It makes a lot of good points about what data is needed to improve models that can guide exit strategies and has a good short discussion on herd immunity and incl. three challenges for even determining the herd immunity threshold:
1. “most of the quantities for calculating the threshold are not known precisely”, for instance how common immunity is or how long it lasts 2. even the value for R0 needs to be refined 3. Disease clustering lowers threshold but to know how much, more info on transmission needed
Also:
"reaching the herd immunity threshold does not mean that the epidemic is over or that there is no risk of further infections. Great care must be taken in communicating this concept to the public to ensure continued adherence to public health measures."
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
Stat’s @HelenBranswell talking about covid vaccine messaging and „The curse of the 95%“ now at @ESCMID #ECCMID2024
Many scientists realized that expectations for a vaccine that is injected into the arm to prevent a respiratory infection were too high, she says, but the public was not prepared for this…
The comparison with flu is interesting, says @HelenBranswell: Not only was the model ignored in communicating about the covid19 vaccines but in the end the things that people in the US accept about flu vaccines are not accepted for covid19 vaccines… #ECCMID2024
So sad to hear that Paul Alexander passed yesterday at age 78 from Covid-19. Paul contracted polio in 1952, when he was just six years old. He ended up in an iron lung and while he could live outside it for extended periods of time he never really left it.
Two years ago my colleagues and I talked to Paul for a few polio episodes of our @pandemiapodcast.
Paul told us about the full life he lived, about the horror of the disease, about studying law and practicing as a lawyer, writing a book and much more.
@pandemiapodcast At the time we put out a special episode just with the interview. (There is a German intro til about 8:00. then you can hear the full interview in English though he can be hard to understand over the sound of the iron lung) files.podcaster.de/podcasthosting…
The two papers on the #H5N1 avian influenza outbreak in cats in Poland make for really interesting reading. The first describes the outbreak and the second investigates the emergence and transmission.
(I'm on a train again so a brief thread).
"Information about a highly fatal disease in cats with respiratory and nervous system signs began to circulate in social media and among cat lovers in mid-June 2023." Cases were mostly from cities but across the map...
https://t.co/R5vrPnMs0ieurosurveillance.org/content/10.280…
Symptoms were similar in all cases: "loss of appetite, apathy, hypersalivation, fever ... followed by nervous symptoms such as epileptic seizures, increased muscle tension and sometimes stiffness of the limbs." Most cats were euthanized, the others died a natural death.
A paper just out in @Eurosurveillanc describes the large and ongoing #H5N1 avian influenza outbreak in fur farms in western Finland with infections in foxes, American minks and raccoon dogs. (Paper mentions 20 farms though 2 more have been affected since): eurosurveillance.org/content/10.280…
@Eurosurveillanc I wrote about an earlier outbreak on a fur farm in Spain last year and why these are concerning:
Here again it looks likely that the virus was transmitted from mammal to mammal and even between different species:science.org/content/articl…
@Eurosurveillanc “Transmission between fur animals is also supported by the general epidemiological pattern of several hundreds of sick and dead animals on the 20 farms. The exact mechanism of the transmission within and between farms is, however, not yet known.”
I spoke to @WHO's new chief scientist @JeremyFarrar about why he decided to take the job, what new technologies the world needs to prepare for and how dangerous #SARSCoV2 remains.
Q&A is here (and short thread coming in a bit): science.org/content/articl…
@WHO @JeremyFarrar Farrar is only the second person to hold this post. @doctorsoumya, who was the first, had to pivot to #covid19 after a few months in the position and so, Farrar told me, "it’s fair to say that the role of chief scientist is still to be fully framed".
@WHO @JeremyFarrar @doctorsoumya He wants to bring "a sense of tomorrow" into WHO, Farrar told me, anticipating new technologies:
"What is coming down the track? What do we need to prepare for now, to ensure that inequality and health disparities are not exaggerated by those new technologies?"
The @WHO has just declared an end to the #COVID19 public health emergency of international concern (PHEIC).
"I declare COVID-19 over as a global health emergency", says @DrTedros at press conference going on now.
@WHO@DrTedros "That does not mean COVID-19 is over as a global health threat", says @DrTedros.
"Last week, COVID-19 claimed a life every three minutes and that's just the deaths we know about."
@WHO@DrTedros "As we speak, thousands of people around the world are fighting for their lives in intensive care units. And millions more continue to live with the debilitating effects of post-COVID19 condition", says @DrTedros.