⚠️Worrisome—New lab experiments from Japan show that #BA2 may have features that make it as capable of causing serious illness as older variants–including Delta! And yet as evasive as old #Omicron cousin BA1. #BA2 🌍 surging—needs upgrade to VOC asap @WHO! cnn.com/2022/02/17/hea…
2) BA2 is seriously bad news. It’s both faster transmission than BA2 and if it’s truly more severe and as evasive against prior immunity including BA1 old #Omicron immunity— then it’d be the worse of 4 worlds. 👀
4) Resistant to Omicron BA.1 induced immunity. Being BA1 immune from past infection provided immunity against BA1– ➡️ but significantly less against BA2. 👀
Good thing we aren’t dropping mitigations anywhere right??? 🤦🏻♂️
5) for vaccine evasion- BA2 is similar to BA1 albeit both are MUCH more evasive than Delta. Boosters still good ~70-74% VE for symptomatic infection. But not enough people boosted. biorxiv.org/content/10.110…
6) just how fast is BA2??? It’s now 90% of all #COVID in Denmark. And there’s even two different BA2 versions! Red and blue below. The red H78Y is surging even more 👀
7) Let’s look at it this way—BA2 is much more aggressive than anything —both pink and green below are BA2 — but the green H78Y subtype of BA2 extra aggressive it seems. Meanwhile BA1 old Omicron near extinct in 🇩🇰! That doesn’t happen by chance. We need to raise BA2 as VOC asap!
8) here is what is happening in the country with the most #BA2 variant so far.., 🇩🇰 has been BA2 dominant for weeks and have now almost no mitigations either… now their excess deaths are spiking again…
9) "[#BA2] might be, from a human's perspective, a worse virus than BA.1 and might be able to transmit better and cause worse disease," says Dr. Daniel Rhoads, section head of microbiology at the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio. BA2 needs a new designation now!!!
10) Worse— monoclonal antibody drug now fails against #BA2 VARIANT—one of the last monoclonal antibody drug still available fails—the rapidly spreading #Omicron BA.2 sublineage "exhibited marked resistance" to sotrovimab in lab experiments. Shit.
11) Meanwhile, we know #BA2 is also surging fast in the US. CDC needs to update its BA2 data — it’s been almost 2 weeks with no new data released!! C’mon @CDCgov - release the new BA2 numbers. The world is watching @CDCDirector
12) Even the @WHO is getting very concerned about #BA2 variant outcompeting and displacing old #Omicron. WHO’s COVID lead @mvankerkhove now warns about a likely BA2 related surge. We must be vigilant. This is not a drill—BA2 is real.
13) we must act quickly with high urgency to stop the rise of BA2. We have not learned from the past — if we ignore BA2, we could be facing another / continued wave of excess deaths. Let’s learn from history rather than repeat it. 🙏
14) The other urgency is that vaccine effectiveness is only high with boosters in face of #Omicronc whether BA1 or BA2. But most folks aren’t boosted in most countries. Thus are we truly prepared for #BA2 given we know BA1 infection immunity isn’t as good versus BA2? #GetBoosted
⚠️BREAKING—ICU Hospitalized human bird flu case in Canada now officially confirmed as H5N1. Worse, it is the same 2.3.4.4b virus clade (variant group) as the one found in BC🇨🇦 poultry and in Washington state🇺🇸! The hospitalized teenager (with no pre existing conditions) had no animal contact, does not live on farm, had “deterioration quite rapid” and now critical in ICU with ARDS. Canada officials says infectious period is 2 days **prior to symptoms** (ie asymptomatic transmission) and infectious up to 10 days.
2) Public Health Agency of Canada's National Microbiology Laboratory (NML) in Winnipeg confirmed that the individual has avian influenza H5N1 canada.ca/en/public-heal…
3) details…
⚠️BAD UPDATE—BIRD FLU HOSPITALIZATION IN CANADIAN TEEN
Summary 🧵 of the live press conference with Canada’s British Columbia health officer.
📌The teen is in intensive care.
📌Condition is ARDS
📌Teen was healthy prior; no underlying conditions
My god—Google Search for “what is a tariff” sudden spikes the DAY AFTER ELECTION DAY. 🤦🏻♂️
2) many folks simply don’t understand what a tariff is — unless you explain it several times to them with analogies. Even then, it’s hard for many to grasp. Eg 👇
📍HARRIS IS STILL AHEAD IN PA—in terms of votes yet to be counted. She’s still +2 of what is needed to win PA, given the outstanding votes still remaining in PA cities, according to @CBSNews @NorahODonnell
Plastic cookware should not be used. Period. Especially BLACK PLASTIC cookware, that often mixes in toxic recycled electronic waste materials. DISPOSE OF ALL PLASTIC COOKWARE, especially if black colored plastic ones. Pass it on to your family.
2) Because optical sensors in recycling facilities can’t detect them, black-colored plastics are largely rejected from domestic-waste streams, resulting in a shortage of black base material for recycled plastic. So the demand for black plastic appears to be met “in no insignificant part” via recycled e-waste, according to Turner’s research. TV and computer casings, like the majority of the world’s plastic waste, tend to be recycled in informal waste economies with few regulations and end up remolded into consumer products, including ones, such as spatulas and slotted spoons, that come into contact with food.
3) You simply do not want flame retardants anywhere near your stir-fry. Flame retardants are typically not bound to the polymers to which they are added, making them a particular flight risk: They dislodge easily and make their way into the surrounding environment. And, indeed, another paper from 2018 found that flame retardants in black kitchen utensils readily migrate into hot cooking oil. The health concerns associated with those chemicals are well established: Some flame retardants are endocrine disruptors, which can interfere with the body’s hormonal system, and scientific literature suggests that they may be associated with a range of ailments, including thyroid disease, diabetes, and cancer. People with the highest blood levels of PBDEs, a class of flame retardants found in black plastic, had about a 300 percent increase in their risk of dying from cancer compared with people who had the lowest levels, according to a study released this year. In a separate study, published in a peer-reviewed journal this month, researchers from the advocacy group Toxic-Free Future and from Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam found that, out of all of the consumer products they tested, kitchen utensils had some of the highest levels of flame retardants.
⚠️MASK MANDATE RETURNING TO ALL NIH PATIENT CLINICS—Effective November 4, 2024, masking will be required in all patient care & waiting rooms. Furthermore, testing for COVID, flu A, flu B, and RSV will be required for all inpatients & rooming-in visitors. cc.nih.gov/patient-servic…
2) This means wearing a mask will be REQUIRED in all patient care areas, including waiting rooms. ➡️This change is due to an anticipated increase in COVID-19 and other respiratory virus activity in the community. 😷
3) I think people should stock up on COVID tests again. The Cheapest COVID test on the U.S. market is now as low as $1.50 with special promo code “COV20”… expiring Jan or March 2025.