DonAlbertus

alpha blogger
profi klugscheisser
lifekunstworker
hobby guru

[Mike Hoerger, PhD MSCR MBA @michael_hoerger]

This is a special graph we only post periodically. It shows 2 things that have considerable implications.

1) Transmission has been lower than anticipated since December, and *only* since December. It's a recent phenomenon, not a long-term trend. WastewaterSCAN has poor longitudinal standardization so sometimes people mistakenly believe waves are getting smaller and smaller (or they say this because their listserv subscribers like to hear it). CDC and Biobot make very long-term data difficult to find. On the PMC 13-wave graph (which integrates long-term CDC and Biobot data, some of which is measured weekly by hand!), wave height gets smaller, but the waves are wider (hard to perceive visually). The take-home is we're in a very weird place in the pandemic, not a trend, but either an aberration or shift.

2) Cumulative levels for the current year (Y7) closely resemble that of Year 2. This is where the debate of aberration vs shift gets interesting. If we are in an aberration of lower than typical transmission, that means many people are walking around with limited short-term infection-derived immunity, and most people are not recently boosted. That would be a tinder box for a saltation variant (MANY variants are circulating), and put us on that scary Y2 path. The alternative is that this is not an aberration but a more meaningful shift, some population-level immunity building through a combination of boosters, infection history, and the most vulnerable dying (social murder), meaning time between infection starting to increase. These divergent hypotheses are the difference between 150 million vs 325 million infections for Y7. If I were a gambler, I'd bet about 200 million. However, you can see the uncertainty. This is a time like no other to monitor the data closely.

The good news is that wastewater monitoring is not going away. PMC will keep posting. Retired NASA scientist, Dr. Eastman at WHN (@jlerollblues), is close to having localized *forecasts* too. On Instagram, a new entrant is integrating different data sources with other methodologies. @CyFi10, @amethystarlight, and @CovidDataReport post nuanced updates frequently.

My advice would be to talk to the people who will listen and remember that much more important than understanding the risk is knowing you can do something about it. Boosting is the easiest intervention. If someone will mask, teach them how to properly fit their nose wire and do a seal check, get them to upgrade from a KN95 with cheek and chin gaps to an N95 like 3M Aura or 3M VFlex in the riskiest or socially easiest contexts. Easier said than done, but if that pessimistic scenario plays out, they may be ready to listen.

[Manuel Ruiz-Pablos @manruipa]

1/ 🔴 NAC, glutamate and the brain: why is such an old mucolytic drug attracting interest in depression, multiple sclerosis, autoimmune disease, ME/CFS and Long COVID?

Because N-acetylcysteine does not act on a single pathway. It sits at a particularly interesting intersection between glutamate regulation, glutathione, oxidative stress, mitochondria, astrocytes and immunity.

And when several of those systems are disrupted at the same time, a molecule capable of influencing several of them becomes especially interesting. 🧵

[Hiroshi Yasuda (保田浩志) @Yash25571056]

"as attention shifts to the prolonged sequelae of COVID-19, commonly referred to as Long COVID, a troubling pattern has emerged: symptoms often resemble or exacerbate chronic conditions, including neurodegenerative diseases and autoimmune disorders.
SARS-CoV-2 infection has been shown to disrupt the blood-brain barrier (BBB), a tightly regulated interface whose integrity can be disrupted by systemic inflammation.
This BBB impairment may allow peripheral inflammation to affect the brain, potentially accelerating the onset or progression of diseases such as Alzheimer's disease (AD) and Parkinson's disease (PD).
Moreover, in both AD and PD, aberrant lipid metabolism is increasingly recognised as a key contributor to neuroinflammation, synaptic dysfunction, and neuronal death..
The overlapping mechanisms also involve RAS (renin-angiotensin system) imbalance, including ACE2 (primary host receptor for SARS-CoV-2) dysregulation, which has been suggested to contribute to both Long COVID and neurological diseases."

SARS-CoV-2 triggers a wide range of dysregulation that can induce a wide range of symptoms.

'ACE2 dysregulation and lipid metabolism: Mechanistic interplay between COVID-19 and neurodegeneration'
https://t.co/KfbePX2mCr

[Vipin M. Vashishtha @vipintukur]

How does a virus become more dangerous? — sometimes, it’s a race against the immune system.

