iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Prof. Michael Fuhrer @michaelsfuhrer.bsky.social · 4h

Covid deaths in Australia comfortably under 1,000/year now. Still running below yearly flu deaths even though record 2025 flu season is now leaving the averaging window. All predictions that we've reached the endemic level of covid mortality so far have been wrong - anyone want to make a new one?

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Carl T. Bergstrom @carlbergstrom.com · 26/09/2026

Does my Speak-n-Spell feel pain when I type O-U-C-H? The jury is out. Philosophers and neuroscientists say that's fucking stupid, but I called a guy from the Center for Pretending that Household Electronics Are Sentient and he said there's no way to know for sure.

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Prof. Michael Fuhrer @michaelsfuhrer.bsky.social · 22h

If you want the TL;dr version for the US: (my annotations in red)

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Prof. Michael Fuhrer @michaelsfuhrer.bsky.social · 22h

Your periodic reminder that the airborne-AIDS and turbo-cancer apocalypses failed to eventuate. The actuaries find no excess mortality: "In the UK and the U.S., mortality rates look to be returning to pre-COVID-19 pandemic expectations." www.rgare.com/knowledge-ce...

rgare.com

Predicting Post-Pandemic Mortality: Are we any closer to an answer?

Recent mortality experience increasingly supports a return to pre-pandemic expectations, though assumption risk remains material.

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Ryan Moulton @moultano.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

When future people watch the matrix they won't believe that Agent Smith was named after what the FBI calls its employees instead of this.

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Prof. Michael Fuhrer @michaelsfuhrer.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

This is 100% correct and it is a lesson that we should have learned from the last pandemic but didn't.

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Ryan Hisner @ryanhisner.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

Mink farming is a massive pandemic risk. It's insane that they are allowed to exist. Now we have an active H5N1 outbreak on a mink farm, & "state officials have no clear plan to rein it in." Imagine if uncontrolled H5N1 transmission in mink were allowed in a research lab...

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Erin Reed @erininthemorning.com · 27/09/2026

The worst part about twitter is there are a number of people who think they have to be active there who are left-leaning but have had their brains absolutely cooked by the site. You can't inundate yourself in exposure to that stuff without it having an impact on you.

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Health Nerd @gidmk.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

New piece on the Last Ditch bar shenanigans and how it's remarkable that some people are still misattributing COVID-19 risk. gidmk.substack.com/p/the-last-d...

gidmk.substack.com

The Last Ditch Mask Fight: What Are The Risks of COVID-19 in 2026?

A discussion that we’re still somehow having

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Prof. Michael Fuhrer @michaelsfuhrer.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

In the continued annals of Missing the Point: LLM-based AIs did exactly what human minds expected them to do, as they are an interface to the (static!) body of human knowledge they were trained on. They reflect, and are entirely bound by, the static human knowledge that forms their training base.

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Prof. Michael Fuhrer @michaelsfuhrer.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

There's a lot of confusion about what Covid-19 RNA in wastewater is telling us. Here's data from Biobot for the United States. Currently Covid-19 RNA concentrations are elevated *relative* to recently (a real "wave") but absolute levels are low compared to the height of the pandemic.

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Prof. Michael Fuhrer @michaelsfuhrer.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

There's a Covid-19 crackpot on this site who posts a lot, and almost always uses the word "transmission" to mean prevalence. I asked Claude what it thought about this*.

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Prof. Michael Fuhrer @michaelsfuhrer.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Since mask discourse is trending again, I thought I'd re-up this. Respirators remain a vital tool for people who need extra protection from respiratory viruses. Masks work! But there are good scientific reasons why population masking as an intervention was a good idea in 2020, but not in 2026.

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Joe Bak-Coleman @jbakcoleman.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

We can simulate fish schools or ants in ways that solve complex problems (gradient detection, bridge building, nest selection) but no one would create this weird soul/no-soul dichotomy to argue they these that multi-agent swarms of extremely simple rules are “thinking”.

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Prof. Michael Fuhrer @michaelsfuhrer.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Are We Missing a Hidden Death Toll From Covid-19? How would we know? medium.com/@michael.fuh...

medium.com

Are We Missing a Hidden Death Toll From Covid-19?

How would we know?

