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Eric Feigl-Ding Profile picture
@DrEricDing
Dec 11, 2021 • 14 tweets • 8 min read • Read on X
📍NOTA BENE—a “mild but faster” virus will often kill & harm more people than a virus that is slower & more severe. Even if just 2x more transmissible & 1/10 less deadly! ➡️Folks who call #Omicron “nature’s vaccine” need to stop the public endangerment. Figure by @GosiaGasperoPhD Image
2) And we believe #Omicron is not just 2x more contagious but likely 3-4.5x by some estimates.
3) seriously— #Omicron contagiousness (combination of transmission and evasion against past immunity) is at least 3-4x if not even higher than Delta. Image
4) furthermore, I haven’t seen any good data that #Omicron is truly much milder. South Africa’s new wave is younger than past waves. The hospitalization rates often haven’t been age adjusted, vaccine prevalence adjusted, past infection prevalence adjusted, etc. 🍎 to 🍊.
5) Also the “mutations make a virus milder” is often not supported. With exception of one virus, most viruses like Ebola, Zika, or chikungunya viruses have “shown no signs of becomes less pathogenic”
6) Let’s compare old May wave (blue) versus the new #Omicron wave (in orange) of hospitalizations by age group in Tshwane epicenter. Notice how disproportionately it’s sending over 6x more kids age 0-4 to hospital in the first two weeks of each wave. 👀 Image
7) Bad news is the UK 🇬🇧 is facing a substantial wave of #Omicron infections in January without further restrictions, according to scientists. The researchers said tougher restrictions may be needed to prevent Omicron overwhelming hospitals. #COVID19 bbc.com/news/uk-596210…
8) Let the Netherlands 🇳🇱 be a lesson of what not to do… they basically let the virus rip. And this is the result… huge excess deaths again, close to last year’s peak. And this wasn’t even #Omicron contagiousness.
9) Why do I feel like many of us are in denial about #Omicron? I get we are all tired. I’m so darn tired. But #COVID19 doesn’t get “tired”— the virus has an evolutionary drive to mutate and play dodgeball with our immune system. We must be vigilant and keep up. Don’t be blasé.
10) Wait, I thought someone last year said “kids are practically immune to COVID”…. Hmmmm, maybe the precautionary principled epidemiologists are right and the pure economists are wrong again? 🤷🏻‍♂️
11) Another key thing to stopping spread is to drop the 6 foot is enough delusion. The virus is airborne folks. 6 feet (2 meters) is minimal safety
12) AGE ADJUSTMENT is lacking in a lot of #Omicron graphs, as well as vaccine or infection adjustment, vs past waves. But if we stratify on age (one method of adjustment), notice how hospitalizations are higher in kids in first 2 weeks. Lower in adults likely cuz of more vaccines Image
13) WARNING: Objects in the #Omicron Severity Mirror may appear milder than they (actually) are… think like an epidemiologists— think of confounders (like age and vaccine and infections) & think of such modifiers of severity have have changed over time that hide true severity.👇
14) don’t rely on past infection or 2 shots to prevent COVID alone. Definitely get the booster. The data is pretty alarming on how evasive it is. There’s no sugar coating it. 👇

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More from @DrEricDing

Eric Feigl-Ding Profile picture
May 8
⚠️Tariffs On Medications Will Make America Sick

We might soon see the Trump WH impose tariffs on pharmaceuticals—patients will suffer and die.

During the past few weeks, President Trump’s on-again, off-again tariff wars have rattled the stock market, decimated many Americans’ retirement funds, and promised to send grocery prices soaring—and his administration hasn’t even gotten to critical pharmaceutical tariffs yet. But that will likely be the next shoe to drop.
Trump exempted pharmaceuticals from his first round of tariffs in early April, but recently declared that he intends to impose “a major tariff” on imported medicines “very shortly.” These tariffs, he claims, will prompt pharmaceutical companies to leave countries including China and India and begin “opening up their plants all over the place.”
Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said in a television interview in mid-April that these tariffs are coming in the “next month or two.”

What will this mean? 

Read on:
progressive.org/op-eds/tariffs…Image
2) The majority of brand name drugs used in the United States are imported. Even generic drugs often rely on ingredients and direct imports from China, including pain relievers and cardiovascular drugs used by millions.
3) The United States was already facing a drug shortage crisis before Trump’s tariff announcement. Now, his policies will drive upnot only the cost of medicines, but also other health care items such as X-ray machines and medical instruments.
Read 8 tweets
Eric Feigl-Ding Profile picture
Apr 10
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.

apnews.com/article/illega…Image
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.
Read 4 tweets
Eric Feigl-Ding Profile picture
Apr 3
Now economists know how scientists felt back when he pushed “hydroxychloroquine”
2) HCQ preventing COVID deaths has been debunked— and it’s now been linked with deaths.

@JoshuaPCohen1
forbes.com/sites/joshuaco…Image
@JoshuaPCohen1 3) JPMorgan on Trump Tariffs: “The largest tax increase since 1968” Image
Read 6 tweets
Eric Feigl-Ding Profile picture
Mar 28
My god—Earthquake (a Richter ~7.7) causes a skyscraper to collapse in Bangkok. Hope all the construction workers made it out.
2) this skyscraper collapse was captured from a distant car’s dashcam while on a highway

3) another view of the collapse. For those who lived through 9/11, this collapse is a bit triggering.
Read 5 tweets
Eric Feigl-Ding Profile picture
Mar 27
Welp—kiss public health & medical research infrastructure in America goodbye for the next 4 years. RFK Jr plans to cut 10,000 jobs from Trump HHS. Image
2) this will not make America healthy again… not by a long shot. So dangerous and irresponsible.
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”.
Read 5 tweets
Eric Feigl-Ding Profile picture
Mar 15
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.Image
Image
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.”

bostonglobe.com/2025/03/14/met…Image
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 Image
Read 8 tweets

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