"Such events are, therefore, likely commonplace in coronavirus populations of a size that occurs in nature."
Steve Griffin
@profstevegriffin.bsky.social
Professor of Cancer Virology, University of Leeds. Co-Chair, Independent SAGE
Neat experiments, with a conclusion that shouldn't surprise: "We found numerous examples of potential furin cleavage site acquisition and replacement through insertion mutation during the normal course of coronavirus replication." www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
biorxiv.org
One important principle that risks being lost in polarised debate following Jason Arday’s tragic death is this: intent is not the test for discrimination or institutional racism. The more important Q for any institution is whether its processes, practices and actions produced discriminatory outcomes
Ultimately, he only beat a "joke" candidate 2:1 in the heartlands of his immigration-dominated power base... No wonder he didn't show up...again... www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/c5... Nigel Farage wins Clacton by-election that major parties boycotted - live updates - BBC News
Nigel Farage wins Clacton by-election that major parties boycotted - live updates
The Reform UK leader won 22,239 votes while Count Binface came second with 9,455.
bbc.co.uk
This is SUCH important research. Many vaccines require storage at cold or ultra-cold temperatures which limits shelf-life once thawed AND is exceptionally challenging in shipping vaccines and for resource poor countries. This research shows potential for dried vaccines that don't need cold storage!
Half of vaccines are binned - this plant could change that
Scientists have kept vaccines stable at room temperature for a year, which could transform global vaccination.
bbc.co.uk
And some people want to include clinical trials in prediction markets… what could possibly go wrong? www.npr.org/2026/08/07/n...
Kalshi and Polymarket bets on clinical trials criticized as 'ghastly'
Researchers warn betting on clinical trials could incentivize insider trading and interfere with drug development. But Kalshi and Polymarket say they provide valuable information to patients.
npr.org
Headquarters@headquartersnews.bsky.social · 3w agoNew reporting reveals Ohio Republican Gov. candidate Vivek Ramaswamy hired his mother to manipulate clinical trial data for an Alzheimer's drug he owned the rights to. This scheme boosted Ramaswamy's company stock price and generated a $1.4 B IPO, where he then cashed out before the stock tanked.
At least, Essex police have confirmed they didn’t advised any candidate to not stay away from the count: “We have a proportionate and robust policing operation to ensure the safety and security of all participants in the count.” 2/2
Interested in endogenous viral elements? Then this meeting next February should be your diaries! Pleased to be invited as a speaker! royalsociety.org/science-even...
Endogenous viral elements | Royal Society
Theo Murphy meeting organised by Dr Katy Brown, Dr Emma Harding and Professor Rachael Tarlinton
royalsociety.org
Bhattacharya was talking scientifically illiterate 💩 in 2020, and some things don't change. Why he feels his sham position at NIH gives him licence to criticise Tony Fauci is beyond me. Clearly politics, not policy, as with all things GBD/AIER related.
Aaron Rupar@atrupar.com · 4w agoa stammering NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya criticizes Dr Fauci: "He leaned into the mandates, denying natural immunity" 🥴
a stammering NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya criticizes Dr Fauci: "He leaned into the mandates, denying natural immunity" 🥴
We need to separate two distinct failures: 1/Schools stayed closed longer than they needed to bec the govt failed to put in strong mitigation measures to make them safe 2/Johnson failed to invest properly in helping children recover – a failure that led Sir Kevan Collins to resign as “catch‑up tsar”
There are other important factors too. Nearly 40% of pupils are from minority ethnic backgrounds. Many lived in communities disproportionately exposed to covid-19, with higher risks of severe illness and death before vaccines. Children do not live in isolation from their families/grandparents.
But it was never simply a question of “should schools be open or shut?” during the pandemic. The key question pre‑vaccine was: were schools safe enough to be open - for teachers, vulnerable children and whole communities – given the wholly inadequate mitigations the Johnson government put in place.
