Very happy to share our new study out today in NEJM, showing fewer PCV doses are non-inferior to standard schedules in maintaining control of vaccine-type carriage in Vietnam. This could make vaccination programmes much more affordable for LMICs. nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NE…

An antiviral pill has, for the first time, been shown to prevent COVID-19 in people exposed to the SARS-CoV-2 virus go.nature.com/4nAMi6g

“The reassurance is technically accurate, but because of the way the media asks the question, it’s the only thing anyone can say. That framing flattens out the actual, complicated response to an actual, complicated emerging disease outbreak. The implicit tone of the coverage is that the only reason that you, the audience, should care about a disease outbreak is whether it is coming for you personally.” This was a great piece

“Public health officials, from the W.H.O. to U.S. officials, would be more helpful if they stopped constantly reassuring people about the likelihood of future events they can’t accurately calculate,” Zeynep Tufekci writes about the hantavirus outbreak. nyti.ms/4tr1O61

Erin asked my opinion about this new info, and I basically said it means we’re still trying to figure this puzzle out so we we should be a bit cautious with definitive statements about this virus. Look, if we don’t do a good job now with quarantining and making sure we don’t have cases that aren’t original ship passengers, we’ll be chasing cases here and there for weeks to months, and because of the long incubation period there will be a blanket of uncertainty over all of this.

Statement from the International Hantavirus Society and members of the international hantavirus research and clinical community regarding Andes virus transmission and the current outbreak investigation zenodo.org/records/20134326

1/ We are living in an era of emerging zoonotic infections. While hantavirus is the focus today, preventing epidemics requires sustained investment in the tools needed to prevent, rapidly detect & respond to biological threats, whether natural, accidental, or deliberate.

100%— serial testing of all passengers will actually give us key insights into asymptomatic or presymptomatic infection & possibility of transmission which would inform not only this outbreak but future ones. #Hantavirus

We have a student loans system which, on a *massive scale* actively embeds injustice and inequality both between and within generations. And the government apparently has no interest in reforming it.

Whether or not interest is capped at RPI, or thresholds are unfrozen, middle earning graduates will continue to be squeezed the most while the richest pay less.

The student loan issue - beyond predictable; all it required was some very basic maths - 16 years ago… Talk about creating unnecessary problems.

A new deal for young people? About time! My newsletter this week is about how years of squeezing the finances of young adults - with student loans, high housing costs and frozen tax thresholds - has created a big political problem inews.co.uk/news/graduates-p…

lol