Eric Feigl-Ding Profile picture
Dec 19, 2022 35 tweets 19 min read Read on X
⚠️THERMONUCLEAR BAD—Hospitals completely overwhelmed in China ever since restrictions dropped. Epidemiologist estimate >60% of 🇨🇳 & 10% of Earth’s population likely infected over next 90 days. Deaths likely in the millions—plural. This is just the start—🧵
2) Summary of #CCP's current #COVID goal: “Let whoever needs to be infected infected, let whoever needs to die die. Early infections, early deaths, early peak, early resumption of production.” @jenniferzeng97

Dead bodies piled up in NE China in 1 night—
3) Doubling time in China may not be days anymore. Doubling time now possibly “hours” says some experts — let that sink in. R is hard to calculate if doubling is <1 day because it’s hard to PCR test that fast. The point is 🇨🇳 & the 🌎 is in deep trouble.
npr.org/sections/goats…
4) The deaths in mainland China is being hugely underreported outside of 🇨🇳. Through a survey of hospitals, funeral parlors & related funeral industry chains in Beijing—there is a recent explosion in funeral services caused by the sharp increase in deaths.
rfi.fr/tw/%E4%B8%AD%E… Image
5) Example—cremation in Beijing nonstop. Morgues are overloaded. Refrigerated containers needed. 24/7 funerals. 2000 bodies backlogged for cremations. Sound familiar? It is spring 2020 all over again— but this time for China, emulating more Western-mass infection approach. 🤦🏻‍♂️ Image
6) Westerns think there is a fever and antibiotic shortage now? ➡️Wait until China’s production is diverted from exports! Here—people rushed to a pharmaceutical factory to buy ibuprofen because it is completely sold out elsewhere! Dec 18, in #Zhuhai City.
7) Yes I care because I was born in China — but also because I’m an epidemiologist (my D degree is in it), & I’ve seen this shit show before. What happens in China doesn’t stay in 🇨🇳— Wuhan was our lesson 3 years ago. The global fallout of this 2022-2023 wave will not be small.👇
8) I’m going to pause for a moment—am I saying this will be the start of another “Thermonuclear bad” #COVID wave worldwide? Not necessarily via virus directly— but the global economic fallout from China’s new mega tsunami wave will be ugly. You can ignore my words at own peril.⬇️
9) 1-2 million deaths in China is a very common number lately—I’ve seen the models— it’s certainly possible. It could be higher if govt doesn’t do anything, lower if govt curbs virus with heavy mitigations again. ➡️But anti-China-zero-COVID folks should accept their hand in this.
10) We need more collective empathy in this world. Just because something happens in a faraway city somewhere that you’ve never heard of—doesn’t mean it won’t affect you. Chances are— in this world—it will affect you. And it may affect / harm our children… may they forgive us.
11) Schools are closed in Shanghai for the next month, and in many other outbreak cities. This comes just weeks after restrictions on COVID were lifted. Protecting kids is also protecting their parents / caretakers and preventing them from being orphaned by a pandemic.
12) so what is going on with China’s vaccination situation? There is a lot of vaccine resistance in the elderly. Additionally, the newer #Omicron sub variants, 2 shots not enough - and 3 shots of China’s main CoronaVac may not be enough again for bad evasive new variants. Image
13) A deeper problem lies in the weaker CoronaVac (by SinoVac) & Sinopharm vaccines. Notice how even with 3 shots of main CoronaVac shot, neutralization performance against newer recent #omicron variants is poor—this is bad. China isn’t using bivalent yet.
biorxiv.org/content/10.110… Image
14) That said, even with recent #Ba5 infection or a recent BA5 bivalent booster, while neutralization is improved, it’s only slightly better. But modest against some of the really troublesome variants China is facing. It’s not the same old Wuhan strain anymore.

HT @yunlong_cao Image
15) This is real—In case you need video proof of the cremations—Staff at Beijing's largest Babaoshan funeral house confirmed that all of its incinerators were working but were still unable to meet demand, resulting in a 20-day backlog...

HT @gchahal

16) BBC’s China reporter @StephenMcDonell tells me… “In Beijing Covid has gone crazy, must be millions infected really quickly. I’m sure other cities will be next.”

Watch this BBC report — “China is overloaded and in for a rough few months”…

17) Among those overloaded are home delivery (food) drivers… not enough of them to keep up. Many have #COVID themselves. Food delivery orders piling up unable to be delivered. It’s a shit show. (Screenshot from BBC video above h. ImageImage
18) That said, China has very recent approved an aerosolized (inhaled) vaccine delivered via a nebulized form—it produced a greater antibody response than intramuscular—& also raised antibodies over 9-fold, and at lower dose. Mucosal vaccines could be key.
pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35605625/
19) More importantly, inhaled vaccines also have the potential to induce a broader ‘mucosal immunity’, which could better defend against breakthrough infection, not just severe disease. This is why we need a mucosal vaccine trial funded soon. science.org/doi/10.1126/sc… Image
20) Key—aerosolized nebulizer inhaled mucosal vaccine booster also performed better against newer #SARSCoV2 variants than muscle injected vaccines. This is key.

