This should go without saying but if you have or recently had sore throat, cough, fevers, runny nose and/or diarrhea, part of your home hygiene plan should be to wash all linen (ie bed sheets, duvets/spreads & pillowcases), curtains & wiping your blinds. Also, air out the place! With many Little’s preparing to return to school or daycare tomorrow, I know many are anxious. In the 🧵below are a few home hygiene tips for general care & infection transmission reduction within your household. Same applies for vacation rentals, hotels, guest houses etc:

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@carlzimmer While I don’t disagree with these conclusions from mostly animal studies & the emerging human epidemiological data from SA, I encourage folks to continue to think past individual variants & ask, “what is necessary to halt this pandemic?”! 🧵👇🏾
www-nytimes-com.cdn.ampproject.org/c/s/www.nytime… Omicron is not the last variant & it’s not a direct predictor of how other future variants will behave. With that in mind, we need to behave like every possible variant is at the door.

@BBCWorld @BNCNews @ShoshUMD @karenhunter @Winston_Duke @JoyAnnReid @katiecouric #Covid_19

As a T-cell specialized vaccine immunologist/biologist/virologist, I feel 😩watching ppl over emphasize neutralizing antibodies’ role.
They’re doing the very thing viral vaccine immunologists know not to do!! T-cells do the heavy lifting here + more is needed. It’s not this/or 🧵 Using neutralizing Abs to define effectiveness is 😩

This over reliance & emphasis on describing adaptive immune function as primarily neutralizing is partly why ppl are now just throwing caution to the wind & no longer willing to even believe we know how to combat this virus.

One of the best ways to know that you're ready for conception, and even learn the best things to do to prepare yourself for pregnancy, is to get your preconception (fertility) checkup! Set up an appointment with your doctor so that they could review your medical history and discuss plans and proper ways to help you jumpstart your journey to pregnancy.

For the pediatricians & parents out there, see 🧵 & stay on alert. Get your eligible Littles vaccinated & ensure that everyone who is eligible in your circle vaccinates/boosts, masks & takes all precautions.

NB: this is a preprint. Omicron ID’d in Nov.

medrxiv.org/content/10.110… This study describes the rapid rise in pediatric COVID-19-associated hospitalizations in Tshwane District in the Gauteng Province of South Africa – one of the first known epicentres of the new Omicron variant of the SARS-CoV-2 virus.

"If you're on thyroid medication, Dr. Duke stresses the importance of checking in with your thyroid throughout pregnancy. "The fetal brain [and] spinal cord start forming at around 21 days, and the pregnancy hormone can actually activate your thyroid,” she explains. “So, sometimes medicine needs to be tweaked in the first trimester. I check it with the first pregnancy test, and then once per trimester, and at delivery."

Check out this blog from @modernfertility as I answer the most common questions about thyroid problems.

Way too many people out there are weaponizing the word “natural”!

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https://twitter.com/DrCindyMDuke/status/1424500651225096194

Whether it be “natural conception”, “natural birth”, “natural medicine” “natural beauty” or now, “natural immunity”, a certain segment of the population has coopted the meaning of “natural” & this is really fueling misinformation & exploitation of many vulnerable people …
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