This is really not a headline I expected to have to read in 2026.
www.theguardian.com/society/2026...
15.02.2026 23:05
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This is really not a headline I expected to have to read in 2026.
www.theguardian.com/society/2026...
She is one of a kind, we can give her that.
Neat work, showing that the entire evolution of a variant of concern can happen in one persistently infected individual over about a year.
Absolutely, effective public health requires collective effort.
A tribute to William Foege, and a reminder of how much can be achieved in public health (eradication of smallpox) with top class science and political determination.
news.emory.edu/features/202...
Pleased to see our research team's work on the @erc.europa.eu funded PALVIREVOL project feature on this ERC report into frontier research for one health @biology.ox.ac.uk.
erc.europa.eu/sites/defaul...
Austria loses its WHO status as measles-free, too, together with Armenia, Azerbaijan Uzbekistan and Spain. This comes as no surprise, considering the rise in numbers in recent years and the decline in MMR vaccine coverage
#VaccineHesitancy #PublicHealthImpact #AllChildrenNeedProtection
UK loses WHO status as measles-free after rise in deaths and fall in jab uptake
www.theguardian.com/society/2026...
I suppose the current US administration's vaccine stance shouldn't be so surprising. Vaccines sit awkwardly with their worldview: they rely on collective action, trust in institutions, expertise, and shared responsibility. Accepting an individual inconvenience, for shared benefit.
Wanting to do some paleovirology of your own? We recently published HI-FEVER, enabling users to run their own fast searches for endogenous viral elements.
Huge thanks to @humanceae.bsky.social, @emma-harding.bsky.social, José Gabriel and Cormac.
@biology.ox.ac.uk
academic.oup.com/bioinformati...
NEW article by me!
We can now visualize pathogens down to atoms; design vaccines in weeks; manufacture them in microbial factories; engineer them more precise than ever before.
We're living through a golden age of vaccine development, but only if we continue to invest in them.
Wanting to do some paleovirology of your own? We recently published HI-FEVER, enabling users to run their own fast searches for endogenous viral elements.
Huge thanks to @humanceae.bsky.social, @emma-harding.bsky.social, José Gabriel and Cormac.
@biology.ox.ac.uk
academic.oup.com/bioinformati...
Good news, if a little overdue
www.theguardian.com/society/2026...
Really exciting work!
Sometimes, viruses don't have to be the bad guys...
Sometimes we can use one to treat another!
Chuffed to present excellent work from Dr Samantha Garcia-Cardenas showing how the innate immune system can be "rewired" by a benign Reovirus to eliminate SARS2 infection.
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
🧵1/ Flu is surging again, & patterns look uncomfortably familiar. The lesson from covid remains unchanged: individual responsibility isn’t enough. We need systemic measures that make protective behaviours easy. @profstevegriffin.bsky.social Stephen Reicher & I offer some thoughts @bmj.com
Why are virologists thinking and talking about this year's strain of influenza? We are dealing with a version of H3N2 that is unusual compared to what we might expect year on year. At the same time, it is not as unusual as, say, a novel pandemic strain, far from it.
I'm sure there is a TikTok market for that
What can we do about it? Well, masks work, vaccines work, avoiding infection in all the ways we know all work. Is it going to cause health systems to collapse? I really doubt it. It will put pressure on though, more than we might expect in any given year.
It could certainly cause more transmission and more pressure on healthcare, though we wouldn't expect a higher intrinsic severity. Will it cause a bigger wave than past years? It could, it might not. Transmission depends on several factors, I would certainly expect the wave to be higher than average
Its not a novel pandemic strain. This is nothing like a transmission of, say, a novel avian H5N1 strain, its nowhere near that ballpark of danger. But, it also does not look like a run of the mill annual influenza strain.
This matters, because it will give some immune escape, meaning the virus could infect people that it otherwise might not, despite pre-existing immunity. It isn't unrecognisable by any stretch, but we expect it to be able to cause more problems.
It has more mutations in the haemagglutinin protein the immune system 'sees' than we might expect, more than double the expected antigenic distance and including several mutations in recognised antigenic sites.
Why are virologists thinking and talking about this year's strain of influenza? We are dealing with a version of H3N2 that is unusual compared to what we might expect year on year. At the same time, it is not as unusual as, say, a novel pandemic strain, far from it.
So, to those who say "masks don't work", cite the flawed Cochrane report, insist upon an unfeasible RCT, accuse folks of panic, and undermine public health on social and mainstream media during a flu/RSV epidemic...
1. Seasonal viruses may be "normal", but they do immense harm.
Do we need a short thread on this year's flu strain.
Really unhelpful to see infectious disease 'experts' reviving the covid culture wars in the middle of a serious influenza wave. If you have flu, staying home if your employment allows, is a great idea. And if you must see others, wear a mask, its will help. Nobody is talking about mandates here.
And thousands more spared long term after effects of infection (long covid), and the unnecessarily costly effects of overtly long measures necessitated by the delay.
Key takehome, a lot of us were highlighting:
"If a lockdown had been imposed on 16 March, a week earlier than took place, modelling suggests this could have cut the number of deaths in England in the first wave of the virus by almost half, equating to 23,000 lives saved, the inquiry authors say."