Watch Dr. Klotman’s Week 317 Video address here. My summary follows,
Measles
- We’re up to 1714 cases this year – close to last year’s 2287
- Utah, South Carolina, El Paso, and Arizona have the most cases
Influenza
- There were 12 pediatric deaths this past week
- Still, Flu is waning in the US
- A recent study from Denmark shows that in people >40yo, the risk of heart attack increases 5-fold and risk of stroke increases 3-fold in the 4-weeks following infection with Influenza
- People vaccinated for Influenza had only half the increased risk as those not vaccinated
COVID (SARS-CoV-2)
- It’s still around at a low level but much less than during its most recent epidemic peaks
- XFG 1.1 is the current dominant strain
- Other species affected now include Emperor Penguins and Antarctic seals
COVID Pandemic Analyses and Theories
- Most of the arguments for a “Lab Leak” cause for the COVID pandemic rely on circumstantial evidence
- The case for a natural, zoonotic origin for COVID is based on epidemiological analysis of the earliest COVID cases around the Wuhan “wet market” – the kind of analysis that John Snow did on Cholera in London.
- A recent genetics study in the journal “Cell” proposes that viruses do not adapt to humans after human infection. Instead, there are many wild mutations of many viruses, some of which can replicate in humans, and a chance human infection with one of those strains leads to pandemic spread.
- Once in a human host, subsequent mutations compete for dominance in humans. (I hate it when that happens)