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[Mike Hoerger, PhD MSCR MBA @michael_hoerger]

PMC COVlD Update, Week of Aug 29, 2026

▪️Outbreaks in 29 states/territories (see Alt)
▪️A projected 13th wave is under way
▪️1 in 95 Americans estimated actively infectious
▪️Peak anticipated around Labor Day

THREAD 🧵(1/4)

[Mike Hoerger, PhD MSCR MBA @michael_hoerger]

This video has been shared >16,000 times and watched a quarter-million times on lG.

The comments are a mix of 1) genuine concern, 2) far-right conspiracy theories, & 3) liberal geospatial prejudice.

lG link in comment

[nature @Nature]

A severe bout of COVID-19 can wake up an army of dormant viruses hiding inside the body

https://t.co/XoLzZfj5Lc

[na @BelizeanBreezes]

@LauraMiers Wonder what this means for Belize below it.

[SARS‑CoV‑2 (COVID-19) @COVID19_disease]

🚨 BREAKTHROUGH: World’s First Vaccine Targeting the Entire SARS Coronavirus Family Begins Human Testing

Imagine a vaccine that doesn’t just fight COVID but every SARS-related virus, including ones still hiding in bats, waiting to jump.

That’s GBP511. And it just started human trials in Australia.🧵

[Laura Miers @LauraMiers]

1998: “In the United States, sporadic cases of Cyclospora infection have been reported among immunocompromised individuals or those with a history of recent travel.”

We’re all immunocompromised now, & it’s locally acquired. https://t.co/LpnWW388oo

[Laura Miers @LauraMiers]

1994: “Cyclospora infection is common in Haitian patients with HIV infection, responds to trimethoprim-sulfamethoxazole therapy, and has a high recurrence rate that can be largely prevented with long-term trimethoprim-sulfamethoxazole prophylaxis.” https://t.co/IER9nDmRoc

[Afshine Emrani MD FACC @afshineemrani]

I'm a cardiologist. NPR reported this morning on something that could save more lives than any drug I've ever prescribed.

One blood test. One vial. Screening for 50 different cancers simultaneously.

It's called Galleri. And the FDA could approve it later this year.

Right now, we routinely screen for exactly five cancers in the United States — breast, colon, cervical, prostate, and lung. Each requires its own separate scan or exam. For the rest — pancreatic cancer, ovarian cancer, liver cancer, esophageal cancer, gastric cancer, and dozens more — we have no routine screening at all. We find them when symptoms appear. By then, most are Stage 3 or 4. By then, for many patients, it's too late.

Pancreatic cancer has a 12% five-year survival rate — because we almost always catch it late. Ovarian cancer: 50%. Liver cancer: 21%. These numbers aren't medical failures. They're detection failures. The treatments exist. We just find the disease after the window for those treatments has closed.

Galleri changes the math entirely.

Here's how it works. Every tumor — no matter where it is in your body — sheds tiny fragments of DNA into your bloodstream as cancer cells die and divide. These fragments carry specific methylation patterns — chemical signatures that are unique to cancer cells and different from the DNA your healthy cells release.
Galleri captures these fragments from a standard blood draw and reads their methylation patterns using next-generation sequencing and AI-driven analysis. The AI doesn't just detect whether cancer is present. It predicts where it's coming from — which organ, which tissue type — with over 90% accuracy in studies. One vial of blood tells your doctor: there's a cancer signal, and it's likely originating in your pancreas, or your lung, or your liver.

Your physician then orders targeted follow-up imaging to confirm or rule out the finding. Galleri isn't a diagnosis. It's a precision compass that tells your doctor exactly where to look.

The data is building fast.

GRAIL has now sold over 475,000 Galleri tests commercially under a special FDA designation. The NHS-Galleri trial — the largest randomized controlled trial of any multi-cancer detection test in history — enrolled over 142,000 people aged 50-77 in England. The primary endpoint — an overall reduction in late-stage cancers — was not met. But by the third year of annual screening, they found a 26% reduction in Stage IV cancers in key deadly types including pancreatic, liver, lung, and gastric. The test detected four times more cancers overall when added to standard screening — catching cancers that would otherwise have been found late or not at all.

The U.S. Pathfinder 2 study — 25,490 participants — showed similar positive signals and forms the basis of the FDA submission filed in January 2026.
Congress has already acted. The Nancy Gardner Sewell Medicare Multi-Cancer Early Detection Screening Coverage Act passed in February. If the FDA approves Galleri, Medicare will begin covering one test per year starting in 2028.

The current retail price is $950. Exact Sciences' competing test Cancerguard is $659. These prices will fall dramatically once FDA approval triggers insurance coverage and competition scales.

As a cardiologist, let me tell you why this matters far beyond oncology.

