“many public health programs are not collecting the data needed to show the [#COVID19] pandemic’s impact on poor and minority people.” Fantastic piece by @tsimonite in @WIRED on how inequality and racism also *cause* public health data bias in the US. wired.com/story/covid-hi…
As we demonstrated in our recent @PLOSCompBiol publication, these data biases further the inequality by obscuring those communities most in need and often hardest hit by epidemics.
However, when considering new public health surveillance systems designed to close these data gaps, we must also acknowledge and *address* the decades and decades of racism and violence that have *caused* so many communities to be at higher risk during epidemics. #racismnotrace
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2/ For those following #H5N1 in CA, there have been positive farms there since late Aug.
@globaldothealth we're working w/ @ThinkGlobalHlth and @CFR_org to maintain a timeline of key events. This tracking allows us to better piece together signals. thinkglobalhealth.org/article/timeli…
3/ I'm concerned about the H5 wastewater signal because it lags far behind the uptick in farms and is better correlated with the rapid rise in human infections. thinkglobalhealth.org/article/timeli…
2/ Milk is pasteurized by heating it briefly to ~72 C (161F). This inactivates pathogens, but does filter the milk. As a result, there can be degraded genomic material from pathogens following pasteurization. PCR, as was done by the FDA, can detect these degraded genomes.
3/ Numerous peer-reviewed studies have found that pasteurization will inactivate influenza A virus, including #H5N1. ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/P…
2/ As you may know, avian influenza doesn't readily infect humans (and doesn't transmit well from human-to-human) in part because of subtle differences in key cell surface receptors. journals.asm.org/doi/full/10.11…
3/ However, our eyes actually contain the bird-flu-friendly confirmation of the cell surface receptor. This is why eye inflammation is often a symptom of avian influenza infection in humans. thelancet.com/journals/lanin…
2/ Following a convening of @RockefellerFdn's Global Wastewater Action Group, we partnered w/ @MathematicaNow and surveyed representatives of wastewater monitoring programs in 43 countries (16 LMICs, 27 HICs) spanning six continents (when I said "all" I didn't count Antartica).
3/ In high-income countries, composite sampling at centralized treatment plants was most common, whereas grab sampling from surface waters, open drains, and pit latrines was more typical in low-income and middle-income countries.
1/ Data from @WastewaterSCAN shows that rates of SARS-CoV-2, RSV, and influenza have dropped precipitously from their winter peaks!
We still have a ways to go, but things are clearly headed in the right direction.
2/ Although for SARS-CoV-2 we've been hovering at peak levels for over a month and we need to see at least another month of continuously falling prevalence before we're back to more "baseline" levels.
3/ And note how *LONG* the RSV outbreak has been in the US.
We've been above 25% of the peak height for >3 months!