Pfizer has said “There are no data to demonstrate that protection after the first dose is sustained after 21 days.”

So why are thousands of Brits - elderly and vulnerable - who are due their 2nd vaccine next week, having their vaccination appointments CANCELED? The UK govt has chosen to ignore the Pfizer/BioNTech clinical trial data and is going back on its promise to fully immunise those most susceptible to severe Covid-19. Now tens of thousands of people will be walking around with an unknown level of protection against infection.

Octopuses sometimes punch fish out of spite, scientists say independent.co.uk/environment/na… I think I feel less bad about eating octopus now.

TSA screened 1 million+ travelers a day for 3 consecutive days over the past weekend, the first time that's happened since March. It's down 60% vs last Christmas but that's still a lot of travelers during a pandemic. I'll discuss this & the "new*" variant on @NewDay at 9:30 am ET *I say new because the B.1.1.7. variant has been around since at least September and it's been detected in Australia, Italy, Iceland, Denmark and Holland, so how is it "new" and how is it the "UK variant?"

It probably arrived from elsewhere but was detected in the UK because....

Even tho the widely talked about covid variant was detected in the UK, it could have come from outside the UK. The UK's Covid-19 Genomics Consortium has tracked the genetic history of 150,000+ virus samples. That's about half the world's genetic sequencing of the virus. In comparison, the US has sequenced virus samples from around 50,000 of its ~17 million cases.

Some British tabloids are reporting the UK's high rate of sequencing as an own goal which has left the poor island nation "a pariah" 🎻

bbc.com/news/health-55…

I'm in the waiting room for an online reading and I'm really really excited for this book talk! Imagine how thrilling it will be when we get to attend literary events in-person like the good old days 😍 @_artelixir's debut picture book WHEN YOU BREATHE follows the story of a single breath. It's absolutely beautiful. You can get a copy here: abramsbooks.com/product/when-y… @abramskids @ABRAMSbooks

Tweeted this before the #VPDebate 4 yrs ago. Pence was a threat to public health then. He's an even bigger danger to public health now.

https://twitter.com/DoctorYasmin/status/783392067783364608

I got into trouble for this thread in 2016. I was a newspaper reporter at the time and was told I'd crossed the line and must delete the tweets. I refused.

Gutted. A kind person, a stellar vaccine scientist, a "towering HIV prevention research leader," someone who dedicated her life to ending the HIV pandemic, has died of Covid-19. Prof. Gita Ramjee was Chief Specialist Scientist + Director of the South African Medical Research... ...Council's HIV Prevention Research and she had a million other titles at academies around the world. I last saw her in Bombay 2yrs ago and she was sweet as always, with a perfect red lip + not a hair out of place, as usual. She was always supportive of my work + so inspiring

So this is the British disease modeling paper that caused the 180 degree pivot by the UK govt & it was mentioned by Dr. Birx at the WH podium this week. It estimates 510,000 deaths in UK and 2.2 million deaths in the US if no action is taken by govts

imperial.ac.uk/media/imperial… If the pandemic is allowed to run its course, the scientists say we'd need 30x the ventilators currently available in the US so the potential death toll would be ~4 million. Deaths could happen fast - over just 3 months. An estimated 8-15% of Americans over 70yrs would die.

The British govt is saying let the virus spread so 60% of Brits become infected and herd immunity is reached. But that means:

- 39.6 million infected
- 5.5 million hospitalized with severe disease
- 2 million critically ill
-277,000 deaths

No other country is suggesting this This is bizarre to me given we don't know how long immunity to the virus persists.

Also, I get the idea of cocooning (forming circles of immunity around the most vulnerable) but you do that in a controlled way with vaccines. This is very different.

If you are a journalist on any platform, and you are talking about the coronavirus epidemic, please allow me to give you some advice as a public health physician and a medical journalist myself: please let your reporting do the talking, not your emotions. #COVID19 I said this on @ReliableSources on Sunday: as the virus spreads, things are dramatic enough. People are scared. The journalist’s job is to analyze all the rapidly evolving data (and misinformation) and present facts in a way that helps the audience. Leave emotion out of it.

If you're panicking about coronavirus, don't. Panic won't help, pandemic preparedness will.

That means getting ready for disruption:

Stock up on any meds you, your kids, your pets need

Have a plan for caring for sick loved ones - while protecting yourself

... Make sure you're using good hand hygiene, cough hygiene, replace handshakes with fist bumps, clean hands after touching common surfaces

Ask your job what plan they have in place. None? They need one. If not for now, then for the future.

Public health Dr here. If you have epidemiologist in your bio, or if you were "involved with Ebola," whatever that means, can you stop tweeting about coronavirus in all caps with alarm bell emojis?

Cuz if you know anything about public health you know inciting panic is unhelpful And your tweets about R0s and exponential growth - tweets based on preliminary data with assumptions for still many unknown - are literally being RTd by ppl saying "omg I'm so scared now."

Don't do that to people. Inciting panic is irresponsible and bad for public health.