➡️ A new multi-scale model suggests that most SARS-CoV-2 infections generate abundant minor variants, but almost all die evolutionary “deaths” before they can transmit.

➡️ The critical window appears in a small subset of infections where viral replication remains high for >10–14 days, giving selection enough time to produce fitter variants. 1/

[Jason Wilde @JasonWilde108]

Forget Plato's Cave

The learned helplessness experiment bothers me more.

In 1967, Martin Seligman and Steven Maier ran experiments where dogs were exposed to shocks they could not control. Nothing they did stopped what was happening.

Later, the dogs were put into a situation where they actually could escape. They just had to cross a small barrier. They didn't.

They had already learned that trying was pointless. The door was basically open and they still stayed there. Some pretty ugly implications for humans.

Keep someone in a system long enough where working harder changes nothing. Complaining changes nothing and following the rules changes nothing. Trying again changes nothing.

Eventually they might stop trying. Then one day an opportunity appears and everyone looking from the outside says, “Why don't they just do something?”

They already did.
A hundred times.

People don't rebel when conditions get bad. Not always.

People will shut down and withdraw. They distract themselves and accept shit they once would have fought against. They have learned that fighting changes nothing.

Who has to convince people that the cage is good? You don't.

You need to convince them the door doesn't open.

Eventually you can unlock it and they will never even check.

[CyFi @CyFi10]

COVID cases in kids under 10 blow away last year's peak in Saitama Prefecture, Japan.

[DonAlbertus @Oliver_Rudnick]

@martinfuerholz @ADAC https://t.co/XMmpVKB7Vw das Wissen ist frei zugänglich. Aber niemand traut sich, es zu kommunizieren, obwohl es eine akute Gefahr für die Gesundheit ist und extrem hohe Kosten verursacht, die in Zukunft weiter steigen. Alle haben Angst, es auszusprechen oder ist es kalkuliert?

[tern @1goodtern]

Articles and studies detailing the long lasting after effects of covid infections have been published in:

Nature Medicine, The Lancet, The Lancet Infectious Diseases, The Lancet Respiratory Medicine, The Lancet Psychiatry, The Lancet Neurology, The Lancet Child & Adolescent Health, The Lancet Healthy Longevity, The New England Journal of Medicine, JAMA, JAMA Internal Medicine, JAMA Neurology, JAMA Psychiatry, JAMA Pediatrics, JAMA Cardiology, JAMA Network Open, BMJ, BMJ Medicine, Annals of Internal Medicine, PLOS Medicine, eClinicalMedicine, eBioMedicine, Science, Science Translational Medicine, Science Advances, Cell, Cell Host & Microbe, Immunity, Nature, Nature Communications, Nature Neuroscience, Nature Cardiovascular Research, Nature Immunology, Nature Aging, Nature Mental Health, Nature Microbiology, European Heart Journal, Circulation, Circulation Research, Journal of the American College of Cardiology, European Respiratory Journal, American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, Thorax, Brain, Neurology, Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery & Psychiatry, Alzheimer's & Dementia, Kidney International, Journal of the American Society of Nephrology, Clinical Infectious Diseases, Journal of Infectious Diseases, Emerging Infectious Diseases, Clinical Microbiology and Infection, Diabetes Care, Gut, Gastroenterology, Blood, Arthritis & Rheumatology, Rheumatology, Pediatrics, Pediatric Research, Obstetrics & Gynecology, British Journal of Sports Medicine, Journal of Clinical Investigation, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, and Scientific Reports.

This is not quackery.
It's not low quality.
It's not junk science.
It's not debated.

It's detailed, exhaustive, thoroughly researched science:
Covid infections increase your risk of a vast range of health problems.

Vaccinations do not prevent that increase in risk.
Having had Covid before does not prevent that increase in risk.

The only thing that prevents the increase in risk is to *not catch Covid*.

There's a wave now, so mask up.

[Zdenek Vrozina @ZdenekVrozina]

Even mild COVID-19 in toddlers leaves measurable changes in the brain.
But this isn’t just about what MRI can detect. It’s about what parents deserve to know.
Because silence helps no one @adamvojtech86.
@szupraha @ZdravkoOnline @VZPtweetuje

[Alberto Román @alberto_roman83]

@TBM4_JP

[バーッド・マン Ⅱ @TBM4_JP]

凄まじい...