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Prof. Michael Fuhrer @michaelsfuhrer.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

I love Will, but his ability to Miss the Point for weeks on end is legendary. The current Will-discourse is (truly!) fascinating, but also in regard to LLMs it is irrelevant and entirely misses the point of what LLMs are, and what they aren't.

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Prof. Michael Fuhrer @michaelsfuhrer.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

The numbers in this chart are fabricated by a psychologist with no training in infectious disease epidemiology. They haven't been peer-reviewed, and I doubt they ever will be, because the reasoning is gobbledygook. But you don't have to trust me! We can look at real data taken by real experts!

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Prof. Michael Fuhrer @michaelsfuhrer.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

I can't emphasize this enough. We really, truly are in the red circle on the graph below, in actual amount of covid RNA that's in wastewater. It's below any time in 2023, even the low points.

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Bob Hawkins @bob-hawkins.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

Prof Michael Fuhrer has extensively written on the misinformation from this analysis, bsky.app/profile/mich...

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Paul Mainwood @paulmainwood.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

So, a local rise in wastewater measurements for COVID pretty reliably means a rise in prevalence, but to chain these over time and give a level e.g., "prevalence of 3.5%" can't be justified without regular calibrations back to a reliable population-level measure. There hasn't been one since 2022.

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Paul Mainwood @paulmainwood.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

This map is entirely implausible. - California, Texas and Florida seeing COVID waves at prevalence rates we only saw at the peaks of the pandemic? - Deriving prevalence from wastewater readings, without contemporaneous calibration from randomised surveys? Bullshit. Dispiriting to see it shared.

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Prof. Michael Fuhrer @michaelsfuhrer.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

With all respect to Prof Hotez who I am sure did not realize: Texas, and much of the US are indeed having a Covid-19 wave, but the map and numbers in this post are misinformation fabricated by a non-expert.

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Prof. Michael Fuhrer @michaelsfuhrer.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

One from the archives. A coy pose from an Australian Pelican in the warm light of sunset. The colours on the pouch skin and bill are due to breeding flush which is unusual to see as pelicans generally breed far from humans. Ricketts Point, Victoria, Australia. 🪶

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Prof. Michael Fuhrer @michaelsfuhrer.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

Isn't it the opposite happening? Actual wastewater RNA concentrations are dropping much faster than WVAL. It's only because WVAL is measured relative to the last 24 months that it stays so high. If it were to use the entire pandemic as a baseline, it would be even lower.

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Prof. Michael Fuhrer @michaelsfuhrer.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

"King's County is raging with COVID, per today's CDC update" Would you like to see ALL the raw data behind this claim? I think you will find it amusing 🤣

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Karl Pettersson @karlpettersson.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

Wrote about this shift in Sweden.

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Bloom lab @jbloomlab.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

This is third installment of our efforts to generate near real-time data on human neutralizing antibody landscape to influenza. Our hope is that these data can improve vaccine-strain selection and ability to forecast short-term evolution of human seasonal influenza.

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Prof. Michael Fuhrer @michaelsfuhrer.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

My hypothesis was that the price of really bottom-end goods has gone up more than reflected by the CPI. So I compared to the price of a Big Mac in the US, from The Economist's Big Mac Index. Nope, the price of a Big Mac has risen commensurately with the CPI. (At least in recent years!)

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CIDRAP @cidrap.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

Few people with the flu isolate for the recommended period Some people might shed the most influenza virus RNA just as their symptoms start to improve and they return to ordinary life. Read more: bit.ly/4rg4JyE

Close up of person's hands holding a cup of tea. Person is wearing a bathrobe.

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CIDRAP @cidrap.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

Fourth measles-associated death reported in Pennsylvania The Mifflin County Coroner says an 18-year-old has died of acute disseminated encephalomyelitis, a rare and severe neurologic complication of measles. Read more: bit.ly/46W89NQ

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CIDRAP @cidrap.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

People who say they’ll get vaccinated against COVID and flu often don’t. Why not? A new study highlights the factors that keep vaccine-willing adults from getting immunized. Read more: bit.ly/4zYooHr

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Prof. Michael Fuhrer @michaelsfuhrer.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

Red-capped Robin, seen at Simpson's Gap, NT, Australia 🪶

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Jess Miers 🦝 @jmiers230.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

I did a somewhat deep dive into the recent OpenAI and Anthropic "hacks" for an upcoming interview. IMO, the AI companies are better off running with the "rogue AI" story because the real story is actually pretty embarrassing. Like making your Wi-Fi password "wifi" embarrassing. 🧵

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Prof. Michael Fuhrer @michaelsfuhrer.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

These are bold claims. Texas having a covid wave on par with the biggest of pandemic, "unimaginable" levels on Hawaii. @michael-hoerger.bsky.social bases these claims on wastewater data. Do the data support the claims? Let's have a look!

