The more contagious #P1 variant from Brazil has now invaded N America—British Columbia🇨🇦 has a sudden cluster of 215+ new #P1 cases sequenced by one Vancouver lab.
#P1 is more contagious, has reinfection risk and possibly more severe.🧵
2) 215 identified by one lab in Vancouver — and not all even included in public reports by BC health Dept yet (they are much slower reporting than CTV news)
BC 🇨🇦 has added 20-30 daily #P1 cases per day for the last 4 days (again not including all the #P1 above)
3) And are these new #P1 cases due to international travel or were they local transmission?
The BC health Dept report few days ago said the initial 84 cases were all community transmission!! Zero international travel. This is a bad sign — so many at once and no travel.
4) One Brazil @obscovid19br study puts #P1 transmission at 2.5x faster than old common strain. This 150% increase is much faster than even #B117 if it holds up.
5) Meanwhile, another UK group at MRC Imperial puts #P1 at 2x (100% increase) more transmissible than older common strains— but with even larger reinfection potential.
Keep in mind #b117 from UK is only 40-60% faster than old common. Both studies imply #P1 is faster than B117.
➡️”Individuals between 20-29 years of age in February 2021 had an over 3-fold higher risk of death compared to January 2021.”
8) “findings suggest significant increases in CFR in young and middle-aged adults after identification of a novel SARS-CoV-2 strain circulating in Brazil, and this should raise public health alarms” ⚠️
9) British Columbia’s recent #P1 spike isn’t the first outside Brazil 🇧🇷. As alluded to in the video (top post), there are surges also in neighboring Paraguay and Uruguay— where ICU hospital beds are now maxed out. see thread 🧵 below.
10) We need to all prevent #P1 from causing more clusters and hotspots around the world. Because we cannot repeat the crisis in Brazil 🇧🇷 right now. See detailed #P1 thread below.
11) Head scratching frustrating — I don’t know why BC health chief keeps dismissing the variants of concern (B117 P1 and B1351) as not different than older strains. That is clearly false (see above) and well known for months. @CDCofBC 🇨🇦 needs to wake up.
12) UPDATE—after some weekend pressure, BC 🇨🇦 health chief Bonnie Henry finally admits there is a serious issue with #P1 variant - now announced discovery of 270 cases in BC! And she finally admits P1 is a problem. BC now on short circuit breaker.
13) Bad update— another 100 new cases of #P1 variant logged in BC 🇨🇦 today. This is exponential.
It’s a trap: CATCH 22—if you register, ICE will deport you. If you don’t register, you’ve now committed a crime for the first time, and ICE will deport you. Trump doesn’t care if you’ve paid all taxes and followed all laws—ICE will deport you.
2) The Department of Homeland Security announced that it was mandating that all people in the United States illegally register with the federal government, and said those who didn’t self-report could face fines or prosecution. ***Failure to register is considered a crime***
3) Registration will be mandatory for everyone 14 and older without legal status. People registering have to provide their fingerprints and address, and parents and guardians of anyone under age 14 must ensure they registered. The registration process also applies to Canadians who are in the U.S. for more than 30 days, such as so-called snowbirds who spend winter months in places like Florida.
3) “Kennedy is set to announce Thursday the planned changes, which include axing 10,000 full-time employees spread across departments tasked with responding to disease outbreaks, approving new drugs, providing insurance for the poorest Americans and more”.
SICKENING—Trump’s DHS just deported a surgeon from Brown University Medical School—who is here legally on an H1B visa that doesn’t expire until 2027, and has committed no crimes. Trained in the U.S. at Ohio State, University of Washington, and Yale as a **transplant surgeon** (one of the most difficult surgical fields in all of medicine!!!), she is a highly trained doctor on kidney transplants, which cannot be easily replaced. Her phone was seized at the border. A federal judge handed down an injunction against her deportation—but she was already deported on a plane en route to Paris. Brown’s kidney transplant clinic is now strained by her deportation.
2) Full text:
PROVIDENCE — A Rhode Island doctor who had traveled to Lebanon to see her parents was prevented from re-entering the United States at Boston’s Logan International Airport on Thursday evening, her lawyer and a colleague said.
Dr. Rasha Alawieh, 34, who lives in Providence, has been working at Brown Medicine’s Division of Kidney Disease & Hypertension since last July, and she [has] been part of the transplant service at Rhode Island Hospital, according to Dr. George Bayliss, the organ transplant division’s medical director. She has been studying and working in the United States for about six years, he said Friday.
The US consulate in Lebanon had issued her an H-1B visa, which is given to people in specialty occupations requiring expertise. The visa was valid through mid-2027, said Thomas S. Brown, an attorney representing her and Brown Medicine.
Alawieh was detained when she returned to Logan airport, and family members are afraid that she is about to be deported to Lebanon, he said.
“We are at a loss as to why this happened,” Brown said. “I don’t know if it’s a byproduct of the Trump crackdown on immigration. I don’t know if it’s a travel ban or some other issue.”
He said her phone has been seized and he has not been able to contact Alawieh.
Bayliss said a lawyer filed a petition with the US District Court in Massachusetts, and Judge Leo T. Sorokin issued an order saying Alawieh should not be moved outside of Massachusetts without 48 hours notice. But he said that message apparently did not reach immigration officials in time, and a plane carrying Alawieh left for Paris.
“This is outrageous,” Bayliss said in an interview. “This is a person who is legally entitled to be in the U.S., who is stopped from re-entering the country for reasons no one knows. It’s depriving her patients of a good physician.”
A US Customs and Border Patrol spokesperson, Ryan Brissette, was not able to immediately answer questions about Alawieh on Friday evening.
Bayliss said Alawieh graduated from the American University of Beirut medical school and came to the United States for a nephrology fellowship at Ohio State University. She then landed a transplant fellowship at University of Washington and had a residency in the Yale hospital system before starting at Brown Medicine last July, he said.
“She’s really a very humble and able person,” Bayliss said. “She takes care of her patients. She is talented and thoughtful and a great addition to our division.”
Bayliss said Alawieh went to Lebanon to visit parents and planned to be gone for two weeks. He said she texted a colleague at 6:30 p.m. Thursday saying she was back in Boston, but then her family heard from immigration officials.
Dr. Paul Morrissey, surgical director of the organ transplant division at Brown University Health, said Alawieh works on getting people in Rhode Island on the list for a kidney transplants, and that’s a crucial job at a time when there has been a lot of focus on the need for kidneys and their equitable distribution.
He said Alawieh should not have had any problem traveling out of the country with an H-1B visa.
“It’s an unfortunate set of circumstances,” Morrissey said. “It’s putting a strain on our office. Her work has been exceptional.”
3) There is a new Trump ban against many countries, including tourist visa bans against all countries in the red and orange lists. This list is still tentative. And it shouldn’t have affected people with existing visas, such and the Brown kidney transplant surgeon
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again… once upon a time, liberals did have our own “Leftist Joe Rogan”… his name was Joe Rogan…
Here he is advocating for socialized medicine, healthcare for all, and supporting labor unions to protect workers.
2) Recall, Rogan was once pro Obama and pro Bernie Sanders, and pro Yang Gang, and anti Trump. It’s sad he has since failed to the dark side. But like Vader… maybe he can be redeemed someday and come back to the light.
Joe Rogan was also pro gay rights and pro DACA and pro helping inner city communities that suffer economic and social injustices. It’s sad what he has become. I feel we should try to pull & welcome him back someday. Everyone can be redeemed.