[theleahfiles @leahfiles]

People keep saying Trump term II is the most corrupt administration ever, so I built a model to find out if it was true.

I took the UN's definition of corruption, turned it into eight criteria and 100 points, and scored the leaders history remembers for looting their countries: Marcos, Suharto, Mobutu, Abacha, Obiang, Putin.

Then I put every president since Eisenhower on the same scale, both parties, with every exoneration counted right alongside the convictions.

Nixon scored 41 and no other American President scored over a 25.

Trump's second term scored a 91, which ties him with Suharto and Mobutu and puts him above Marcos and Abacha.

So he is not only the most corrupt president in American history. At this pace he finishes his term level with the most corrupt rulers of the last hundred years.

PSA: don't come in my comments arguing about the results if you haven't read the full article, because ignorance is a choice.

Full article is up now on my Substack (link in bio) and it's free.

[Jim Stewartson, Decelerationist 🇨🇦🇺🇦🇺🇸 @jimstewartson]

At the Bernie-Bannon AI hysteria conference, they allowed a heretical voice on stage—who happens to be one of the smartest & most accomplished technologists on Earth.

Jaron Lanier explained the origins of the problem—Minsky et al. anthropomorphizing AI because it sold well.

The problem begins with calling it artificial *intelligence* far before you could plausibly argue that it was.

Jaron calmly explains how the industry is now essentially a religion focused on building a machine god instead of tools for humans.

For example, he says “agents” used to mean agents of humans—but now the industry switched it to “agentic AI” which makes loops of prompts sound like they have motivation or sentience.

This is really worth watching. Jaron is a legitimate genius.

[Denis - The COVID info guy - @BigBadDenis]

A Canadian study of nearly 9,000 adults looked at repeat COVID infections. The study found people reporting COVID at least twice had 76% higher odds of being diagnosed with a new health condition, across 21 conditions studied, compared with those who reported never being infected

[Anna @AnnaDeMilanese]

Ich brauche eure Aufmerksamkeit in eigener Sache.
Der Kanal trägt sich nicht mit meiner Rente. Viele glauben, hier wäre alles kostenlos. Das stimmt nicht. Ich habe niemanden, der mir ermöglicht, tagtäglich zu recherchieren und die Geopolitischen Themen seit 5 Jahren zu beobachten. Niemand bezahlt mich dafür. Es ist nicht Feierabend mal 1 oder 2 Stunden hier rein zu schauen oder mal zu Texten. Es ist täglich harte Arbeit. Teils 14 Stunden am Stück und 10 Stunden täglich sind keine Seltenheit. Aber das war nie das Problem.
Die Kosten schnallen in die Höhe. Auch meine privaten Kosten. Zusätzlich diese Arbeit hier zu unterhalten, ist mir nicht möglich.

Die Stunden, die ich investiere, mach ich gerne und werde nicht dafür bezahlt. Warum nicht? Weil ich nicht beeinflusst werden möchte. Von niemanden. Ich bin ADHSler.
Und die Medien erlauben mir, trotz dieses Handycaps meinen Teil in der Gesellschaft einzubringen. Und meine Hyperfocussierung erlaubt es, stundenlang zu recherchieren. Das ist eine spannende Sache.

Deshalb, wenn euch diese unabhängige Stimme wichtig ist, unterstützt diesen Kanal.
Ich muss mit der Zeit und nicht gegen die Zeit gehen.
Das bedeutet, Verifizierung ist das a und o. Teuer aber unverzichtbar in der heutigen Zeit. Und ich habe niemanden, der freiwillig die Kosten übernimmt. Keinen Sponsor, der das Equipment übernimmt.
Eine grosse Bitte an euch. Jeder Cent ist eine Entlasstung.
Jeder Monat wird sonst ein Spießrutenlauf um die Frage, ob ich diesen oder jenen Vertrag doch lieber kündigen sollte. Ob es vielleicht doch ohne funktioniert. Aber die Realität ist, nein. Es würde nicht funktionieren. Die Fakes würden hoch gehen oder meine Arbeit würde sich auf das reduzieren, was schon hunderte Male woanders bereits veröffentlicht wurde. Fakten aus Veröffentlichungen. Das wäre ein großer Schritt zurück. Den kann und möchte ich nicht gehen.

