⚠️BREAKING—CDC now confirms my scoop that super evasive #BQ1 & #BQ11 variants (Typhon & Cerberus) have meteorically surged from *unlisted* 3 weeks ago, to 11% 2 weeks ago—to ⬆️now suddenly 27% today! This is a bad 10-day doubling time! 🇬🇧’s #BQ ~30% too🧵 covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tra…
2) Moreover, In New York and New Jersey (plus PR) region - #BQ variants now at a whopping 42.5%—confirming my scoop again. They have now displaced even their immediate ancestor #BA5. Clearly #BQ1 and #BQ11 sub-variants are dominating the race for this fall. I’m worried for fall.
3) Everything I’ve warned for the last 2 weeks about #BQ variants have been confirmed. I’ve been told by my source that CDC leadership has been flustered and shaken — trying to defend their lackadaisical variant tracking of #BQ variants — it’s quite a dereliction of diligence. 😢
4) This post 2 weeks ago had upset the CDC senior staff the most. Because it revealed the utter incompetence tracking #BQ11, and allowing it to go from UNLISTED status to suddenly 11% without warning.
5) My updates are in the interest of public health. To date, I have reported scoops here first. But with changes in Twitter, I will also be posting breaking news on my Journal. It’s free to subscribe—COVID news will always be free, though support welcome: drericding.substack.com
6) #BQ variants are highly resistant to monoclonal antibodies — one of the key drug classes during the pandemic against #COVID19 — now defunct. This is why we are losing when this winter comes. We do NOT have all the “tools” anymore.
7) that said, the #bivalent BA5 booster should still mostly work against the daughter lineages #BQ subvariants. Mostly work- albeit neutralizing data shows some minor drop even after BA5 immunity. This hopefully will still hold against hospitalizations and death—but unclear LC.
8) Also important to note— , UK 🇬🇧 also seeing #BQ variants spiking— suddenly over 30% as of last week (red, lower right). This is very very bad. Notice how fast it is displacing other variants that are all falling. This matches the new 27% #BQ CDC scoop above.
9) How the hell did we get here? For all the govt focus on death and hospitalizations —neither drives mutations. What spurs more mutations is MASS INFECTION—especially unmitigated infection of millions and billions—basically the 2022 neglectful strategy against #COVID. Result 👇
10) I’ve shared a bit more color on the CDC situation. If people are interested in knowing a fuller story about CDC and the BQ variants, I can maybe share more down the road. I want to see if the CDC changes masking, testing & mitigation policies meantime. drericding.substack.com/p/update-cdc-n…
11) If they don’t act to change the course to slow down the surge and help slow transmission to relieve overwhelmed hospitals, especially amid hospitals filling up, then I think more will need to be said about CDC leadership. drericding.substack.com/p/update-cdc-n…
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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.
BREAKING—FDA suddenly cancels meeting to update next season’s flu vaccines, with zero explanations. Any delays will jeopardize next year’s vaccine supply chain.
2) Folks who follow me know that I’m no bullshitter. I criticized past pandemic response right and left, and have called balls and strikes without bias. And I often say things that doctors & epidemiologists are whispering among themselves but don’t say publicly. (Cough cough) ⬇️
3) While I don’t recommend hoarding… I think stocking up on flu antivirals, which you can obtain prophylactically (preventively) from doctors if you ask nicely why you’re high risk, can be a good idea. I know many doctors, epidemiologists and virologists who do for their family.
Doctors are debunking RFK Jr’s claim that 20 hospitalized measles cases in Texas are there for mainly quarantine. Doctors on the ground say the 20 kids hospitalized are having trouble breathing. Oh and they are all unvaccinated against measles, which RFK Jr neglects to mention.
2) RFK Jr told Trump today there’s now 2 measles deaths.