Thread by @_ppmv

1. Maternal chronic immune activation harms the fetus. They experience catch-up growth, retardation in utero and then faster growth in the first year, an evolutionarily conserved double tap that foreshadows obesity and cardiovascular problems later in life.

For your children. 🤨

https://twitter.com/_ppmv/status/1656575779130449920

2. We warned early and clearly.

https://twitter.com/_ppmv/status/1652238429286014976

3. People started to share @RealCheckMarker's arguments on (1) unmitigated international aviation; (2) WHO's template and the North American pandemic playbook; and (3) the real risk of SARS with legal and other experts. Good, this is how society learns. 👇

https://twitter.com/_ppmv/status/1648286965471535105

@RealCheckMarker 4. Reference to show how international cooperation by member states and WHO eradicated SARS 2003. See how hard it was to bring different epistemic communities together?

SARS-CoV-2 will end exactly the same way. That's a physical, not political, argument.

https://twitter.com/_ppmv/status/1601311718285922304

@RealCheckMarker 5. Necessary references. Don't bother having an "opinion" about SARS and global health politics if you haven't done the readings. This is no time and place for amateurs.

https://twitter.com/_ppmv/status/1605953746793480193

@RealCheckMarker 6. Link to a good exchange from 2020. (Dr. @AmritaNarlikar deserves recognition) Why did policy fail?

Because western experts assumed counter all evidence that betacoronaviruses behave like influenza.

It was scientifically wrong even before the pandemic.

https://twitter.com/_ppmv/status/1631421047105789952

@RealCheckMarker @AmritaNarlikar 7. Counterargument: Did #ZeroCovid in AUS, NZ, Taiwan succeed because they are islands?

No. South Asia, Europe, MENA, Africa, Americas, NE/SE Asia are all islands to SARS-CoV.

It doesn't care for maps; only population size and proximity to the next host.

https://twitter.com/RealCheckMarker/status/1630224363956887552

@RealCheckMarker @AmritaNarlikar 8. The wikipedia entry refers to DPRK as Zero Covid state. Maybe? Either way, public health faces pressing challenges, in North Korea as much as in every other state.

I see zero reality-based public debate yet. That's long overdue. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-COVID
38north.org/2023/02/the-en…

@RealCheckMarker @AmritaNarlikar 9. Counterargument: Does public health threaten your economy or freedom?

This is why honest scicomm is so important.

Anyone who ever studied law, politics, human rights or even economics should be able to make a coherent case for effective public policy.

https://twitter.com/RealCheckMarker/status/1621673876685000704

10. These threads meander, illegible or hard to follow to most people unused to twitter syntax (eg, always check RTs). We need to get these arguments out to policymakers and the public. One day I'll also write meaningful long form inshallah 😉

Start here:

https://twitter.com/RealCheckMarker/status/1622721840639578113

11. This time we have no thousands of SARS survivors, but hundreds of millions of COVID survivors with viral persistence.

Whatever your goals in life, we'll all agree that such policy malpractice threatens society itself. This 👇 is prepandemic knowledge.

https://twitter.com/RealCheckMarker/status/1622723453924126721

12. Counterargument: Climate. Maybe public health malpractice is your idea of climate mitigation policy?

As full-time volunteer climate activist-scholar, I think this deserves no reply (not here) but we all know that serious people think this way. (=Ecofascist illiberal thought)

13. Counterargument: Is SARS-CoV elimination impossible in the Omicron era?

Maybe? Only policy+analysis that deserve their name can solve this. The island argument #7 above is about scale. Epidemiological studies of Hong Kong and Co. show what's possible.

https://twitter.com/_ppmv/status/1653833281857638400

14. Counterargument: Is eradication impossible in the Omicron era?

WHO is scientifically correct to say the PHEIC ended; one day the pandemic will end. The virus will stay.

SARS doesn't have to take down society. It means eternal watchfulness and POLICY.

https://twitter.com/DrTedros/status/1655669247719120927

15. Smallpox eradication was only possible because infection or vaccination conferred protective immunity.

FYI #mpox mutated to allow efficient reinfection. Genetic recombination with SARS-CoV-2 makes it possible.

That's why you can't "Live with Covid".

https://twitter.com/LaurentAFKaiser/status/1555291308050227200

16. #Mpox is resurging with half of French cases in vaccinated patients. Taiwan CDC recorded <1% of global cases despite correctly treating hMPX as respiratory virus (droplet/airborne).

WHO member states should do so too to avert "Living with" a poxvirus.

https://twitter.com/_ppmv/status/1648765633020977164

17. Good dad joke: Yes this public health argument is inaccessible to the public 👆 with unintended consequences. As the COVID-19 PHEIC ends, we now need to design systems keeping society safe &/o sane. "Living without SARS" requires sustained attention and resources. Good luck,

18. Good dad jokes don’t require kids to be infected with a lympholytic. My sense of humor is to not stay silent while people gamble their kids’ healthy life expectancy.

I understand pressure on parents, but there are philosophical and biological limits. journals.lww.com/pidj/fulltext/…

19. Here bad news. Pre-vaccine, SARS-CoV-2 infections were 44% asymptomatic, highest share in 13 yo. That’s not asymptomatic at time of transmission, but throughout!

I don’t know the share post-vaccine, but it will likely stay high as immune systems grow permissive to the virus.

20. I don’t know the politics of the #Mpox PHEIC, but @therustychemist is right. A coronavirus found to reverse transcribe about 1% of the genome to the nucleus, can block nuclear signaling or coinfect cells together with pox and RNA viruses is bad news.

Even short of this: 👇

https://twitter.com/therustychemist/status/1656689293845499904