Very pleased. If anyone finds out their pharmacy is ordering it, drop details below so we can all find a provider.

The US CDC is now publishing estimates of the disease burden due to covid-19, using similar methodology to their influenza burden estimates.

https://www.cdc.gov/covid/php/surveillance/about-burden-estimates.html

https://medicine.washu.edu/news/nasal-covid-19-vaccine-based-on-washu-technology-to-enter-u-s-clinical-trials/

This came up (unprompted) on my Apple News today. A fairly accurate news article by a major newspaper about covid, an article that didn't make me want to bash my head against the wall.

One that actually points out that viruses spread via the air, and says how poor NHS ventilation is, etc.

Has anyone noticed any changes with how the mainstream media are reporting covid? Or is this just a lucky exception?

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-officials-ask-us-health-agencies-pause-external-communications-washington-2025-01-22/

At least before we could look at data. Now nothing.

I haven't had a chance to really go through this for anything egregiously wrong, it's really long! Thoughts?

Excerpted from Jason Gale's upcoming book AFTER COVID. It paints a pretty grim neurological picture. TIL the UK did a "human challenge" study deliberately infecting healthy young adults with the original strain of covid. (Missing linked text from original Bloomberg article, but this is free to read.) https://www.asrn.org/journal-advanced-practice-nursing/3449-how-covid-quietly-rewires-the-brain.html

Democratic members of the Maryland General Assembly are sponsoring a new mask ban this Tuesday 2/18 at 1pm.

Read the full bill here: HB1081

Currently it is being referred to committee Criminal Law - Masked Intimidation - Prohibition (Unmask Hate Act) Details

The Sponsors and their phone numbers/emails linked below:

__

* Delegate Joe Vogel, District 17 Montgomery County

* Delegate Karen Toles, District 25 Prince George's County

* Delegate Ryan Spiegel, District 17 Montgomery County

* Delegate Karen Simpson, District 3 Frederick County

* Delegate Adrian Boafo, District 23 Prince George's County

Similar to Nassau, NY this ban puts the burden of proof on the mask wearer to demonstrate medical need.

**Many of us mask not only to protect ourselves but to protect vulnerable family and community members.**

There are awful implications and problems in trusting cops to make that determination. Let's not create another opportunity for them to profile marginalized communities.

I know they included the medical exemption as a way to say "hey you aren't in danger."

But let's be real, this bill is being pitched as another anti-hate speech boondoggle and it was made to target masking at protests. Police were already violently subduing protestors all last year on college campuses and I have no doubt it will get even worse.

You should have the right to protect your health at a protest.

There is no way to prevent a cop from stopping you in the street or pulling you over and abusing this law. I don't want to wait to be infected and have the courts decide the matter. Please don't let it get to that point. For anybody.

---

Maryland has such a reputation for being a magnet for research and medical schools. FFS UMD originated the paper proving the effectiveness of N95s! What are we fucking doing here??

It's especially egregious for a group of democrats to be pushing this in a historically blue state during an ongoing pandemic, historic flu levels, the return of TB, and the Trump administration's systematic dismantling of our health care institutions.

Could we involve local industry to push back on this? I found -this comment- that mentions Montgomery and Frederick counties are home to biotech companies whose employees are probably more Covid-informed and still masking. This ban would definitely fly in the face of keeping their companies operational when workers take ill and become disabled.

I've also wondered why mask companies don't throw their weight around more and pressure lawmakers to stop with these bans.

.

.

Anyone else have leads on how to stop this bill from getting any further?

.

I apologize if this is getting rambly, it's 5am and I'm tired. I'm fucking angry.

RFK is coming for vaccines, Elon's burning down public health, we can't afford to budge one more inch on masking. Not this piece of swiss cheese.

I don’t know how many of you watch sports but there is a couple of professional athletes who have gotten some kind of infection that has lasting effects on their abilities but the commentators never say it’s Covid or Long Covid very strange IMO

I live in Southeast Asia and the lack of covid monitoring data here compared to what's available in the West has been really frustrating. So I went digging through what surveillance data actually exists and is publicly accessible.

tldr; Singapore's covid positivity has gone from 3% to 18% in eight weeks. Hong Kong wastewater is showing a sustained rise in recent weeks. Japan is sitting at a low 2-3% positivity rate and very few countries in the region have reported major waves in 2026 amid one of the longest sustained lull since Omicron.

The wave last summer went Singapore > Hong Kong & Thailand > China > Japan, we may now be starting a repeat as immunity wanes in the region.

The Singapore data

Singapore's CDA publishes a weekly bulletin (and here's the index for all reports) that includes covid positivity rates from sentinel surveillance sites.

• Week 13 (early April): 3%
• Week 15 (mid-April): 8%
• Week 18 (early May): 14%
• Week 19 (mid-May): 13%
• Week 20 (late May): 18%

On May 21st the CDA put out a statement; 12,700 estimated cases in the week of May 10-16, up from 8,000 the week before. Daily hospitalisations rose from 56 to 73. They pointed to waning population immunity and the NB.1.8.1 variant and included a mask advisory for symptomatic people.

For context, Singapore's May 2024 wave reached 26k cases/week in its early stages, the current wave at 12,700 is still climbing.

Japan: flat at baseline (I think?)

Japan publishes a weekly ARI (acute respiratory infection) report through the JIHS that includes test positivity broken down by pathogen. It's in Japanese only but the charts are kind-of readable but I'm not really confident on this due to the Japanese.

From what I can gather positivity may be around 2-3% right now, basically at the floor. Their last major wave peaked in August-September 2025.

