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Dr. Angela Rasmussen Profile picture
Dr. Angela Rasmussen
@angie_rasmussen
Virologist. PI @VIDOInterVac @USask. Co-EIC @Els_Vaccine. Jeopardy! loser. "Disreputable vaccine cheerleader." 🇺🇸in🇨🇦. Opinions my own. she/her
70 subscribers
May 14 • 11 tweets • 4 min read
In case you you were wondering what’s going on in Canadian medical freedom/anti-vax news, the embarrassing off-brand J6ers of the True North convoyed out to BC to prevent 400 H5N1-infected ostriches from being culled.

This got me thinking about H5N1 in ostrich hosts 🧵👇🏻 When I came across this bright idea that these ostriches are somehow now H5N1 cure factories. I blame the movie Outbreak for giving people the idea that you can cure highly pathogenic viruses with serum or whatever. But H5N1 pathogenicity exists across a range of severity.
May 7 • 26 tweets • 9 min read
New EO banning “dangerous gain-of-function” experiments dropped Monday.

Allow me to break out my deranged anti-vax kakistocrat translator.

Will this improve the safety & security of biological research?

Hell yes, because biological research won’t exist anymore! Image I do kind of love the idea that Trump’s path to dictatorship includes a proclamation on his political position on mouse adaptation, unregulated DNA synthesis, & whatever else is deemed subjectively dangerous by authors who obviously know fuck all about it.
whitehouse.gov/presidential-a…
May 2 • 12 tweets • 5 min read
I am often challenged to provide an example of a vaccine that could not have been developed without doing gain-of-function virology research.

Thanks to HHS @SecKennedy and former @BiosafetyNow board member @DrJBhattacharya, I now have an answer:

Generation Gold Standard Image Can't complain about half a billion for a "next-generation universal vaccine platform"! What is this amazingly innovative new vaccine technology? Tell me more, because this says "BPL-inactivated, whole virus platform". That describes current flu vaccines.
hhs.gov/press-room/hhs…
Apr 22 • 8 tweets • 2 min read
I am the co-Editor-in-Chief of @Els_Vaccine & I’ll be the first to say that a lot about academic publishing needs reform.

But replacing peer review with ideologically-driven censorship or shutting journals down in the name of “free speech” is not reform. Image FYI to the NIH Director: having your paper rejected because peer reviewers found it lacked scientific merit is not censorship or gatekeeping. It means your work didn’t pass muster & wasn’t up to scientific standards. Expert peer review is what distinguishes a journal from a blog. Image
Apr 21 • 13 tweets • 3 min read
So this interview lasted 2 hours so this “you’re scaring me” part might seem like an overreaction or fearmongering to someone without that context.

There’s a lot of evidence to support my hypothesis that a potential H5N1 pandemic would be worse than COVID. The clade 2.3.4.4.b viruses circulating in the US have infected many different mammalian species. In the course of this, we are seeing many opportunities for these viruses to adapt to mammalian hosts, including switching receptor usage & increasing virus fitness.
Apr 8 • 15 tweets • 5 min read
One thing I’ve been wondering about: why is H5N1 so quiet? It’s everywhere & exposure risk remains high.

No news on new cases. Is this because there are no new cases or just less testing? So I took a look at some numbers.

Spoiler: it’s bad policy & sabotaged response capacity. Over at @CDCgov, they maintain an updated H5N1 situation report so I thought I’d see if that gave any indication of what’s going on.

cdc.gov/bird-flu/situa…
Apr 3 • 10 tweets • 3 min read
Hardly a surprise that Tracy Beth Høeg is now in at FDA as the Grima Wormtongue to Commissioner Marty Makary.

Høeg’s only “extensive experience working in vaccine science” is making up imaginary risks about vaccination to further monetize her various anti-vax platforms. Like her fellow contrarians in the HHS conman clown car, she’s been persecuted & censored by the public health industrial complex for her dissenting views.

Evidently LinkedIn removing false info—like this omg plasmids with a SV40 origin in Pfizer vaccines thing—is proof of truth
Mar 27 • 21 tweets • 9 min read
I’m not going to be able to tell you about the consequences of EVERY lost grant, but I’m going to try.

Let’s start with the Antiviral Drug Discovery (AViDD) program for pathogens of pandemic concern! It just got unceremonially shitcanned. Image Here’s a list of all the funded research with links to NIH Reporter so you can dig through all the info about what your tax dollars have funded.

Do you think we need more antiviral medication? I do! AViDD research was developing new antivirals.

niaid.nih.gov/research/antiv…
Mar 20 • 20 tweets • 6 min read
I’ve now been asked about the USDA H5N1 action plan quite a few times, so maybe I should say a few things about it.

There are a few things I like about it, more things I don’t, and some things about it that are completely WTAF.

This is the 5 step plan: Image Basically this is the plan:
$500M for biosecurity improvements
$400M for indemnifying producer losses
Deregulation
$100M for vaccine research
Relax import controls to make it easier to buy flu-free eggs from abroad

Link here: usda.gov/about-usda/new…
Mar 7 • 12 tweets • 4 min read
RFK Jr is not a trustworthy source about vaccine efficacy or zoonosis, particularly for H5N1 in chickens.

