As you read more and more reports of uncommon pathogens infecting a lot of people, or common pathogens surging far more than usual and/or having unusually severe effects, please remember that this is what immunity theft predicts and what we've warned about for years.

1/ By contrast, "immunity debt" or "post-pandemic normalizing of levels" as an explanation makes less and less sense as more time goes by. In 2025, it is absurd to still be talking of new surges of illness being due to the lack of immunity from mitigations that ended years ago.

2/

Lots of things in biology correlate with "latitude" (biodiversity, population size, body size, etc.), but "latitude" itself isn't a thing in and of itself. What actually matters is photoperiod, temperature, precipitation, etc. That's how we should think of "seasonal" as well.

1/ Viral transmission may be strongly and predictably "seasonal", mostly occurring during certain times of the year (flu, RSV), but it's not either-or. Other viruses may be common year-round but also increase at certain times of the year.

2/

So, I'm not sure the American right has thought through the implications of annexing Canada yet.

A few things to consider...

1/ First of all, Canada has a slightly larger population than California, so presumably we'd get at least 54 electoral college votes in presidential elections. Polls here showed that about 61% of Canadians would have voted for Harris and 21% for Trump.



/2globalnews.ca/news/10830218/…

(Sarcasm alert) The way viral evolution works is that if you have a naïve idea of how it works and that helps with calm-mongering, that's how it works. Need some examples? 🧵 For example, if it helps with calm-mongering to think that viruses have to evolve to become mild or else they will drive their hosts and themselves extinct, that must be what happens. Don't let actual evolutionary biologists convince you otherwise! (Sarcasm)

One side is consistently painted as violent and the other as being unsafe. Is that accurate? Well, all of these happened on video in Ontario, Canada. 🧵 Attacking with a nail gun while shouting "All Palestinians will die".

How sure are you that only certain people are susceptible to severe acute COVID, and that you're not one of them?

What is your level of certainty that only specific people are vulnerable to long COVID, and that you're not one of them?

1/ Are you certain that repeated SARS-CoV-2 infections won't have cumulative effects?

How confident are you that you don't, or won't ever, harbour a persistent SARS-CoV-2 infection?

Are you totally convinced that SARS-CoV-2 will necessarily become mild and seasonal?

2/

Beyond "immunity debt".

In what ways could SARS-CoV-2 be involved in surges of other infectious diseases like RSV, tuberculosis, fungal infections, Mycoplasma, etc.?

Here is a list of additional hypotheses, all increasingly supported in the scientific literature.

🧵 H1. Temporary immune effects of recent SARS-CoV-2 infection increase susceptibility to other infections.

"Punk variants" and "eek soup". 🧵 I've written many times about how viral evolution occurs at two levels: within hosts (intrahost) and among hosts (interhost).

https://x.com/TRyanGregory/status/1477332222206423041

On tuberculosis. I'm sure we'll be hearing a lot more about how lockdowns caused immunity debt or meant that people weren't getting tested. Here are four additional hypotheses that will get very little attention in the reporting:

🧵 H1. Temporary immune effects of recent SARS-CoV-2 infection increase susceptibility to TB.

journals.plos.org/plosone/articl…

So, @arijitchakrav and I have been talking about the idea of "slow COVID", which is a distinct issue alongside severe acute COVID and long COVID.

This means the accumulation of damage that shows up over time, either through repeated infections or persistent infection.

https://twitter.com/atranscendedman/status/1849077902781849692

The main distinction between slow COVID and long COVID is that long COVID is clearly associated with debilitating symptoms from the outset. Slow COVID may be more insidious, with organ or immune or cognitive or other function declining gradually over time.

Case in point about denialism, when I post this kind of thing , they'll screenshot and go on a rant about how I don't understand stuff. (Ironically, they demonstrate both poor reading comprehension and a lack of understanding of humour).

Here's why it's denialism 🧵

https://twitter.com/TRyanGregory/status/1846913521247764693

1) Does SARS-CoV-2 affect lungs? Check the literature for yourself:

scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&…

Here's the full pandemic picture based on wastewater surveillance in Canada. A few things of note (most of which I have discussed previously several times): 🧵 1. The story isn't just about peaks, it's about the lack of lows. At best, there have been six periods of lower activity, but really there have only been two decent lulls that were not still at a fairly high baseline and weren't immediately followed by another peak.

The minimizer position is committed to every one of these assumptions being true. The cautious position is the right one if even one of them is false. 🧵 Required assumptions:

1. Immunity against severe illness will be long-lasting or can be maintained at low risk (vaccination or truly mild infection).

2. Most people are not at risk of long COVID.

3. There is no cumulative damage or risk associated with repeated infection.

As we head into the new school year and then into winter, a reminder about these articles focused on actually doing something to keep our kids and other loved ones healthy. 🧵 August 2024.

"Protecting HCWs and patients: An impossible fix, or an essential one?"

calgaryherald.com/opinion/column…

If anyone says "It's all still Omicron", "The current variants aren't that different", "SARS-CoV-2 is running out of evolutionary space", or "The current wave is finally over!", show them these. 🧵

For my reporter friends who are still writing about SARS-CoV-2 variants (thank you!), here are some notes that I hope are helpful.

🧵 * Pretty much everything circulating right now is a descendant of BA.2.86 (Pirola), which was a highly divergent variant that evolved within a single, chronically-infected host.

* BA.2.86 was descended directly from BA.2 and had about 30 new spike mutations.

When making a decision regarding who is and who isn't a reliable source of information about SARS-CoV-2, one can look at how often they have said either "Well, I didn't expect that" versus "Yes, as I have been saying for a while now".

Here's a notable example. 🧵 I want to bring up a thread I wrote *a year ago*, on the then newly-discovered (by @shay_fleishon) BA.2.86 variant.

https://x.com/TRyanGregory/status/1697387659537133766

Introducing three exciting new approaches to public health*! 🧵

1. Epidemiastrology.
2. Viralchemy.
3. Common-cold reading.

(* For personal career advancement purposes only. No accountability allowed.) 1. Epidemiastrology: making incorrect predictions about SARS-CoV-2 waves based on nonsense assumptions about mechanisms.

Lots of SARS-CoV-2 in wastewater. Far fewer hospitalizations than in early waves of this size.

Why?

Could be several (non-mutually-exclusive) things. We've talked about most of these at various times before, but here's a rundown of some hypotheses.

🧵 H1. Hospitalizations lag wastewater, so it's just a matter of time.

I don't think this is it, to be honest. Hospitals haven't been overrun during waves for long time now and wastewater levels have been high for a while already.

If someone says that SARS-CoV-2 variant evolution is slowing down, they can safely be ignored as a source of non-bogus information.


More on what is actually happening with SARS-CoV-2 evolution:

https://x.com/TRyanGregory/status/1801997622376354200?t=xZg98KvNX2zrQLMsPo1I0w&s=19

SARS-CoV-2 provides an unprecedented opportunity to watch evolution occur in real time. It also happens to be showing the pervasiveness of many misconceptions about evolution, even among scientists with limited knowledge of evolutionary biology. Here's a list and explanations. 🧵 Misconceptions about evolution on display with SARS-CoV-2:

1. Typological thinking.
2. Variation seen as noise rather than signal.
3. Teleology.
4. Orthogenesis.
5. Not understanding how natural selection works.
6. Ignoring Orgel's second rule.
7. Myths about human evolution.