This article is making the rounds. Since I suspect most people seeing this have not read the publication cited here, some information: 1/ nypost.com/2024/01/16/new… As far as i can tell, The authors studied a pangolin virus, in mice that have been changed genetically: with this change they have the receptor for SARS COV 2 on their cells. Without that, ACE 2 binding viruses would not infect.

This paper should nominated as " paper of the year" if it were up to me. Why? It is a beautiful example of studying the relationship between anthropogenic change and spillover risk, based on 25 years of data collected in Australia. pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36384167/ their basis was data from spillovers of Hendra virus. They then focussed on locations of bat roosts. Fruit bats are the reservoir of Hendra viruses. Historically, the bats were nomadic, moving among roost sites to track pulses of flowering by Eucalyptus trees

Interesting paper this week in cell press that studied a possible pathway that is disrupted in patients with long COVID (LC). An comination of studies involving patients and mechanismtic research in mice builds the case for a gut-brain axis involovement cell.com/cell/fulltext/… An interesting finding that did not get too much attention (in my view) was that they grouped the patients based on symptoms. They then analysed metabolites and found significant differences in the levels of amino acids and particularly 5HT, in the serotonin pathway (reduced)

Great paper by PhD student Louella Kasbergen. Massive piece of work, looking into the quality of studies using serology for arbovirus exposure testing. This is often done, but quite challenging due to cross reactive antibodies 1/.. She did a systematic review of current knowledge and knowledge gaps in differential arbovirus serology, based on 102 papers. Using a quality scoring system she shows that the majority of papers provides insufficient detail to support conclusions on outcomes 2/..

Veel heisa over “mijn bewuste acties om zaken onder de pet te houden”, volgens @mauricedehond. Bronnen: mails, een dia, en een shot uit een interview. Voor hem HET bewijs dat ik me het recht toe eigende om de wereld voor te liegen. Dat is nogal wat. Laten we ff echt kijken. Voorafgaand aan de meeting met Dr Fauci was er een publicatie die concludeerde: komt uit vleermuizen, kijk maar naar de fylogenie. Daarvan zei Kristian A: dat kun je met fylogenie niet bewijzen (wat klopt). Is makkelijker om daar even overleg over te hebben (mail 1 februari 2020)

evidence review "Stay-at-home orders, physical distancing measures, and restrictions on gathering sizes were repeatedly found to be associated with significant community-wide reductions in SARS-CoV-2 transmission" royalsociety.org/-/media/policy… "Within care home settings, strict cohorting of staff alongside residents and restrictions on visitors were frequently found
to be associated with reduced SARS-CoV-2 transmission among residents and reduced outbreaks within care homes".

NIH to intensify scrutiny of foreign grant recipients in wake of COVID origins debate……i guess that means an admin top-up as well? The argument that data should flow freely: well, lets evaluate how common that is between US institutes….. nature.com/articles/d4158… It will all depend on how this is done. Sharing labbooks and all data every few months also sounds line a awfull lot of work. The data is there, of course, archiving is part of lab routine. And for genomic data and derived data, we have data repositories in the INSDC, see fi ..

@KatherineEban @VanityFair Interesting read, with some surprising observations. Reading it, i cannot help but mentioning an omission: the initial draft paper on the market by Gao et al found an association with human DNA, not mentioning animal DNA presence. @KatherineEban @VanityFair I think the biggest issue with the new information was: there was DNA present from a range of wild animals that had NOT been mentioned in the data on market analyses produced by china authorities. This already had been clear since a survey was published on live animals

"One of the points is how different aspects of our health care system performance and readiness will impinge on how well we are able to respond to a pandemic" Some lessons from a debate, but I do think they oversimplify the testing issue. @NEJM @JeremyFarrar particularly: Not all solutions come from private sector. Or SHOULD come from the private sector for that matter. I think it is unfortunate to see that narrative going around. We need strengthening of public health labs, reference labs, people that do this for a living, ....

"it is likely that PASC immunopathology is quite distinct and heterogeneous, thus requiring large-scale longitudinal analyses in patients with and without PASC after an acute SARS-CoV-2 infection." Could not agree more (which is tragic)! An excellent overview of the current ... knowledge of innate and adaptive immune responses in acute and long COVID-19, with a listing of observations. A key challenge (imho): there is no large cohort that allows testing all of this. As a consequence, there is a staggering list of outstanding questions, listed here and .