As someone who sat on the Education Policy Institute’s working group on disadvantage gaps during covid, I’m under no illusions about the enormous educational and psychological harms of school closures – especially for working‑class and BME children. Those impacts are real and must not be downplayed.
Hey @lewisgoodall.com here is our Lancet article on Long COVID. Happy to chat. www.thelancet.com/action/showP...
thelancet.com
FGS … We wrote this right at the beginning. For many of us, it never was. However we also knew that a failure to interupt transmission would kill on a massive scale. www.bmj.com/content/369/...
Mitigating the wider health effects of covid-19 pandemic response
Countries worldwide have implemented strict controls on movement in response to the covid-19 pandemic. The aim is to cut transmission by reducing close contact (box 1), but the measures have profound ...
bmj.com
And we also calculated that imposing restrictions a week earlier would have saved tens of thousands of lives pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35421094/
Estimating the effects of lockdown timing on COVID-19 cases and deaths in England: A counterfactual modelling study - PubMed
Our modelling supports the claim that the relatively late introduction of social distancing and lockdown measures likely increased the scale, severity, and duration of the first wave of COVID-19 in En...
pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
Try this, Lewis. I would pay particular attention to the section by Peter Hotez. Comparing adult and childhood disease is a common strategy used by those with an agenda on this issue. It is deliberately avoiding the fact that kids are less likely to die, at all. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
COVID-19 and children
science.org
yup. i added this as a separate post - feel free to add more recent papers (the linked one is from 2024)! bsky.app/profile/chri...
Prof Christina Pagel@chrischirp.bsky.social · last mo.And on the lab leak hypothesis... While a lab leak has not been disproven (and likely can never be), every piece of positive evidence that has emerged since 2020 about where the outbreak began points to a natural origin from the Wuhan wet market. www.annualreviews.org/content/jour...
Also eally surprised to see @lewisgoodall.com 'just asking legitimate questions' about the covid lab leak theory. We really are well past that point now.
4. Support for children in disadvantaged communities, inc devices, connectivity, food, safe spaces to learn, catch-up teaching 5. Dedicated and planned mental health and social support if school closures become necessary 6. Build capacity to generate evidence more rapidly for the next time 11/12
2. Clean indoor air: helpful in a pandemic and good for health and learning at all times (and not just in schools but other buildings too) 3. Effective public health measures: testing, contact tracing, support for isolation, communication, etc 10/12
Keeping schools open is a goal not a policy. A blanket "never close schools" is a bad lesson. I suggest these: 1. Do not prejudge next pandemic which will be a different virus and could have very different age profile of who it attacks 9/12
And covid was not harmless to children. Being at lower risk than adults does not mean harmless. There was acute illness needing hospital, late onset rare but serious inflammatory disease, Long Covid and 13,000 UK children who lost a parent. (more details in substack post at end) 8/12
In fact, modelling on contact and case data estimated that if schools had remained open during the final Jan-March 2021 lockdown, it would barely have brought R below 1. I've already written about that devastating wave in which 87,000 people died. 7/12 christinapagel.substack.com/p/the-uk-cov...
The UK Covid Inquiry has laid bare the avoidable horror of the second Covid wave
It is becoming ever clearer both how devastating the second wave of winter 2020/21 was, and how much of that devastation could have been avoided.
christinapagel.substack.com
We did in fact try lockdown with schools fully open in November 2020. It worked initially, but cases in London & SE started rising again *before* lockdown even ended, because of new variant Alpha. Lockdown with schools open was not enough! 6/12
After 1st wave, we didn't run summer catch up programmes or improve ventilation in schools - we didn't even try until 2021, months after the last school closures. We didn't recommend masks (let alone good masks) in classrooms until after the last school closures. 5/12
Several studies have since shown definitely that children and schools contribute signficantly to transmission. In Sweden (with no formal lockdown), parents and teachers of pupils at school had higher infection rates. Children live with and are taught by adults. Many are vulnerable adults. 4/12