Cancer is now the number one killer of Americans over 50. Not heart disease. Cancer. And the patients I lose to cancer are often the same patients whose hearts I saved — patients who survived their cardiac event, optimized their metabolic health, and then received a late-stage cancer diagnosis that nobody screened for because no screening tool existed.

I've written on this platform about GLP-1 drugs reducing cancer metastasis by up to 50%. About personalized mRNA cancer vaccines cutting recurrence by 49%. About inflammation as the common root of heart disease and cancer. About AI detecting disease years before symptoms.

Galleri is the missing piece that connects all of it.
Detect the cancer early — with a blood test. Confirm it with AI-enhanced imaging. Treat it with personalized mRNA vaccines, targeted therapy, and GLP-1 drugs that may slow progression. Monitor response with liquid biopsy in real time.

That's not five separate breakthroughs. That's one integrated system of cancer prevention and treatment that didn't exist five years ago — and could be standard of care within five more.

The shift from reactive to proactive medicine — from "we found it too late" to "we caught it in time" — has been the central theme of everything I've written on this platform. Preventive cardiology. Advanced lipid testing. Inflammation detection. AI imaging. Gene editing.

Galleri applies the same principle to cancer. And it could save more lives than all of them combined.

One blood test. Fifty cancers. FDA decision expected this year.

Prevention is the new cure. And the science just took its biggest step yet.

https://t.co/2crrETWhRa

[Outbreak Updates @outbreakupdates]

Cincinnati: Over 70 dead vultures found at Amelia school believed to have bird flu

[K-in-CT 😷😷😷 @KinCONN]

#H5N1 @CDCgov @USDA
⚠️ Ohio ⚠️
For anyone who missed it on the first go-round, this is sort of a big deal if it is indeed #H5N1:

- did these vultures drop from the sky or land & die as a flock?
- carcasses were quite scattered, not found in a tight flock
- the dead birds remained on the property for some period of time over the extended (4-day) holiday
- there was plenty of time for scavengers - wild mammals or neighborhood cats & dogs - to scavenge the carcasses
- are they not shutting down the school for a few days??
- does the school have security cameras that can offer insights?
- SEVENTY vultures⁉️

[Spencer Hakimian @SpencerHakimian]

Even if you 100% support the tariffs and believe they will eventually lead to historic successes for the U.S., you have to acknowledge that if you don’t pause the tariffs in the interim phase, you are going to wreck the economy to a level and scale that would takes *years* to recover from.

China and the U.S. should both announce a pause to any tariffs. And then set a timeline for negotiations.

You can’t set your house on fire while you try to renegotiate your fire insurance rates.

That’s just now how this works.

[na @BelizeanBreezes]

@katiebraylon44 This explains it VERY well. Read entire thread.

[Ed Krassenstein @EdKrassen]

For those who don't think they will be affected by Trump trade war, let me give you a brief economics lesson that you can easily understand.

70% of the products you buy on Amazon are produced in China.

(Thread) -->

[Aaron Rupar @atrupar]

Bernie Sanders: "I think this is a prelude not only to cutting benefits, but to privatizing Social Security ... why do you lie so much about Social Security? Why do you make it look like it's a broken, dysfunctional system? The reason is to get people to lose faith in the system so you can give it over to Wall St"

[Wildfriends Africa @WildfriendsUG]

No community celebrates the birth of a newborn baby than elephants!🐘🥰. This trumpeting and elation is far beyond angels can sing in heavenly places. What a heart-melting and awe-inspiring sighting? 🐘🐘🐘❤️

[Donald Trump’s Neck Vagina @torontobaddy]

This is what smallpox looks like. RFK Jr. wants to eliminate the smallpox vaccine. Good luck everyone. This is what you voted for.

[Emmanuel @ejustin46]

2 BAD NEWS in 1 STUDY ! 🤷‍♂️

▶️ COVID-19 infection triggers an inflammatory response and oxidative stress in the brain, leading to cognitive decline.
▶️ Genes involved in mitochondrial function were consistently downregulated across different brain cells
https://t.co/rsUHCx1fX4

[Headquarters @HQNewsNow]

Republican Mayor of Mesa, Arizona: I am a lifelong Republican. I do not recognize my own party. The Republican Party has been taken over by extremists. I have something to say to those of us who are in the middle. You don’t owe a damn thing to that party. You don’t owe anything to a party that is out of touch and hellbent on taking us backward. You owe no displaced loyalty to a candidate who is morally and ethically bankrupt. In the spirit of the great Senator John McCain, please join me in putting country over party, stopping Donald Trump, protecting the rule of law, protecting our Constitution, and protecting democracy by voting for Kamala Harris

[Sara Anne Willette ♿️🌈👩🏻‍💻𓅆 @amethystarlight]

OH THANK HEAVENS Y’ALL!!

[na @BelizeanBreezes]

@EstherDavidson What airline