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

Very early A/H1N1 season in US. bsky.app/profile/mich...

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

Oh that is a problem. The vax is actually well-matched but it is better in your arm than in a warehouse!

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Paul Mainwood @paulmainwood.bsky.social · 19h

Early flu wave still looking early. Would get a jab now if you qualify/want one.

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Roger Sollenberger @sollenbergerrc.bsky.social · 13h

This is objectively psychotic and every member of Congress and Senate should be ashamed if they don’t try to remove him from office before this happens

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Prof. Michael Fuhrer @michaelsfuhrer.bsky.social · 14h

Western Australia and New Zealand also nearly completely avoided pre-omicron infections. Of course WA was one of the first BA.3.2 waves.

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Prof. Michael Fuhrer @michaelsfuhrer.bsky.social · 14h

The unique aspect of Japan's pandemic response pre-omicron was the lack of testing, not any special NPIs, leading to a persistent misconception that they did well. They did poorly at suppressing pre-omicron compared to S. Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong.

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Prof. Michael Fuhrer @michaelsfuhrer.bsky.social · 16h

Yes, it should be a good match, thankfully.

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Prof. Michael Fuhrer @michaelsfuhrer.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

P.S. the two outliers with highest ED visits for influenza at the moment are Alaska and Hawaii. These two are often outliers and the least likely to follow the usual seasonal patterns of the continental US.

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Prof. Michael Fuhrer @michaelsfuhrer.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

One aspect that be surprising to some: The early rise in influenza is most prominent in states in the South and West of the US. This is in fact the *typical* pattern: These states show lower seasonal variation and higher flu in summer, so flu can take off faster in autumn.

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Prof. Michael Fuhrer @michaelsfuhrer.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

The percentage of emergency department visits for influenza has passed Covid-19 last week in the US. Levels are still low compared to mid-winter peaks BUT high for the date (typically reaching the current levels in late Oct or Nov) and highlight the early onset of this year's flu season.

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Prof. Michael Fuhrer @michaelsfuhrer.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

We're headed for a 2026 peak soon, and the timing looks similar to 2025. If that is the case, and integrate over one peak and one trough in one year, 2026 still is lower than 2025, then I would say it's not the lull that makes the difference. Will check later in the year!

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Prof. Michael Fuhrer @michaelsfuhrer.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

Here are the timeseries for the Netherlands and Scotland (UK stopped monitoring wastewater). I agree that the seasonal pattern is less clear in N. Europe. So it's hard to say whether (1) pattern is same but at lower level, or (2) peaks getting farther apart (i.e. "lull").

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Prof. Michael Fuhrer @michaelsfuhrer.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

The peak in CIS is 25% higher than Infectieradar.

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Prof. Michael Fuhrer @michaelsfuhrer.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

BTW, here are Infectieradar results and the Coronavirus Infection Survey results from UK (all participants swabbed weekly, and supposedly results were corrected for false negatives). I think the one-third figure is probably roughly correct.

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Prof. Michael Fuhrer @michaelsfuhrer.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

I am wondering if Fig. 5 is actually showing the self-test negative/PCR positives and it is a typo in the paper. Hard to say.

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Prof. Michael Fuhrer @michaelsfuhrer.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

Yes, but, we need to know how many of the symptomatic tested positive. If only 7% of symptomatic tested positive, and 7% of the negatives tested positive, the false negative rate might be 50%.

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Prof. Michael Fuhrer @michaelsfuhrer.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

Though maybe I am reading the paper wrong? I don't think you can determine the false negative rate from that number. So it's unclear what they're trying to say.

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Prof. Michael Fuhrer @michaelsfuhrer.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

Point taken, though I did note that it is "symptomatic infections" not all infections in the Medium post. Also, if I read it correctly it is 7%, not one third, of the negative self-tests that are positive for SARS-CoV-2 in PCR.

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Prof. Michael Fuhrer @michaelsfuhrer.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

There's nothing particularly unusual about 2026 in the US; it looks very much like 2023 and 2025. (2024 is the year that stands out as different.) Emergency department visits and R_eff (derived from ED visits) follow the same trend in 2026, just lower at all times.

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Prof. Michael Fuhrer @michaelsfuhrer.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

*Whoops should have been 2024-25 in first post!

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Prof. Michael Fuhrer @michaelsfuhrer.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

Influenza A/H1N1 positivity has already pulled even with SARS-CoV-2 in Biofire's surveillance in US, very early in the season. A/H1N1 never passed covid last winter, and in 2025-25 it didn't pass covid until mid-December. Not a good year to put off your flu shot!

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C.H. Romatowski @chromatowski.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

Read this if you’d like some encouraging Covid news (tl,dr: not yet endemic because rates of Covid are plunging rather than plateauing)

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Prof. Michael Fuhrer @michaelsfuhrer.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

I think if one considers how pandemic and endemic vaccination policies might differ, their position isn't controversial.

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Prof. Michael Fuhrer @michaelsfuhrer.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

As it says in the article, it depends on how "endemic" is defined. For some definitions, covid is certainly endemic. Though ATAGI doesn't define what they mean by endemic, I think it is quite reasonable to treat covid like other endemic diseases in terms of vaccination policy.

