This article was originally posted in the Montreal Gazette. Recently, some people have been spreading the idea that getting additional doses of the COVID vaccine increases the risk of catching the

The hit TV show The Last of Us is taking the world by storm. It’s about a pandemic, but a very different one from the what we are experiencing now. It’s about a fungus that evolves to infect humans, and then mushroom heads run at exorbitant speeds trying to infect other humans.

archived 6 Feb 2023 12:54:51 UTC

President Biden informed Congress on Monday that he will end the twin national emergencies for addressing Covid-19 on May 11.

Egg prices are up 60%, which means we are paying upwards of $5-7 for a dozen eggs. That is if you can find them. Why? A constellation of reasons, but there is one we can’t ignore: the avian flu is hammering poultry farmers.

Rumors around COVID-19 vaccines and death, like the Died Suddenly video we highlighted earlier this week, aren’t random. Disinformation campaigns are deliberate, often orchestrated, and highly effective in confusing people enough to change behaviors, like not getting the COVID-19 vaccine. And it’s a very lucrative business. Malicious rumors continue to be a massive challenge in public health, but we aren’t hopeless. There are things that can be done.

A review of the cumulative body of evidence

Well, I was very much enjoying my holiday but COVID continues to do its COVID thing. It’s time for an update. China: A humanitarian disaster As expected, the COVID-19 situation in China is out of hand. In an interesting turn of events, China went from a “zero COVID” policy to a “let it rip” policy by dropping all mitigation measures without fully vaccinating the highest of risk or strengthening their healthcare system.

CoV-lineages has 18 repositories available. Follow their code on GitHub.

We don't know if they'll ever sing their old songs again.

Alright people, the data you’ve been waiting for: the first real-world effectiveness data on the fall COVID-19 (bivalent) booster. Here are the results. Science until now As a reminder, we hoped the fall booster would accomplish three things: Greater protection

The dreaded and much anticipated triple-demic is finally here—for the first time RSV, flu, and COVID-19 are rising together. And it’s not looking pretty. Here is the current state of affairs. Overall Every Friday the CDC updates their “influenza-like illness (ILI)” data. This is a database in which providers tally patients that presented with ILI—a fever and a cough and/or sore throat—at their office. So these numbers include everything (flu, RSV, COVID-19, etc.) and are a general indication of the climate of respiratory of health in the United States.

It's across most of the planet now. Delving into why, what to expect, and what we can do about it.

Until now, the CDC has relied on Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report—an internal scientific publication journal—to communicate COVID-19 science throughout the pandemic. But this pipeline is too slow for crisis communication. We need rapid analyses to guide evidence-based decision-making.

