I’m fighting for a country where we can just grieve when our heroes die. Where compassion, empathy, and knowledge are valued over greed, power, and ambition.
Make no mistake, it’s the same leaders who perpetuate the grief of families, friends, and communities every time a police officer murders a person of color.
And it’s the same leaders who— through incompetence, arrogance, and anti-science—*let* COVID-19 cause so much grief and prevent us from safely mourning together, for those murdered by police, that die during this pandemic, and for one of the great heroes of our democracy, RBG.
The stakes are just as high as they’ve always been. For those of you just realizing this now, welcome to the fight. It’s going to take all of us.
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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!