Das ist mein Leben und meine Realität.
Ich wünschte, es würde weiter gehen. So, wie es sich entwickelt. Ich liebe diese Aufgabe. Wachse damit. Es wäre schön, wenn sie kein Spießrutenlauf wäre jeden Monat wegen der Kosten.
Deshalb möchte ich euch bitten.
Unterstützt diese Stimme.
☕️ 🇪🇺🇺🇦✨

https://t.co/X1PI0g0ATh oder https://t.co/FwU5DiOnQ6
🌻

[UAVoyager🇺🇦 @CrimeanVoyager]

"In such a war, in such a monstrous civilizational conflict, where on one side stand the forces of freedom, and on the other — obscurantism and tyranny, it is simply impossible to seek a middle ground.

This is a war that has only two outcomes — either Putin's victory or his defeat.

Any attempt to find an intermediate option makes you an ally of evil."

— Garry Kasparov

[Denis - The COVID info guy - @BigBadDenis]

"Rich countries face COVID-related costs for 20 more years, says OECD"

"The health and economic impacts from Covid-19 will likely continue for another two decades, according to a report out Tuesday from the world’s wealthiest countries."

Source: https://t.co/o63JRnaW3r

[Hiroshi Yasuda (保田浩志) @Yash25571056]

From a study of 24 people with post-COVID syndrome compared with healthy controls using positron emission tomography (PET),
"The data showed a significant reduction in this marker (VMAT2, a protein found on nerve terminals responsible for releasing dopamine) in the brain’s striatum [of the long COVID patients], ranging from 16% in the dorsal putamen, an area involved in motor planning, to 20% in the ventral striatum, which plays a role in motivation.
The imaging findings closely matched the difficulties reported by patients, showing a direct association between the loss of specific nerve terminals and symptoms such as slowed movement and memory problems."

SARS-CoV-2 is a novel virus capable of gradually causing neurological deterioration.

'Long COVID May Leave a Physical Signature in the Brain'
https://t.co/uXZs2u03nM

[tern @1goodtern]

Articles and studies detailing the long lasting after effects of covid infections have been published in:

Nature Medicine, The Lancet, The Lancet Infectious Diseases, The Lancet Respiratory Medicine, The Lancet Psychiatry, The Lancet Neurology, The Lancet Child & Adolescent Health, The Lancet Healthy Longevity, The New England Journal of Medicine, JAMA, JAMA Internal Medicine, JAMA Neurology, JAMA Psychiatry, JAMA Pediatrics, JAMA Cardiology, JAMA Network Open, BMJ, BMJ Medicine, Annals of Internal Medicine, PLOS Medicine, eClinicalMedicine, eBioMedicine, Science, Science Translational Medicine, Science Advances, Cell, Cell Host & Microbe, Immunity, Nature, Nature Communications, Nature Neuroscience, Nature Cardiovascular Research, Nature Immunology, Nature Aging, Nature Mental Health, Nature Microbiology, European Heart Journal, Circulation, Circulation Research, Journal of the American College of Cardiology, European Respiratory Journal, American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, Thorax, Brain, Neurology, Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery & Psychiatry, Alzheimer's & Dementia, Kidney International, Journal of the American Society of Nephrology, Clinical Infectious Diseases, Journal of Infectious Diseases, Emerging Infectious Diseases, Clinical Microbiology and Infection, Diabetes Care, Gut, Gastroenterology, Blood, Arthritis & Rheumatology, Rheumatology, Pediatrics, Pediatric Research, Obstetrics & Gynecology, British Journal of Sports Medicine, Journal of Clinical Investigation, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, and Scientific Reports.

This is not quackery.
It's not low quality.
It's not junk science.
It's not debated.

It's detailed, exhaustive, thoroughly researched science:
Covid infections increase your risk of a vast range of health problems.

Vaccinations do not prevent that increase in risk.
Having had Covid before does not prevent that increase in risk.

The only thing that prevents the increase in risk is to *not catch Covid*.

There's a wave now, so mask up.

[Harry Spoelstra @HarrySpoelstra]

"Sweden, which famously did not close its schools (for the PISA ages tested), scored its worst in 2025, and, in fact, lost an entirety of THIRTY POINTS on the PISA metric (15 MONTHS OF LEARNING LOSS) during the 2018-2025 natural experiment in which they kept their schools completely open with no closures."😬👇