Eric Feigl-Ding Profile picture
Mar 22, 2022 14 tweets 10 min read Read on X
⚠️BA2 is now 34.9%

A wise mentor once taught me—whenever you see exponential change—#BA2—it’s safe to assume among 3 things:

📌Something new / different is driving it
📌It must be either faster/better/stronger
📌Something new will likely occur soon

Figure @DrWilliamKu #COVID19
2) this is now cases and hospitalization in UK which has been #BA2 dominant for many weeks. England hospitalizations is already approaching their December peak… and surged quite quickly after cases rose I might add (perhaps under testing during early surge?)
3) England lifted all restrictions on Feb 24th… cases surged again. This coincided with also #Ba2 surge. So England is having a double whammy of both dropping mitigation and BA2 at the same time. Way to effing go @BorisJohnson
4) another worrisome thing is that reinfection % rate has also begun to recently spike in England 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿— coinciding with the surge in BA2 and cases— Especially worrisome since UK is surging after a recent BA1 Omicron wave. This is the stuff that I ponder at night why.
5) Also fascinating is that in the 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 December #Omicron wave, hospitalization rate trailed cases and was about 2% of cases at the peak, but now it’s significantly outpacing 2% in the new surge. This may not mean it’s more severe—more likely cases are heavily under-diagnosed.
6) has testing dropped in the UK? Yes by quite a bit, but testing per capita in UK is still significantly higher than the US. UK wave is definitely real (cases surging despite testing dropping is usually a bad sign). But the quick surge in 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 hospitalizations is very worrisome.
7) As #BA2 grows, it will displace the older variant. You will not see a surge until the new variant overtakes the old. This is why US isn’t surging overall yet because BA2 still under 50%. Wait for the crisscross—that’s when it plateaus & reverses.

Diagram by @GosiaGasperoPhD
8) however, there is a matter of both when the criss-cross of the old #BA1 vs new #BA2 variant will occur. Some think late March or early April. And there is debate how quickly uptick will be afterwards—spring outdoor friendly weather could slow it. But no mask can accelerate it.
9) Ontario 🇨🇦 just hit around ~50% #BA2 this week. So how are things looking in Ontario? Their wastewater is now showing #SARSCoV2 resurgence province-wide, right on cue. Wastewater increase almost always precedes case rise in 1-2 weeks. Data doesn’t lie.
covid19-sciencetable.ca/ontario-dashbo…
10) In the annals of history… don’t be the dismissive person who history looks back with scorn for having dismissed #COVID19 whenever clearly #CovidIsNotOver. Yet many believe act with arrogance 👇
11) Danish officials got arrogant about #BA2 and this is their epic failure. Not only COVID deaths increased but also EXCESS deaths increased substantially. That is an epic fail if you ignore BA2.
12) Speaking of COVID deaths… yes, #BA2 is now driving increased deaths again in the UK. But do we honestly need to wait to see deaths before we act damnit?!?!

Original data source: coronavirus.data.gov.uk

Figure complied by @JoePajak
13) Folks— Join our new COVID Precaution Community below… open to all.
14) as expected with surging #BA2… the next wave is upon us. We predicted late March for the cross crossing of BA2 passing BA1. It’s here.

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More from @DrEricDing

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
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
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
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
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
Mar 14
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.
3) *Fallen, not failed (above).

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.
Read 4 tweets

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