1. Highly transmissible variants pose a huge challenge, but allowing the virus to spread without any protections is a political choice, not a scientific one.

"Vaccines only" #COVID19 strategy w removal of other protections makes perfect if you hold 6 beliefs Each belief WAS reasonable in 2020, yet proved wrong w time. Now, to maintain the idea that things are OK, each of these 6 beliefs must be defended with ever more vigor 🧵

A thread🧵 on herd immunity.

In 1959, Eugene Ionesco wrote the absurdist play Rhinoceros in which one by one, an entire town of people suddenly transform into rhinos. At first, people are horrified but as the contagion spreads, (almost) everyone comes to accept that turning into a rhinoceros is fine. 1/

First bit of analysis from the CDC on hepatitis cases out yesterday. Summary: -232 cases <=16 yrs -76% are <5 yrs -15% admitted to ICU, 6% transplanted, 1 death -60% adv positive -74% SARS-CoV-2 positive on serology with 12% PCR +ve 🧵

Monkeypox: A rapid review, as you apparently might be seeing this in the emergency department #FOAMed first10em.com/monkeypox/

Great overview of pediatric hepatitis by Dr. Tehseen Ladha (she/her)

Close contact is not a mode of transmission. Let’s not do this all over again.

The insistence that the pandemic is over, even in the face of overwhelming evidence it is not, is born of a desire shared by just about everyone. Everyone just wants this to end. There is an enormous incentive for those with the most influence to say it is over.

Hey colleagues. I worked with a resident physician the other day who is pregnant and wears an N95 to protect herself and her baby. Why aren’t you all doing the same to protect her and her baby? It’s a workplace and trainee safety issue.

We can’t keep pretending this is a rare outcome. It isn’t. Failing to put safeguards in place (better air and personal protection) is negligence. As is Public Health pretending that “personal risk assessment” is sufficient. We are in a state of mass denial and it needs to change.

The "learning to live with it" phase of the pandemic functions through widespread denial of the reality of ongoing harm. That denial is paradoxically enabled by a basic tendency toward optimism, which although a positive trait gets in the way of effective action.

Perfect time to talk about the extremely long ER wait times - after Ontario's provincial election. How strategic!

Please Doctors, Nurses, Everybody There is NO (ZERO) reason to tell a #COVID19 positive person that they are not infectious JUST because 5 days has passed since they got symptoms This is not true Many (Most) still are! If Rapid Test Pos.. Do NOT assume you are not infectious

Study confirms that HEPA filters work on SARS-CoV-2, of course. Note that antiviral coating doesn't affect removal from air, since it's a physical process. I sketched expected ratio of concentration at time t to initial concentration as function of t. /1 journals.asm.org/doi/full/10.11…

You cannot turn a novel systemic virus into influenza simply by waving a magic wand by creating policies that pretend it is

School and work will become amplifiers of community spread given sub-optimal layers of protection compounded by the CMOH green-lighting individuals returning to these environments while infectious. How will this help a provincial healthcare system already on life support?

Reckless, unscientific, inequitable nonsense.