Importance The origin of highly divergent “cryptic” SARS-CoV-2 Spike sequences, which appear in wastewater but not clinical samples, is unknown. These wastewater sequences have harbored many of the same mutations that later emerged in Omicron variants. If these enigmatic sequences are human-derived and transmissible, they could both be a source of future variants and a valuable tool for forecasting sequences that should be incorporated into vaccines and therapeutics. Objective To determine whether enigmatic SARS-CoV-2 lineages detected in wastewater have a human or non-human (i.e., animal) source. Design On January 11, 2022, an unusual Spike sequence was detected in municipal wastewater from a metropolitan area. Over the next four months, more focused wastewater sampling resolved the source of this variant. Setting This study was performed in Wisconsin, United States, which has a comprehensive program for detecting SARS-CoV-2 in wastewater. Participants Composite wastewater samples were used for this study; therefore, no individuals participated. Main Outcome(s) and Measure(s) The primary outcome was to determine the host(s) responsible for shedding this variant in wastewater. Both human and non-human hosts were plausible candidates at the study’s outset. Results The presence of the cryptic virus was narrowed from a municipal wastewater sample (catchment area 100,000 people) to an indoor wastewater sample from a single facility (catchment area ∼30 people), indicating the human origin of this virus. Extraordinarily high concentrations of viral RNA (∼520,000,000 genome copies / L and ∼1,600,000,000 genome copies / L in June and August 2022, respectively) were detected in the indoor wastewater sample. The virus sequence harbored a combination of fixed nucleotide substitutions previously observed only in Pango lineage B.1.234, a variant that circulated at low levels in Wisconsin from October 2020 to February 2021. Conclusions and Relevance High levels of persistent SARS-CoV-2 shedding from the gastrointestinal tract of an infected individual likely explain the presence of evolutionarily advanced “cryptic variants” observed in some wastewater samples. Question What is the source of unusual SARS-CoV-2 Omicron-like Spike variants detected in wastewater but not in clinical samples? Findings We identified a cryptic SARS-CoV-2 lineage in wastewater collected at a central wastewater treatment facility and traced its source to a single wastewater outlet serving six restrooms. The virus in this sample resembled a 2020-2021 lineage except for the Spike protein, in which Omicron-like variants were observed. Meaning Prolonged shedding from the human gastrointestinal tract is the most likely source for evolutionarily advanced SARS-CoV-2 variant sequences found in wastewater. ### Competing Interest Statement The authors have declared no competing interest. ### Funding Statement This study was made possible by the generous support of the Rockefeller Foundation's Regional Accelerators for Genomics Surveillance (DHO/TCF), Wisconsin Department of Health Services Epidemiology and Laboratory Capacity funds ([www.dhs.wisconsin.gov][1], 144 AAJ8216) to DHO, CDC contract 75D30121C11060 (DHO/TCF), Wisconsin Department of Health Services ELC Wastewater Surveillance funds ([www.dhs.wisconsin.gov][1], 130:AAI8627) to the UW-Madison Wisconsin State Laboratory of Hygiene (WSLH), and NIDA contract 1U01DA053893-01 (MJ). ### Author Declarations I confirm all relevant ethical guidelines have been followed, and any necessary IRB and/or ethics committee approvals have been obtained. Yes I confirm that all necessary patient/participant consent has been obtained and the appropriate institutional forms have been archived, and that any patient/participant/sample identifiers included were not known to anyone (e.g., hospital staff, patients or participants themselves) outside the research group so cannot be used to identify individuals. Yes I understand that all clinical trials and any other prospective interventional studies must be registered with an ICMJE-approved registry, such as ClinicalTrials.gov. I confirm that any such study reported in the manuscript has been registered and the trial registration ID is provided (note: if posting a prospective study registered retrospectively, please provide a statement in the trial ID field explaining why the study was not registered in advance). Yes I have followed all appropriate research reporting guidelines and uploaded the relevant EQUATOR Network research reporting checklist(s) and other pertinent material as supplementary files, if applicable. Yes Sequencing data is available in NCBI SRA and Genbank. Additional data is available from https://go.wisc.edu/4134pl. https://go.wisc.edu/4134pl [1]: https://www.dhs.wisconsin.gov

The 1st of daily/frequent brief updates

Lab studies assessing the preliminary impact of our updated fall boosters are trickling in. (We don’t have “real world” data yet, and honestly, it may be a while.) In all, we knew boosters would help given circulating variants, but we didn’t know how

SARS-CoV-2 is having a mixed impact across the globe. The WHO is tracking more than 100 subvariants of Omicron, and each country has a different makeup of “subvariant soup,” but two are winning the race: XBB and BQ.1.1. Couple this with changing behaviors and different immune histories (which wave hit and when; booster uptake), and country-to-country comparisons are getting harder than ever.

Biden officials are bracing for the prospect that the sole preventive Covid treatment for immunocompromised people, Evusheld, could soon be ineffective.

After recovering from COVID-19, a significant proportion of symptomatic and asymptomatic individuals develop Long COVID. Fatigue, orthostatic intolerance, brain fog, anosmia, and ageusia/dysgeusia in Long COVID resemble “sickness behavior,” ...

Through a new book, op-eds, and a steady stream of TikToks, Wes Ely has become a leading voice on the recovery that can take place after trauma or grueling illness.

A piece in The Economist this week about masks, and how at least half of the people in Japan are planning to continue to use masks indefinitely (where there was never a mandate), prompts a deeper look into what has been the secret of Japan’s extraordinary success in the pandemic. Over time it has the least cumulative deaths per capita of any major country in the world.

The protection from flu vaccines erodes pretty quickly over a flu season. A dose given in early September may offer limited protection by February or March.

Researchers at Tel Aviv University and their colleagues have identified two antibodies they report can neutralize all of today’s known COVID-19 variants with up to 97% efficacy in a laborator…

Psychological distress— including depression, anxiety, worry, perceived stress, and loneliness — before Covid-19 infection is associated with an increased risk of long Covid, a new study finds.

Today ACIP— the external advisory committee to the CDC— met to discuss the bivalent fall boosters in the United States. This committee’s main purpose is to evaluate the safety and effectiveness of vaccines as well as policy recommendations for dissemination (who should get one and when).

Where things stand now with the pandemic, and who is being hurt the most, as the country prepares to enter its third Covid autumn.

Americans born in 2021 can expect to live for just 76.1 years — the lowest life expectancy has been since 1996, according to a new analysis. It's the biggest two-year decline in almost 100 years.

Texas health officials on Tuesday reported the death of a person with monkeypox — what appears to be the first fatal case in the United States during the unprecedented global outbreak of the virus.