A bleak report on a hugely challenging problem: the need for change in academic work culture to reduce mental health issues. A staggeringly high percentage of people experience excess pressure, bullying, discrimination. Now this seems to be happening in all of society.. But does mean “we” need to act. With “we”, i mean us, academic leaders, but also everyone involved. The discrepancy between anonymous reports and formal complaints shows there are barriers to reporting. …

Gezien/gehoord deze week: 1. collegetour fimpje over Sigrid Kaag 2. Bijeenkomst Spinoza club oa over de machteloosheid van werkgevers 3. Verhaal van jurist die aangeeft dat aangifte doen als target tot verergering leidt 4. Een golf van media aandacht, .1/ Over o hoe erg dit is 5. Commentaren van collega politici , die het ook erg vinden maar natuurlijk niet zwichten. Wat ik er van vind? 1. Herkenbaar, pijnlijk, woestmakend 2. Gebruikt het programma dit nu als reklame? Letterlijk: ga dat zien, zondag! Dubieus 3. 2/

Volgende spreker vanuit landsadvocaat met terugblik. Meer dan 50 kort gedingen over allerlei onderwerpen. Vooral bij versoepelingen kwamen er procedures. Daarbij leerden alle advocaten de “ medisch epidemiologische adviezen” te lezen. Eerste geding bij “ de speech van Rutte” : “Overheid, u doet te weinig”. Boeiend verhaal over behoefte aan informatie over bestrijding vanuit de advocatuur en hoe bij de eerste rechtszaak de rechter een toetsingskader ontwikkelde dat sindsdien gehanteerd kon worden

Tweede spreker bij afscheid George Haringhuizen: kerckhaert, burgemeester Hengelo en voorzitter integriteitscommissie J&V en betrokken bij de oprichting van het Centrum Infectieziektenbestrijding . Maar ook betrokken bij het project “ versterking infrastructuur bestrijding”. Toenmalige inzet: bouw aan vertrouwen , ga terug naar 25 GGDen, markeer wanneer iets een landelijke aanpak vergt. Advies toen: capaciteit is te beperkt voor een nationale crisis. Interessant om vanuit de toenmalige adviezen de pandemie te bezien. Volgens Kerckhart met name ..

@RinkevdBrink advies: onvermoeibaar kennis delen, belangrijk om te blijven doen. Voorbeelden oa @mkeulemans die daarvoor terecht journalist van het jaar werd. Ook de 2-wekelijkse update door Jaap van Dissel en Jacco Wallinga bij de @NOS als goed voorbeeld Met wekelijkse meer dan een miljoen lezers, wat aangaf hoe groot de honger naar kennis was. Daar stonden kritische geluiden tegenover: het red team, maar ook artsen die corona als probleem ontkenden

thread on this new paper: New study from large group of authors, almost all from China (including Hongkong), focusing on virus discovery. Group reflect veterinary/agriculture and wildlife expertise. nature.com/articles/s4146… Focus on virus diversity in pangolin and zoo animals, given examples of zoonotic spillovers, including SARS COV 2. The authors comment that the bioprospecting approach (metagenomic testing) is insufficient: it discovers many “ new” viruses but does not say if they are a problem.

Ok, thread on wastewater, flagging paper. We've been interested in exploring wastewater for some time, starting with a collaboration with @DTUtweet where Frank Aarestrup has been pushing this for some years for surveillance of antimicrobial resistance. pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37100150/ When we teamed up with @Compare and @veo (thanks, @H2020 program!) we included it in our plans. General concept: catch all surveillance could make surveillance of unusual diseases, pathogens, resistance genes more accessible, independent from human sampling,

Human Infection caused by Avian Influenza A (H5N1) - Chile, an update: 12 contacts were identified, no new cases. Important to know. Report states viruses are highly similar to viruses found in animals in the region who.int/emergencies/di… But also some key concerns here: it took 2 weeks to get flu diagnosed, 3 weeks to confirm by genomics. If this had been a spreading virus, the cat could have been out of the bag. This is why we need capacity building globally for key diagnostics and confirmatory testing

Mobilisation of public data of SARS COV2, a multi-institutional effort developed at the request of the EU presidency as part of the European open data cloud and linked with the INSDC. Here shown for raw reads, the underlying data that often sit in individuals computers. 1/n contributions from across the globe. New features: data generators can claim the data which then links it to their OrCID, so that credits are clear and unchangeable. 1/n

Mink are highly susceptible to SARS COV 2, and countries have dealt with this risk in different ways. While NL and DK culled mink farms, other countries established enhanced surveillance and a different approach 1/.. In Poland, positive farms are subjected to rigorous isolation and the animals are tested repeatedly for the presence of SARS-CoV-2 until two consecutive rounds of negative testing. Farms are culled if the mink mortality exceeds 10% or in case of mink-to-human transmission.

This analysis was triggered by conclusions from a paper submitted as preprint almost a year ago. In that, the authors analysed SARS COV 2 positive samples from environmental testing on the Hunan seafood market from the first phase of the pandemic assets.researchsquare.com/files/rs-13703…

https://twitter.com/MarionKoopmans/status/1637989813482663937

they also tested for the presence of human DNA and reported that "The SARS-COV-2 nucleic acids in the positive environmental samples
55 showed significant correlation of abundance of Homo sapiens with SARS-CoV-2". No info on animal DNA, which seemed strange