Again, this research is from 🇨🇳. US has funded zero randomized trials on mucosal vaccines!
tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.10…
21) While we know China’s old CoronaVac vaccine is weak, China’s newest aerosolized nebulizer-inhaled mucosal vaccine is likely more powerful — 14.5x stronger in eliciting antibodies versus CoronaVac. The US needs to invest in these next gen stuff.
medrxiv.org/content/10.110…
22) And yes, China has emergency approved their inhaled vaccine (by CanSino) already for rollout. But most vaccines being administered in China is still the CoronaVac shot. My hope is the new miracle aerosolized inhaled vaccines will make a difference. 🙏 cnn.com/2022/09/06/chi…
23) In case anyone wondering— yes, US has one in development too—Washington University developed one — and currently licensed to Ocugen. Yale has developed a nasal one too. But the problem is that there are no US funding for any trials! Warp speed 2.0??? source.wustl.edu/2022/10/washu-…
24) Back to China crisis—folks, I’m not exaggerating on the up to 2 million dead from #COVID in China in the coming months. Research teams have modeled it. It’s possible if no intervention. bloomberg.com/news/articles/… Image
25) So how much did China’s COVID mitigation rules change? Actually 🇨🇳 lifted only some of the most severe—but still left A LOT OF MITIGATIONS—China did not throw rip up everything and reopen like UK or US did ([cough] @CDCDirector fail)—hence #COVID just that evasive. See 🧵
26) You don’t have to believe me. Many people didn’t in Jan 2020 when I tried to warn the “novel coronavirus” was a pandemic that the world hasn’t seen since 1918. And I’m saying that #CovidIsNotOver. I’m just an epidemiologist trying to warn… nymag.com/intelligencer/…
27) I’m going to take a short break. China situation is fast moving. If you want more of my research and data aggregation— subscribe ✍️ below. I’ll post this thread 🧵 there shortly. Stay safe everyone 🙏
drericding.substack.com/subscribe
28) I’ve been reading comments. some call me a “CCP propagandist” or a “communist shill”. Nothing could be further from the truth. Ethnic Chinese makes me care, doesn’t make me a shill. I have been a public health advocate for 16 years. Here is an old NYT piece on who I am… 👇
29) WHITE HOUSE'S National Security Council KIRBY says—

⚠️U.S. MONITORING OF CHINA'S COVID SITUATION, INCLUDES POTENTIAL IMPACT ON U.S. COMPANIES AND SUPPLY CHAINS

➡️We need to worry about supply chains if China #COVID explosion continues.

HT @DeItaone
30) 📍UPDATE—China 🇨🇳’s chief epidemiologist now says that “the worst is yet to come”, @selinawangtv. There will likely be 3 big 🇨🇳 #COVID19 waves coming—this is just the first. ➡️Next big wave will come after the Lunar new year travels in late January!
31) China has HUGE vulnerable elderly population that is unvaccinated or undervaccinated—➡️130 million such people. Mortality in this group would be likely very high— easily over 1 million if the virus spreads unchecked in China. This is why 1-2 million total deaths is possible.
32) China is still reporting 0 or single digit deaths, and not providing hospital reports to WHO. It’s getting ridiculous to say there’s nobody dying in China when the reports are clear as day from inside China. This overflow of body bags was even at a top hospital in Beijing.
33) let this sink in — **OXYGEN TANKS ARE DEPLETED** at even top level Beijing capitol’s hospitals. You know when that happens that it is much worse at secondary and smaller hospitals and clinics…
34) Frustrated staffers in Beijing state media also now venting that they can’t run certain TV shows because over half of staff are home sick with #COVID. I mentioned this on @NPR @hereandnow discussing 🇨🇳crisis w/ @tongscott—it keeps me awake at night. wbur.org/hereandnow/202…
35) Epic long lines at crematoriums… imagine having to not just wait for hours to cremate you loved ones, but have to do it carrying their deceased bodies for all those hours… let’s have empathy for the horrific #COVID19 wave 🌊 crashing into China. 🙏

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More from @DrEricDing

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
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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
Feb 26
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. Image
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.
Read 6 tweets
Feb 26
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. Image
2) RFK Jr told Trump today there’s now 2 measles deaths.
3) RFK Jr is a tear with his FDA today. A dark Darwinian future lies ahead for America.
Read 4 tweets
Feb 26
BREAKING—Reports coming in about potentially *2 measles deaths* in Texas, not just one, according to an HHS briefing to the White House today.
2) Earlier today, one measles death in an unvaccinated child was reported in Texas. Image
3) It seems to be RFK Jr who said it in an official Trump WH cabinet meeting today. Not saying he doesn’t lie, but he is now HHS Secretary
Read 6 tweets
Feb 21
Woke or biology? There are actually more than the basic “male” XY & “female” XX sexes. Why? Because biology also creates people with single X chromosomes, or extra chromosomes like XXX, XXY, XYY, or XXX+, plus many 🧬genes. 👉All I’m asking is— please be kind to others. Thanks🙏 Image
Image
Image
2) “The most frequent SCAs include Turner syndrome (45,X), Klinefelter syndrome (47,XXY), Trisomy X syndrome (47,XXX), and Double Y syndrome (47,XYY).”

pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10…
3) “The phenotype seen in SCAs is highly variable and may not merely be due to the direct genomic imbalance from altered sex chromosome gene dosage but also due to additive alterations in gene networks and regulatory pathways across the genome as well as individual genetic modifiers.”
Read 5 tweets

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