Thank you, that's very kind of you. It makes my day to know someone enjoyed something I wrote.
07.03.2026 19:14
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Thank you, that's very kind of you. It makes my day to know someone enjoyed something I wrote.
A woman reading 'Sneeze' in a park with a cat by her feet.
If you're looking for something to read in the park, now that the weather's improving, a book on the peculiar science of the common cold might by what you need.
One out of one cats that we consulted endorses this message.
The pictures are probably the best bits!
What's as wide as half a minute's fingernail growth, makes you miserable and costs you hundreds of quid every year?
It's a cold virus.
I wrote a book about what what we know about the little so-and-sos and how we know it. Would you like to read it?
www.augustbooks.co/books/sneeze...
The conclusion isn't a huge surprise but it's good to see a real-world experiment backing it up. Though very few UK schools would have had CO2 <1400ppm for more than half the time.
Reminds me of the Milan study showing filtration cuts absences by less than EUR12/sickday.
www.rff.org/publications...
Really looking forward to this. Understanding why we find it so easy to believe things that aren't true is fundamental to so many things and @profchrisfrench.bsky.social is an expert on why we believe them.
“I don’t like established science…science is what I observe…there is an emotion when people use the word proven.”
Time to invest in iron lungs because poliomyelitis will leave some children needing a machine to do their breathing for the rest of their lives.
www.statnews.com/2026/01/22/v...
Thank heaven for small mercy. I hate the way the Bandim team seem to have got involved in that. The research they were doing 25 years ago was groundbreaking.
Here we go again. When are people going to realise that when a LLM gives you an answer, it's also given you a lot of factchecking to do.
Nine times out of ten, working it out for yourself is a lot quicker and less likely to leave egg on your face.
Many years ago, I was planning a study around influenza vaccination that I remember calling the 'flujab' study for short.
Maybe it's a British thing but I don't think the word is particularly associated with antivax here. These days, it's as likely to mean semaglutide as a vaccine.
Good news for British children, not to mention parents who don't like seeing their children being ill. The chickenpox vaccine's been in use for three decades in the USA so it's got a very solid record for being safe and effective.
www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
Here's one to look forward to. Always good to be reminded why seeing really shouldn't be believing.
Ah, sorry. I misunderstood your point. The barrels of cash make even more sense now.
Fully agree with the list, including the last one.
Would you add clean water and clean air?
"If you want to imagine the platonic business under capitalism, it's a business that pays nothing to its workers and its suppliers and charges its customers infinity, right? There are some businesses that can do that. They're called academic publishers."
One nail among many that got hit on the head
Was Banks saying everyone else got drunk and he didn't? That doesn't sound like Banks at all.
Or was this him saying 'I wasn't drunk, it was all of you lot who were drunk'?
Exceptions to the known pathogens tend to come through the animal house, where someone caught something from a live animal.
But, as Elizabeth said, new pathogens emerge naturally all the time.
Lab leaks have happened, certainly, but what leaks are usually known pathogens kept in the lab. That's very different to some new and unknown pathogen emerging from a lab with no explanation for how it got in there in the first place.
I was thinking they're infallible on their own terms. Skynet didn't do what it's designers intended but when it decided to kill everyone, it was very good at it. Though I don't remember Data or Murderbot having any trouble counting fingers.
That's very kind of you.
The irony being that a lot of novel viruses are artificial in the sense that they arise out of our agricultural systems or wild-caught animal trade. Nobody seems to be nearly as concerned about that.
Hollywood's spent years telling us that apocalyptic viruses come from idiots in labs so when an apocalyptic virus appears, everyone's primed to think lab leak.
Hollywood's also spent years telling us that AI is omniscient and infallible so...
How the hell is this going to work? What ERB, in Denmark or Guinea, is going to let them withhold the birth dose in a region where there's endemic vertical transmission?
There's no grantholder named in the linked document which makes me wonder if this is even a real study or some sort of grift.
In fairness, it's not for the first time although maybe Trump is the most extreme example. Carl Sagan said that nuclear weaponry makes us dependent on the 'sanity and sobriety' of our leadership.
It's one of the most terrifying statements I've ever heard.
🧵1/ Flu is surging again, & patterns look uncomfortably familiar. The lesson from covid remains unchanged: individual responsibility isn’t enough. We need systemic measures that make protective behaviours easy. @profstevegriffin.bsky.social Stephen Reicher & I offer some thoughts @bmj.com
There's solid evidence that a FFP2/N95 masks keep filtering for at least 40 hours. By then, they're probably starting to smell even if the straps haven't broken but as you say, the reuse makes them a lot more affordable.
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
So, to those who say "masks don't work", cite the flawed Cochrane report, insist upon an unfeasible RCT, accuse folks of panic, and undermine public health on social and mainstream media during a flu/RSV epidemic...
1. Seasonal viruses may be "normal", but they do immense harm.
Or we could wear FFP2 masks, available from any pharmacy, and not get the flu in the first place.
www.theguardian.com/society/2025...
So RSV, influenza and COVID-19 vaccines all cut hospitalisation risk by between half and two thirds. That's very impressive for viruses as slippery as those three. More importantly, it's a lot of people being a lot less ill.
Now we've got RSV joining the party that influenza started a month ago. Looks like the winter virus season is starting early this year. Let's hope it finishes early too.