1) 5-yr Anniversary of the WHO Pandemic Declaration
🔥10 waves
🔥Covid mortality rivals lung cancer
🔥8 infections/person by 2030
🔥Long Covid as catastrophic
🔥Death trajectories becoming complex
🔥"During Covid" as anti-science rhetoric
🔥Serious ppl take Covid seriously
🧵
2) Wastewater-derived estimates of case rates show international consensus
3) The ratio of reported cases versus true cases has remained consistent, demonstrating the validity of wastewater-derived estimates.
4) Misinformation is based on cognitive biases that steer people toward easy-but-bad data or lead them to overestimate their skills.
Disinformation can be blatant or grounded in specious pseudo-scientific arguments. Financial COIs are often the cause.
5) Contrary to misinformation and disinformation, wastewater-derived estimates have a long history of publication on top scientific journals
6) The NYTimes shows that Covid continues to cause excess deaths, meaning it is killing hundreds of thousands of Americans in 2025.
Their estimates are overly simplistic but make the correct argument. See next few.
7) More complex analyses of Covid excess deaths remain much too simplistic and often underestimate current Covid deaths. They do not account for "mortality displacement" -- the idea that so many have already died, we should be seeing fewer deaths by now. We're not.
8) Actuaries measure excess death correctly (or still slightly underestimate). They find Covid deaths are on par with lung cancer in 2025.
9) The sources of Covid excess deaths are increasingly understood and paint a more pessimistic long-term trajectory, as demonstrated by (multi-systemic) non-respiratory deaths.
10) The past and ongoing consequences of Covid will be marked by health disparities. Race, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, immigration status, LGBTQ.
11) We are headed from nearly 4 Covid infections on average to 8 cumulative infections over the next 5 years if current trends hold. The Long Covid burden will be substantial.
Mitigating risk using multi-layered mitigation, like during the early pandemic, helps greatly.
12) Nearly 5 million American adults have become disabled during the pandemic, with an ongoing linear trend because cumulative infections remain an ongoing burden.
We're doing almost nothing as a society to reduce infections.
13) Children continue to become sick more frequently and more severely, with an increasing proportion missing multiple weeks of school.
So-called "lockdowns" don't case this. An annual Covid infection is the likely culprit.
14) Younger adults are becoming disabled by Covid, though often still working. Women are particularly burdened.
15) Though at a slower clip, male workers <65 years old are also becoming disabled by Covid.
>1 million female workers <65 have become disabled during the pandemic
16) Older adults are dropping out of the workforce. 2.0-2.7 million so far, so-called "excess retirements"
17) Covid deaths are less and less about acute deaths and more and more about complex non-acute death trajectories.
18) An example of a Covid cumulative reinfection death trajectory.
19) I have no idea what people mean by "during Covid" - a useless and anti-science concept.
20) #DuringThePandemic is today.
21) #DuringCovid is today.
22) "During Covid" is anti-science offensive nonsense.
We don't say during car accidents, during lung cancer, or during diabetes to describe the onset or any time point of these public health problems.
23) Many people are "high risk," simply based on known evidence, albeit imperfect. Many more are high risk based on unknown or undiagnosed factors. Most should assume a high risk family member or that high risk themselves.
24) NIH has required universal masking in 48 clinical centers for >4 months because they lead on healthcare.
25) Over 75% of PMC Covid Dashboard viewers note using 4 layers of mitigation (masks, vax, tests, air quality) in the past 6 months. 95% use at least 3 out of 4 layers.
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
🌍Want to track COVID transmission accurately worldwide?
This PMC thread walks you through leading dashboards with information more up to date than WHO & EU directories.
🧵 1/
The Pandemic Mitigation Collaborative (PMC) Dashboard provides weekly COVID updates for the U.S., using wastewater surveillance derived case estimation models and analytic forecasting.
Our international directory includes official government dashboards & those developed by citizen scientists.
We exclude countries that have stopped reporting in the past 2-12 months even if on EU or WHO lists. We also exclude low-quality data from opt-in testing programs.
🧵 3/
🔥Biggest uptick since Jan
🔥1 in 167 actively infectious
🔥>2 million weekly infections
🔥700-1,200 resulting excess deaths from weekly infections
Track transmission closer to home w/our new state & international resources 👇
🧵1/6
PMC COVlD Dashboard, Jun 23, 2025 (U.S.)
🔹With >90% probability, we have entered the 11th COVlD wave.
🔹In a room of 50 people, there is already a 1 in 4 chance of an exposure.
🔹We expect nearly 15 million infections in the next month, and rising.
🧵2/6
PMC COVlD Dashboard, Jun 23, 2025 (U.S.)
We continue to expect transmission to break 500,000 daily infections in the U.S. around July 9th.
This is the same prediction as last week, as the forecast was dead on. Yet, there is considerably uncertainty around this timing.
Current transmission (red line) closely tracks that of summer 2023 (yellow line).
We expect to break 500k daily infections between July 9 and the end of July. Our current forecast...
2) PMC COVlD Dashboard, June 16, 2025 (U.S.)
Our current forecast is a bit more aggressive, predicting breaking 500k daily infections by July 9. The 2023 trend suggests end of July.
The 95% confidence interval shows large variation. Note that...
3) PMC COVlD Dashboard, June 16, 2025 (U.S.)
Note that CDC and Biobot both had retroactive corrections to last week's data, meaning the relative "lull" will last a little longer than the uncorrected data suggested. No big news on NB.1.8.1.
1) Here's a quick example of how the federal government is censoring the best scientific research. It's not just cuts to ongoing research.
It's new grant submissions too...
2) In January, I re-submitted a promising Covid/cancer grant to a non-federal funder. Hundreds of pages. Hundreds of hours of work. The best proposal I've submitted as a scientist.
Out of curiosity, I used Sean Mullen's Scan Assist tool to see how many banned words it had...
3) The proposal had 1,750 banned words. No big deal -- they're non-federal.
BUT I had planned to submit a smaller version to NIH this month as a "back up." Impossible!
It's not a matter of using a thesaurus or the find/replace command. The grant is on *Covid*...
CDC wastewater surveillance data show transmission rising. This is our forecast if transmission growth follows typical patterns.
The high & low estimates could be thought of as optimistic & pessimistic scenarios for NB.1.8.1.
2) PMC COVlD Dashboard, June 9, 2025
Notice that current transmission (red line, lower left) tracks closely with two years ago (yellow), slightly below the median (gray), and not far below last year (orange).
Consider each of these trajectories realistic scenarios.
3) PMC COVlD Dashboard, June 9, 2025
All indications are that we are headed into the start of an 11th national wave in the U.S.
We could percolate near the lull point another couple weeks (fingers crossed), but that scenario is becoming less likely.
National COVlD transmission recently fell to its lowest levels since the pre-Delta era.
It's go-time for many who have delayed medical appointments. The situation will likely get much worse in Jul/Aug.
2/ PMC COVlD Dashboard, June 2, 2025 (U.S.)
An estimated 1 in 211 are actively infectious. Most states are "low" or "very low" per CDC.
The situation remains serious even in a relative "lull." >1.5 million weekly estimated infections to result in 600-900 excess deaths.
3/ PMC COVlD Dashboard, June 2, 2025 (U.S.)
By the end of the month, we forecast an increase to 450k daily infections. If NB.1.8.1 takes off, closer to 600k. If overhyped, percolating only slightly higher.