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Prof. Michael Fuhrer @michaelsfuhrer.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

Is Covid-19 endemic yet? Surprisingly, I think the answer is “No”! medium.com/@michael.fuh...

medium.com

Is Covid-19 endemic yet?

Surprisingly, I think the answer is “No”!

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Colin @colin-fraser.net · 04/10/2026

I’m not happy about the way the pendulum has swung from the tech industry portraying itself as For Good in the 2010s to For Evil in the 2020s. Ofc it’s fake, it’s always simply For Money, but I think it’s better on balance when the tech cos feel a little bit of pressure to appear, like, not wicked.

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Prof. Michael Fuhrer @michaelsfuhrer.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

It's really wild to think that someone would actually do that, but hey, now you know! As I said, it's a funny world we live in.

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Prof. Michael Fuhrer @michaelsfuhrer.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

He'll never give you a straight answer, and he will never address the fact that WVAL isn't an absolute number, but a comparison to the last two years. Because he's based his whole life over the last several years around that lie.

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Prof. Michael Fuhrer @michaelsfuhrer.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

I saw you actually did ask Hoerger, and I appreciate it, that takes some integrity. bsky.app/profile/exsi...

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Prof. Michael Fuhrer @michaelsfuhrer.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

This is a mix of surveillance and diagnostic testing. All data from the National Respiratory and Enteric Virus Surveillance System (NREVSS), though the data are in separate places: data.cdc.gov/Laboratory-S... gis.cdc.gov/grasp/fluvie...

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Prof. Michael Fuhrer @michaelsfuhrer.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

(Note: that's influenza A and B in the chart. Covid was detected a little less than half as often as A alone, and a bit more than B alone. The vast bulk of testing is in clinical labs that don't distinguish between A types.)

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Prof. Michael Fuhrer @michaelsfuhrer.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

Total test volumes for the past year for each virus in the dashed lines, total detections (positives) in the last year in the solid lines. There's a lot of information here; I will write a long-form blog about this soon.

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Prof. Michael Fuhrer @michaelsfuhrer.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

I don't why I never plotted this before. In the last year in the US, Covid-19 (red) was detected in clinical & public health labs fewer times than influenza (blue), RSV (green), or *rhinoviruses* (orange). Despite similar test volumes for flu/RSV, and about 1/3 the test volume for rhinoviruses!

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Prof. Michael Fuhrer @michaelsfuhrer.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

The reason that nothing evolved to see 2.2 micron light isn't that water absorbs it; the atmosphere with water vapour is transparent at 2.2 microns. It's just that there isn't any 2.2 micron light around, so seeing it isn't very useful.

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Prof. Michael Fuhrer @michaelsfuhrer.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

Of course useless thing also don't get invented:

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Prof. Michael Fuhrer @michaelsfuhrer.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

Not everything that's useful gets invented by evolution.

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Prof. Michael Fuhrer @michaelsfuhrer.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

Frankly, I think the answer to a lot of these evolutionary questions isn't "because it must be that way" but rather the answer "that's just the way it is - more mammals than just bats could have evolved an organ to see in the dark, but they just happened not to".

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Prof. Michael Fuhrer @michaelsfuhrer.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

That's fine, but my point is that the answer to "Why can't we see 10 micron light?" isn't that water isn't very transparent at 10 microns. Snakes have evolved the ability to localize ten micron light three times independently, and bats have evolved it once.

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Prof. Michael Fuhrer @michaelsfuhrer.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

Our own three-colour vision evolved independently; we inherited two colours out of four from our common ancestor with birds, and added the red-green ability.

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Prof. Michael Fuhrer @michaelsfuhrer.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

Terrestrial winged insects evolved colour vision independently from vertebrates and can famously see ultraviolet.

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Prof. Michael Fuhrer @michaelsfuhrer.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

Eyes have evolved independently dozens of times, including terrestrials, and photoreceptors are thought to have evolved more than once. Thermal imaging has evolved independently several times terrestrially.

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Prof. Michael Fuhrer @michaelsfuhrer.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

I think this is a "just so" story. The atmosphere has other significant windows of transmission, and we know one of them is VERY useful (8-13 microns) and in fact some animals have evolved to use it to "see" rudimentarily. Why not better? bsky.app/profile/mich...

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Prof. Michael Fuhrer @michaelsfuhrer.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

There's a bit of begging the question here though, as the *atmosphere* has more transmission windows. E.g. it would be possible and useful to see thermal radiation (and there are cameras that do this). Indeed thermal imaging has evolved several times in terrestrial animals (snakes, bats).

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Prof. Michael Fuhrer @michaelsfuhrer.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

Longer thread on why WVAL gets stuck at 1 here: bsky.app/profile/mich...

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Prof. Michael Fuhrer @michaelsfuhrer.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

CDC's Wastewater Viral Activity Level (WVAL) as designed is really a failure as an early-warning system (I know that's not what it's for, but still!) Compare for influenza A: CDC WVAL on left shows essentially no signal, WastewaterSCAN on right shows the early Flu A wave (my circle in red).

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