Yeah, thanks!

I've tried to make this point when people complain that virologists in protective gear go out and get samples from bats. The "risk" of that sample-taking is a drop in the ocean of human-wildlife interactions that take place daily. Might as well complain about the risk of someone going for a hike.

Slight correction of this part of the article: BA.3.2 is not a descendant of BA.1; it's a descendant of BA.3.

Parts of the BA.3 genome most closely resembled BA.2 and other parts BA.1, but it's not a clear recombinant. Possibly BA.1, BA.2, & BA.3 were intrahost variants within a single person.

It's one he's repeated in various forms in recent months. Hard to know how to even respond to something so plainly idiotic.

No, no, this can't be right. I was told by the very sane & always judicious Matt Ridley that 1000s of years ago, humans lived with bats in caves—& global pandemics were quite rare in those days!

Needless to say this disproves the notion that deforestation or wildlife trade might spark a pandemic.

The lowest of the low-hanging fruit. There are already compelling ethical reasons for shutting fur farms down, & the pandemic risk they pose is immense. And it’s not exactly an essential industry.

Unreal that phantom lab leaks are obsessed over while fur farms get a free pass.

This takes courage..

The Strokes closed their Coachella set flashing images of the governments the CIA has overthrown, the leaders the US has assassinated including MLK, the war crimes the US is committing in Iran, and the genocide Israel is committing in occupied Palestine.

Depends on whether the change in sequences was sudden and final or (as I suspect) something more like a gradual transition. Funding changes likely caused some rapid changes, but institutions & habits generally tend to change slowly.

The 2025-26 change (the largest) I think is BA.3.2-driven.

Yes, the lower overall sequencing plus the concomitant increase in the proportion of sequences coming from hospitalized cases.

I would bet that the trend toward an increasing proportion of 0-4-year olds that started increasing around 2023-24 with the change in sequencing sampling is entirely due to 0-1-year-olds, probably mostly by those under one year old (for the same reason you outline in your essay).

Is there any way to separate infants (0-1 years old) from other children? In all the data I've looked at, the proportion of 0-1 year-olds in BA.3.2 sequences is decidedly smaller (~2-fold higher) than the overrepresentation of 2-17-year-olds (more like 6-fold higher) relative to adults.

But the issue isn't that kids "account for a larger, seemingly growing share of detectable symptomatic infections than adults do."

By itself that would be interesting, but the main story here is that kids are hugely overrepresented in sequences from one variant (BA.3.2) but not other variants.

The Trump admin is a catastrophe for science.

Yeah, I understand that, but I guess I still don't get how that explains anything. So the LLM breaks down the word into three parts. It's not at all clear to me why that would cause it to have difficulty figuring out the number of times a letter occurs in each part & then adding them.

Maybe it's just my ignorance, but I don't understand how this is an explanation at all. Seems like they just substituted bracketed numbers for words/letters. Not clear to me how that explains anything.

I hate to say I told you so but...

Since I posted this (3 days ago) there have been over 130 BA.3.2 sequences released (more than doubling the US total).

Every one of them was from NY, MD, NJ, and MA

Shit don't lie.

Maybe something more along the lines of a prolonged respite? If saltation variants started showing up once every 5 years instead of every year or two, that would be a huge improvement I think, and it doesn't seem unreasonable to hope for something like that.

Seems likely. I also think there's a good chance the loss of ORF7a reduces the incidence of chronic (or even just prolonged) infections.

The overall low infection rates also means fewer chronic infections. Raw number of BA.3.2 infections is likely still relatively small.
bsky.app/profile/ryan...

These public health matters have unfortunately been turned into burdens borne by individuals, in classic neoliberal form.

I've put a $1000 HEPA air cleaner in the classroom I work in to improve the air quality where I work.

US hospitals generally have very good ventilation. UK is worse I think.

They definitely collect that data internally. Their data is second to none. It's just that a lot of it is not shared publicly, for political/bureaucratic reasons (i.e. not the fault of any of the actual scientists/researchers in @ukhsa.bsky.social).

Same. I'm still amazed every time I listen. And still gutted by the brilliant music that was stolen from us (and the life stolen from him and his family) by his profound, intractable depression and death at age 26.

Yeah, probably that report. I'm just waiting for them to include BA.3.2-specific age data at some point. They surely have the data. Right now they include overall Covid data for different age groups but nothing about the ages of cases/hospitalizations for BA.3.2 and non-BA.3.2 variants.

Road YouTube video by Nick Drake - Topic

Probably my favorite song from my favorite album, clocking in at 1:59.

Not a guitar player, so I don't know exactly what Nick Drake is doing here or elsewhere in this album, but I don't think anyone's been able to replicate it in the 50+ years since his death.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=jpk3...

Still nothing meaningful happening in BA.3.2 sequences. Spike mutations are rare & fleeting.

One interesting thing today: ∆T676, reminiscent of the ∆675-676 some months back in Australia. Similar deletions ~nonexistent pre-BA.3.2. More proof the BA.3.2 spike is different.
bsky.app/profile/ryan...

FWIW, there was also a large NYC upload just posted. Same trend as always:

BA.3.2 — 23/54 (42.6%) ages 0-17
non-BA.3.2 — 24/209 (11.5%) ages 0-17

They definitely have the data. I don't think there's any doubt that they'll find the same thing we've seen in every country: a hugely disproportionate share of children among BA.3.2 sequences.

But they always have the best reports & analysis, so it will be nice to have that kind of confirmation.

SARS-CoV-2 sequences submitted today w/age data:

BA.3.2 — 15/17 seqs ages 0-17
non-BA.3.2 — 5/20 seqs ages 0-17

From South Korea & USA, MD.

BA.3.2's propensity for children undeniable at this point. Not sure there's any point belaboring it anymore. Awaiting
@ukhsa.bsky.social BA.3.2 report.

Hope this isn't a sign of the Xification of Bsky.

Frankly, it's extremely disappointing that @bsky.app still hasn't fixed their DMs yet. We still have:

• No group chat option
• Character limits on DMs (Why?)
• No images allowed on DMs

What gives?

Could this be an example where people are trying to avoid a pronunciation that sounds vaguely like a word people don't like to say? I think something like this happened w/Uranus. My dad says when he grew up he never once heard anyone say YOUR-un-us, though now most "serious people" say it like that.

BA.3.2 update.

In the last week BA.3.2 showed up in over 70 wastewater samples, but they were not evenly distributed.

Over half of them came for NY (all NYC), CT, MD and PA.

In NY, PA and CT it was almost every sample (29/31)
In MD it was just over half.

1/