subjects were enrolled, it was a double-blind, placebo-controlled random trial.

Fascinating. An Australian research group may have found out the key difference in Omicron that resulted in less deep lung pathology. They find difference in how the virus enters cells.