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Gary & Shaggy have been dx w/the first ever documented cases of Marfan syndrome
Reminding us that sometimes unknown disease associations can stay hidden for years until somebody finally connects the dots
“Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence”
people.com/first-documented-…
BirdieBittern retweeted
When bird flu spread through a Utah mink farm, the government should’ve ordered it to cull its mink, experts say.
But the state never seriously considered it.
A fur trade representative warned that doing so would kill the industry.
propublica.org/article/bird-…
BirdieBittern retweeted
My parent's homeland has been trashed by Amerikkka for so long, and now they're being euthanized💙😢
Puerto Rico is currently sitting at its highest Covid levels in over two years, and the news and government are out here running the classic “Covid is over, nobody look at that, look at influenza and dengue instead” script.
Puerto Rico news outlets stress Covid is on the decline while instead influenza claims 22 lives due to 27 school outbreaks.
The same week, the official Puerto Rico Health Department posts photos of a packed in person Infection Control meeting with zero masks.
Meanwhile in Puerto Rico, a woman suffers with a cough so bad and feels as if something is stuck in her throat.
She hopes it’s just “la monga” which translates as “a severe head cold, common cold, or the flu” and not Covid.
A tourist’s husband gets hospitalized after a week of sickness and treated for severe “upper respiratory infection URI” and pneumonia.
Puerto Rico just casually still talking around that C word.
BirdieBittern retweeted
My cousin who I haven’t spoken to since around 2021/2022 after she became irate after I shared Covid information with her grandmother, posted that she lost her Mom, son, and uncle in 2020.
She lost her step-sister, fiancé and who would have been in MIL in 2021.
She lost her best friend, brother, and two of her friends from high school in 2022. (She is in her mid 40s).
She lost her aunt, 2 cousins, a friend from work, and her manager in 2023.
She lost two dogs that originally belong to one of her cousins that passed on her father’s side after only having them for a few weeks in 2024.
The same year, her daughter who is now 11 years old, lost her best friend and her best friend’s Mom died. She also lost both of her remaining aunts.
In 2025, her department combined with another department at work because what used to be 8 people was now down to 2.
Three people died. Two went out on medical leave and didn’t return, and one went out on disability in December 2024.
She stated that most of her weekends in 2026 has been driving her grandmother to funerals..and that her grandmother has outlived all 6 of her children….5 daughters including her mother, (one daughter died in Nov/Dec 2019 from “pneumonia”), and a son.
THEN SHE SAID….. “I can’t even imagine Covid being as bad as the SUPER COLDS that they couldn’t shake. Knock on wood, none of us got Covid.”
….and for me…this is why distance is good to maintain sanity,
BirdieBittern retweeted
This is exactly the scenario that @DrFiliatrault, @TRyanGregory and I warned about in a Scientific American article last summer:
scientificamerican.com/artic…
We weren’t the only ones. This is such a predictable disaster unfolding in slow motion.
There is something really concerning (and disappointing) going on in the US right now.
A dangerous and preventable situation.
Let me explain.
nextstrain.org/avian-flu/h5n…
1/
BirdieBittern retweeted
There is something really concerning (and disappointing) going on in the US right now.
A dangerous and preventable situation.
Let me explain.
nextstrain.org/avian-flu/h5n…
1/
BirdieBittern retweeted
In early 2022 a new variant of H5N1 bird flu made its way to the US.
It wasn’t subtle. It quickly swept the country and caused massive bird mortality among all different bird types.
2/
nature.com/articles/s44298-0…
BirdieBittern retweeted
Remember a few years ago when eggs were more expensive than beef? H5N1 was the reason. It is extremely pathogenic to chickens.
3/
BirdieBittern retweeted
There were a number of spillovers from H5N1 into various mammals, but most of these were fairly contained.
4/
BirdieBittern retweeted
Then something completely unexpected happened. In late 2023 or early 2024, H5N1 started showing up in the mammary tissue of dairy cattle. It was a major outbreak.
5/
BirdieBittern retweeted
It took several months to figure out this was happening, and by then the virus had spread to herds across the country.
nextstrain.org/avian-flu/h5n…
6/
BirdieBittern retweeted
Pasteurization kills H5N1, so there haven’t been any human cases from drinking pasteurized milk. However, it caused a lot of damage and maintained an enormous outbreak in mammals (not where we want it circulating).
7/
BirdieBittern retweeted
The USDA tried to contain the outbreak by preventing the transport of lactating cattle across state lines unless they test negative for H5N1. It wasn’t enough though.
8/
aphis.usda.gov/sites/default…
BirdieBittern retweeted
This should have ended 2 years ago. It is SUPER easy to screen herds for the virus (bulk milk testing).
Infected cattle clear the virus after a few weeks. The outbreak could have been stopped (and still can be) if we had the will to enforce strict quarantines.
We don’t.
9/
BirdieBittern retweeted
Here’s the other disappointing part. This is a phylogenetic tree of the H5N1 lineages since the start. Notice how all of the sequences from this year cluster together?
10/
BirdieBittern retweeted
If you look at where those sequences came from you see that they are from all over the country. That means the virus is not contained, it’s continuing to move across the country.
11/
BirdieBittern retweeted
The fear is that with time the virus will adapt to mammalian transmission and start infecting other mammalian species, which is happening already (and we aren’t doing much about it).
12/
xitter.cf/andrewpekosz/status/21…
nice article from Propublica describing an influenza H5N1 outbreak going on at a Utah mink farm. Situations like these pose more of a threat for development of better mammalian transmission yet government officials seem unable or unwilling to end it. propublica.org/article/bird-…
BirdieBittern retweeted
Among those species is human.
So far there hasn’t been sustained human-to-human transmission, but if we keep giving the virus chances, it is just a matter of time.
13/13
telegraph.co.uk/global-healt…
Maile Emily Francisco, who was crowned Miss Aloha Hula in 2005, has died. She was 45.
Her family shared in a statement that she died Sunday morning at Kaiser Permanente Moanalua Medical Center on Oahu.
No cause given
Former regional daily journalist dies suddenly while on holiday, aged 58
"Tributes are being paid to a former regional daily journalist, Ruth Meech, who died suddenly while on holiday in Spain"
"Meech spent 25 years as a reporter and features writer"
holdthefrontpage.co.uk/2026/…