His claim that poultry vaccination will "turn those birds into mutant factories" is incorrect & I've got receipts 👇

h/t @Alexander_Tin
cbsnews.com/news/rfk-jr-va… Most of the data on poultry vaccination comes from Mexico and China. Mexico has used vaccination successfully for 30 years to control bird flu in poultry. However, this did influence virus evolution since flu vaccines aren't sterilizing.
journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/jv…
Mar 6 • 7 tweets • 3 min read
I found Bhattacharya’s hearing striking not because of what he promised to do, but what he wouldn’t commit to. For example, refusing to commit to not breaking the law if asked to do so. Image There’s a longer list of things he would not commit to, including:
-Not doing unnecessary studies on vaccine safety because someone might disagree with settled science
-Funding grants with the billions in appropriations being illegally impounded
-Rehiring fired federal workers
Mar 5 • 19 tweets • 7 min read
Well my old friend Jay Bhattacharya is having his Senate confirmation hearing today so time for a quick refresher on who this guy is.

A mass infection proponent who never met a contrarian position he wouldn’t take for personal gain. He first rose to national prominence with the Santa Clara study—a terribly executed serology study that couldn’t be validated & concluded the CFR of COVID-19 was much lower than it actually was.

medrxiv.org/content/10.110…
Feb 27 • 24 tweets • 6 min read
Okay, so. I don’t know how much of a heads up this is when it’s just a notice about these 2 mutations. Do they really raise serious concerns about “increased transmission?”

Sort of. It’s more complex than D701N & E626K, omg pandemic bird flu.

What do these mutations do in H5N1? Flu is a segmented, negative sense RNA virus. This means its genome is divided into 8 pieces and they are negative coding sense and serve as a template for transcribing (copying) mRNA from each segment.

D701N and E672K are in a segment called PB2.
Feb 19 • 19 tweets • 5 min read
I have insomnia a lot lately so may as well share what’s literally keeping me up at night.

It’s a long list but tonight it’s flu. Yes, H5N1, but also seasonal flu. Firing federal scientists brings a flu-filled future.

Have you ever wondered how flu vaccine strains are chosen? Every year the flu vaccine changes to match the strains that are circulating around the world. Right now these are 3 main viruses: H1N1(pdm09) and H3N2 flu A and 1 from the flu B Victoria lineage.
Feb 18 • 25 tweets • 7 min read
This is going to be another rough week for our colleagues in government & for all of us. Vast cuts of govt scientists hurts everyone’s health.

Let’s talk about what this will do to vaccines.

This is the process. Here’s how they’re going to undermine it:
cdc.gov/vaccines/basic… So as @CDCgov helpfully describes, vaccine development is a long and complex process involving all the HHS agencies.

cdc.gov/vaccines/basic…
Feb 16 • 21 tweets • 6 min read
Here’s some positive H5N1 news for a change: conditional approval for poultry vaccines made by @Zoetis for chickens.

Why didn’t we do this sooner? The answer is more complex than you might think.

science.org/content/articl… For years, the standard approach in the US, Canada, and Europe has been to cull birds in flocks that get hit with HPAI (highly pathogenic avian influenza). A couple reasons for this:
1. HPAI kills chickens & turkeys (the HP refers to severity in birds)
2. No other alternatives
Feb 14 • 25 tweets • 6 min read
I wasn’t planning on discussing this publicly (it’s nobody’s business) but after this bullshit MAHA EO, fuck it, it’s personal story time. Let’s talk safe meds.

I lost ~75 pounds taking Ozempic. I don’t give a damn if I have to take it for the rest of my life, it fucking RULES. I started Ozempic in Feb 2023 after my annual checkup. I told my doctor I am dieting & riding my Peloton maniacally but I can’t lose weight. She said it’s age, my hypothyroid condition, stress, & lack of sleep. It’s not a matter of working harder or more. She prescribed Ozempic.
Feb 14 • 17 tweets • 6 min read
Giving infectious disease research a break, as promised by the MAHA agenda.

Let's break down what exactly this Executive Order is *really* saying. Fortunately, I speak fluent anti-vax grifterese & can translate.

whitehouse.gov/presidential-a… There's this background section about the terrible epidemic of chronic disease & they are VERY worried about children.

Note the diseases they focus on? Autism spectrum disorders, obesity, & ADD/ADHD = vaccines did it.

"increased prescriptions" = evidence-based medicine is bad Image
Feb 11 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
Can’t say whether D1.1 H5N1 (new cow genotype) is more or less virulent than B3.13 (prior cow genotype), as @JenniferNuzzo correctly notes.

Viruses can be more or less virulent than others but the main determinant of pathogenicity is the host. That’s key for assessing H5N1 risk. So far most of the cases have been “mild” (an imprecise term I dislike, but good to convey “not severe”). That includes both B3.13 and D1.1 cases. But it’s probably not the virus primarily driving that. It’s more likely determined by how the host responds to infection.
Feb 9 • 19 tweets • 4 min read
Editing scientific content for political purity is turning MMWR into a compromised propaganda organ.

And why are the propaganda squads at CDC replacing specifically H5N1 bird flu studies?

I’ve got some pretty serious fascism- and flu-related concerns about this. Over the last year, the CDC’s H5N1 response has left a lot to be desired. They fucked up testing—again, as with COVID, they failed to make functional PCR primer/probes—and did not take decisive action that IMO could reduce risk, such as offering vaccine to high risk workers.
Feb 2 • 15 tweets • 5 min read
On Data Purge Eve, many people stayed up late to save the CDC website. @charles_gaba downloaded the whole thing. 👑

A group of us are working to make these preserved data an accessible & publicly available resource. More to come, but get started here 👇🏻

acasignups.net/25/02/02/llink… Page 2. These data were generated with US taxpayer dollars. They belong to the American people. CDC made them available to the world.

Deleting these data is theft. Deletion disobedience is how we take back what is ours.

acasignups.net/25/02/02/links…