Promising development on the H5N1 dairy farm front. Fewer outbreaks reported in the past few weeks. Are we finally bending the curve or is the data just noisy?

Trends are very different in the US. Flu is at ~0% of winter peak hosp RSV is at ~0% of winter peak hosp Covid is at 55% of winter peak hosp and 66% of peak winter infection rates

The U.S. is “not at risk” from the current mpox outbreak right now, Scott Gottlieb, MD says. But a new variant “that appears to spread a little more easily” is raising concerns about further spread because it has “potentially more pandemic potential,” he adds. Here’s what you need

Oh, look at that. School must have started.

Baseball just got cool again

Typhoon Shanshan definitely has "that look" about it. A buzzsaw storm, equivalent to a Cat4 Hurricane with eye pressure down to 932mb- if you are in southern Japan, take this storm seriously.

For now, XEC may have some advantage over KP.3.1.1, but I'm not convinced that it has enough momentum to actually drive much change to transmission. Maybe more data will change my mind, for now I'm fairly pessimistic on its potential.

5 Week US Forecast to October: 📉A nearly 40% drop in daily infections is anticipated over the next 5 weeks, with some uncertainty in the rate of decline. No variant is backing up right behind KP.3.1.1, allowing some extra breathing room for numbers to come back down.

I normalized % ED diagnosed Covid data for each age group across the last 21 months. It's quite interesting to see the return to school effect in fall and even after winter break. Other conclusion: The yearly peak for school aged kids happens the first few weeks of school.

Wonder if they would have had to "invent" a G6 designation if this was aimed at us 😄

Be data driven.

Be willing to change your mind when confronted with data that doesn't agree with preconceptions. It's a lot better to look a little dumb now than a lot dumber later.