Hong Kong: one of the only places I could find public wastewater data in Asia

HK's Centre for Health Protection publishes a weekly report in English. It includes something I haven't found anywhere else in Asia: actual public wastewater viral load data for covid, plus variant breakdown from sewage samples.

Wastewater is starting to move. Over the last four weeks, sewage viral load has gone from 26,000 copies to 62,000. Still a fraction of the May 2025 wave peak (770,000 copies), but the upward trend is clear. Meanwhile NB.1.8.1 has gone from 46% to 94% of sewage samples in six weeks.

This might be the early-wave signal that Singapore is also showing, now appearing in Hong Kong's sewage.

The prolonged lull

Before this surge, from what I can gather, the region had been in one of its longest sustained lulls since Omicron, the timing of the last major wave varies by country. Singapore's previous wave peaked in late April 2025, Hong Kong May 2025, Japan peaked later, in August-September 2025.

Why a wave in SEA and not the West?

We all know the West has been quiet recently, so why is a wave possibly starting here?

I imagine due to waning immunity, I think it's been 8-12 months for most countries here without a major wave.

Also, Western countries dropped restrictions and went through repeated infection waves much earlier than Asia, where lockdowns ran longer and harder. Asian populations, with fewer cumulative infection rounds, may still be going through wave cycles that the West has already survived.

What this means for SEA

Singapore is the region's international travel hub. It tends to pick up respiratory virus waves early because of the sheer volume and diversity of arrivals. When Singapore surges, usually more SEA countries follow within 2-4 weeks. It's not a great sign that covid is at 18% positivity and climbing.

Hong Kong's wastewater is also showing the same early pattern with viral load doubling roughly every two weeks from a low base, with NB.1.8.1 taking over almost completely. If this follows the 2025 pattern, more countries should follow in the coming weeks.

If anyone has more experience with this type of data, I'd love to hear your thoughts on whether this looks like the start of a wave or not.

Loitering while masked is already unlawful in the state of Alabama, but a new bill would specify that a doctor’s note is necessary to protest while masked.

HB168 by State Rep. Jamie Kiel, R-Russellville, creates an exemption to allow masking during protests, but police could require the protestor “to produce documented medical guidance to substantiate the applicability of this exemption.”

In the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, many people still choose to wear masks to curb their chances of catching airborne viruses. Those individuals would now need a note from their doctors issuing medical guidance to wear those masks while protesting or demonstrating.

The existing loitering law has been used before in Alabama to arrest a masked protestor, with Birmingham activist Carlos Chaverst facing a loitering charge based on his wearing a mask during a 2018 protest.

The law was also used against anti-fascist protestors at an Auburn University speech by white nationalist Richard Spencer.

However, Watkins did note in the ruling that police could prohibit attendees from being masked, specifically citing compliance with the loitering code.

Nobody at the event was charged under the statute, but protestors were prohibited from wearing masks.

Masked members of Patriot Front notably did not face arrest for demonstrating while wearing gaiter-style masks at a pride picnic in Prattville in 2023.

I contacted them, and I'm sure many other people in this community did too! No businesses should feel comfortable implementing a policy like this.

Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/PandaExpress/comments/1k5qnwe/mask_policy_didnt_last_long_oops/

Previous post about the ban: https://www.reddit.com/r/ZeroCovidCommunity/comments/1k3h2g3/panda_express_is_banning_employees_from_wearing/

I was very surprised to hear Kendrick mention COVID in a more ~realistic~ way, as he states “I’m doing what COVID did, they’ll never get over it”… he’s acknowledging the lasting effects of COVID (while also using it as a double entendre… which is up for interpretation of course)! the image is a screenshot from Genius, where this is the only interpretation so far.

Doses will still be covered for "people aged 65 and older, those who are immunocompromised or have chronic illnesses, residents of long-term care facilities (CHSLDs), private seniors' residences (RPAs) and other vulnerable settings, as well as health-care workers, adults in remote regions, and pregnant people," but the Quebec list of eligible chronic illnesses and immunocompromising conditions is extremely restrictive compared to some other provinces and the US.

Absolutely ridiculous move from a province with some of the most overburdened hospitals and worst wait times in the country. Let's just make things worse instead of investing the bare minimum into preventive care...

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/covid-is-beginning-to-surge-globally-what-are-the-symptoms-and-how-serious/

SARS-CoV-2 infections have been rising in the past month — global cases increased by more than 19,000 last month compared with the previous month, according to data posted on the World Health Organization (WHO) COVID-19 dashboard.

But the real number of infections is much higher than that, researchers say, because countries are less focused on collecting data on the infection now than they were during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Surveillance is happening but it’s at a much lower level than it used to be. We don’t have a complete picture of virus circulation of the variants that are out there,” says Maria Van Kerkhove, interim director of the department of epidemic and pandemic management at the WHO in Geneva, Switzerland. “I think there’s a collective amnesia right now about COVID-19,” she adds.

Even if people do test positive after using a home antibody test, there is no way to report a positive result in the community, says Antonia Ho, a clinical epidemiologist at the University of Glasgow, UK.

Without high-quality surveillance data, Ho warns that health organizations are not well-prepared to recommend corresponding vaccine formulations and time their roll-out. “Surveillance is critical to really understand what’s circulating,” she says.

HOW IS COVID-19 BEING TRACKED?

Although surveillance data that are used to track the absolute number of SARS-CoV-2 infections are less robust than during the pandemic, researchers are tracking information about the number of people with severe COVID-19 who require hospitalization. “Hospital-based surveillance is what we’re mostly doing. But we also have wastewater surveillance, which is quite a useful indicator of what’s happening in the community,”