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Prof. Michael Fuhrer @michaelsfuhrer.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

This week's update shows that all the early indicators for Covid-19 (positivity, ED visits, and wastewater RNA concentration) have peaked in the US. Positivity peaked 53% lower than summer 2025 ED visits peaked 62% lower than summer 2025 Wastewater RNA peaked 67% lower than summer 2025 More later!

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Prof. Michael Fuhrer @michaelsfuhrer.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

That's 51 weeks of predictions vs observations in the US of Covid-19 R_eff for the SSM* and it is going pretty well. (black = observed, red = model) *silly seasonal model 1/

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Prof. Michael Fuhrer @michaelsfuhrer.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

Major Mitchell's Cockatoo was a bird I'd always wanted to see but I knew I'd need to get lucky on my Alice Springs trip. And I did! Saw a pair by the side of the road dining on feral Afghan melons. Lifer 😀 Major Mitchell's Cockatoo 🪶

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Kristian G. Andersen @kgandersen.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

Imagine that - a novel, highly divergent, betacoronavirus with a weird-looking* furin cleavage site popped right out of a bat butt 🦇. You gotta wonder 🤔. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

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Prof. Michael Fuhrer @michaelsfuhrer.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

A welcome drop this week in flu hospitalizations in NZ however still higher than any of the past 10 years, and 72 times (!) higher than Covid-19 in the past week. Influenza also very high in Australia. Please stay home if you feel unwell. This is the time of peak strain on the health care system.

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Prof. Michael Fuhrer @michaelsfuhrer.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

Covid emergency department visits (blue) have peaked in US, ~60% lower than summer 2025, which was ~40% lower than summer 2024. Wastewater RNA, positivity, hospitalizations, deaths show similar trend. Covid-19 decreasing year-on-year, and the decrease is accelerating. Unexpected good news! 1/

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Onisillos @onisillos.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

The other "hangover from Covid" is that people spent years talking down influenza. Scolding those who made comparisons. When the point was that, as bad as covid was, influenza was still something to be taken seriously. www.rnz.co.nz/news/health/...

rnz.co.nz

Why a GP wishes people would stop saying 'it's just the flu'

New Zealand is in the grip of Influenza A, and for our most vulnerable it's proving deadly

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Prof. Michael Fuhrer @michaelsfuhrer.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

The most common fairywren sp. around Alice Springs. The blue makes a lovely contrast to the red rocks. Splendid Fairywren 🪶

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Prof. Michael Fuhrer @michaelsfuhrer.bsky.social · 06/09/2026

How cute is this tiny guy? Another lifer for me in Alice Springs. Red-browed Pardalote 🪶

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Prof. Michael Fuhrer @michaelsfuhrer.bsky.social · 05/09/2026

Bad flu season continues in New Zealand. Hospital admissions with flu were 95 times (!) higher than admissions with Covid-19 last week. Exercise higher caution, and please stay home if you feel unwell. This is a time of absolute peak strain on the health care system.

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Prof. Michael Fuhrer @michaelsfuhrer.bsky.social · 05/09/2026

Summer Covid-19 waves in the US (red arrows) used to be far above the baseline of all pneumonia/influenza/Covid-19 deaths. This current wave (blue arrow) isn't even visible in PIC deaths (red line). A reminder that, as bad as the pandemic was, the airborne-AIDS apocalypse did not eventuate.

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Prof. Michael Fuhrer @michaelsfuhrer.bsky.social · 05/09/2026

I replotted the chart so you can see the whole pandemic. Pneumonia/influenza/Covid-19 deaths made up over one-third (33.8%) of *all* deaths in the US at the peak in winter 2020-21. Astounding.

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Prof. Michael Fuhrer @michaelsfuhrer.bsky.social · 05/09/2026

The percentage of deaths in US due to pneumonia/influenza/Covid-19 (PIC, red line) is at its lowest level since at least 2018-2019. 1/

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