Here is Dr. Klotman’s Week 234 video update. The highlights are:
- A woman in Missouri is the first H5N1 Bird Flu patient who has no history of contact with dairy cattle or bird flocks
- There is still no evidence of human-to-human spread of H5N1
- Wastewater numbers show no RSV activity, little Flu activity, and falling levels of COVID
- ER visits for COVID seem to have peaked
- COVID activity levels seem to be falling without reaching last year’s JN.1 peak
- COVID hospitalizations, virtually all among the elderly (me and maybe you), may have peaked too
- There’s a new Novavax, protein-based COVID vaccine to last year’s JN.1 strain for those who have some concern about taking m-RNA vaccines
Dr. Klotman devotes a substantial portion of this week’s update to MPox. There are two Clades (lineages) of MPox. Clade 1 originated and is most prevalent in central Africa; the DRC is its epicenter. It has spread to adjacent countries but has occurred outside Africa only among folks traveling to affected areas. It seems to be spread by rodents which are most abundant in crowded living settings such as refugee camps.
Clade 2 is seen among folks in multiple West African countries and has affected individuals in Europe as well as the Americas. Both clades can be spread through sexual contact, but outside of Africa, it is typically clade 2 that spreads (primarily) among MSMs.
The smallpox vaccine protects against both clades, and Moderna has developed an m-RNA vaccine against MPox. As is so often the case, when an infectious scourge affects people in poor countries, the industrialized world responds only sluggishly because there is no profit in it.
I often think that in Star Trek our values would have been best represented by the Ferengi rather than the Federation.