Ryan Hisner Profile picture
Dec 14, 2021 6 tweets 3 min read Read on X
1/6 Imagine that: Omicron is undergoing phenomenally fast exponential growth in the US, just like in the UK, Denmark, and South Africa. Crossing the Atlantic didn't impair its transmissibility. Who could've guessed?

Dec 6—3%
Dec 7—7%
Dec 8—13% Image
2/6 Take it from the master himself, Trevor B: "There is an inevitable very large wave of Omicron. It's going to happen." nytimes.com/live/2021/12/1… Image
3/6 There's such an air of fatalism around all this, as if we are utterly incapable of doing anything that could dampen or avert a devastating Omicron wave. Hospitals are already at max capacity in many states. An Omicron tsunami approaches, & we collectively shrug our shoulders.
4/6 Epidemiologist @sanghyuk_shin of UC Irvine: "We need to take this seriously, starting now. If we have learned anything on how this virus operates—it’s that any kind of mitigation, the earlier the better...." voiceofoc.org/2021/12/local-… Image
5/6 "...There is really no evidence that suggests that Omicron is going to be mild, there’s no evidence that it is less virulent." Image
6/6 At a company Christmas party at an Oslo restaurant, 80 out of 111 young (ages 30-50), 2-dose vaccinated Norwegians were infected with Omicron. Only 1 of the 80 was asymptomatic (none hospitalized). I've never heard of an asymptomatic rate so low. It doesn't suggest mildness. Image

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More from @LongDesertTrain

Dec 29, 2025
Very proud to be a co-author on this comprehensive preprint on the novel, growing saltation lineage BA.3.2, together with @Tuliodna, Darren Martin, Dikeledi Kekana, and lead author @graemedor. 1/9
I would normally write a summary 🧵 of the BA.3.2 mutational analysis here, but as much of my contribution parallels my previous BA.3.2 threads I'll just link to those here, w/brief descriptions of each.

This is my first, big-picture BA.3.2 🧵. 2/9
Short thread from June when the first travel BA.3.2 sequences showed up. I think my prediction from back then has pretty much been borne out. 3/9
Read 9 tweets
Dec 24, 2025
BA.3.2 emerged in Nov 2024 after ~3 years of intrahost evolution with >50 new spike AA muts, but since then, it's changed very little. Could the drug molnupiravir (MOV) galvanize BA.3.2 into pursuing new evolutionary paths? A new 89-mut MOV BA.3.2 seq suggests it could. 1/11 Image
Background on MOV: It's a mutagenic drug. Its purpose is to cause so many mutations that the virus becomes unviable & is cleared. But we've long known this often does not happen. Instead, the virus persists in highly mutated form & can be transmitted. 2/
I was an author on a paper published in @Nature that conclusively showed not only that MOV has created highly mutated, persistent viruses, but that these viruses have transmitted numerous times. See 🧵 below by lead author @theosanderson. 3/
Read 11 tweets
Dec 22, 2025
The most valuable viral research tools—@nextstrain & CovSpectrum—are being destroyed, not only blocked from new data but now forbidden from even sharing info from the PAST. Why?

Because GISAID is run dictatorially by a con man, paranoid egomaniac, & liar named Peter Bogner. 1/
I use CovSpectrum & Nextstrain every day—& I'm not the only one. Every Covid thread I've ever posted here has relied partly on CovSpectrum & Nextstrain for information & visuals. These vital tools have now been stolen from us by a world-class grifter. 2/ thinkglobalhealth.org/article/to-fin…Image
For years scientists knew something was very, very wrong with GISAID, but the breakout story (from which much of this 🧵is based) came 2 years ago in @ScienceMagazine from @sciencecohen & Martin Enserik. 3/
science.org/content/articl…
Read 22 tweets
Dec 9, 2025
3/77 sequences from the latest Netherlands upload are BA.3.2 as well as 4/86 seqs from Queensland, Australia, consistent w/the steady, slow growth we've seen in Germany, the UK, Ireland, & much of Australia.
1/4
One interesting (and possibly coincidental) aspect of the BA.3.2 tree: Two large branches have NSP14 mutations at adjacent AA residues—ORF1b:T1896I and ORF1b:H1897Y. 2/4 Image
I don't have any idea what functional effects either of these mutations would have. They are both C->T mutations, which is the most common type, but they've been relatively uncommon throughout the pandemic, with fewer than 8000 sequences combined. 3/4 Image
Read 4 tweets
Nov 22, 2025
Fascinating 🧵. The grotesquely mutated spike of this NJ Cryptic binds ACE2 very tightly.

It raises a broader question: Can cryptic wastewater-like lineages transmit?

YES

We knew it happened once. Now we know it's happened at least twice. The results were not pretty. 1/15
The first instance involved a small cluster of sequences that hospitalized several people & resulted in the death of a young child in early 2022. More on this one later. 2/15 Image
The most recent example requires some background. In late 2024, a spectacularly mutated Delta appeared in Spain with 40 new spike mutations and numerous Cryptic markers.

Normally, I would write a thread about such a remarkable sequence, but there were some issues... 3/15 Image
Read 15 tweets
Nov 5, 2025
Slovenia gets its first BA.3.2. Its (slow) geographic spread continues.

Also, 2/4 sequences uploaded from Western Australia (WA) today are BA.3.2.2.

If you're not familiar with BA.3.2, see posts 3 & 4 below for an introduction. 1/4
@StuartTurville has pointed out that WA delayed Covid spread longer than elsewhere in Australia. China has a somewhat similar immune history (as do other SE Asian countries). Perhaps BA.3.2 will do well in China once it arrives there? 2/4
Read 4 tweets

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