Here are covid deaths in Australia, as another example. (Again, the point at 1 Jan 2025 is the total for 2024, the point at 1 Jan 2024 is the total for 2023.)

It *is* seen in ED in the US, see below. (The point at 1 Jan 2025 is the average for 2024, the point at 1 Jan 2024 is the average for 2023.)

This doesn't explain why the excess is negative. The simplest explanation (but the hardest to quantify!) is mortality displacement: Those who died as a result of the pandemic were overall less healthy, leaving a healthier surviving cohort. 6/

In 2025, people in the US of every age were less likely to die than their counterparts in 2019, and less likely to die than even an extrapolation of the pre-pandemic trend would suggest. 2/

I hadn't shared this photo before. The camera tells the truth, and the camera lies. Photograph was taken just after sunrise with full sun on the bird. Exposed for the bright white bird, the surroundings appear almost black. Yellow-billed Spoonbill at Western Treatment Plant, Victoria, Australia. 🪶

The easiest one-stop-shop website to check for the level of respiratory disease in your state is this page from CDC. (Currently everywhere with data is "very low" nationwide.) 5/ www.cdc.gov/respiratory-...

The national aggregate wastewater surveillance level ("Wastewater Viral Activity Level" or WVAL) remains fairly useless at moment, with up to 64% of US sites recently reporting non-detections. See quoted thread for explanation of why WVAL gets stuck at exactly 1. 3/ bsky.app/profile/mich...

While absolute levels are very low, the effective reproductive number R_eff in 2026 is tracking along quite close to 2023 and 2025, which saw summer waves peaking around end of August / 1st week of September. South and West US tend to see bigger summer waves. 2/

Covid-19 is on the increase again in the US, after reaching the lowest levels of emergency dept visits and positivity since the beginning of the pandemic. US will see a summer wave once again. But coming off a trough an astounding 4X lower than last year, how big will the wave be? 1/

It's quite possible that bag looks like this under different lighting conditions/to a different observer. (Just adjusted curves/vibrance in Photoshop)

Last week's was indeed revised to 1 today.

...or fading from peak surge levels to baseline lows in just one week. As they say, big if true! 2/

Quite amazing charts here. Covid-19 outbreaks growing from very low levels to the highest peak surge levels, in just one week... 1/

Here's the raw data behind Hoerger's map, for the three red sites, and the state aggregate. You can see the individual sites' datastreams are quite noisy. In fact, you could have picked anytime between late January and April this year to find an "outbreak" in these sites. 6/

...all are showing levels lower than anytime in the omicron era, and TWENTY TIMES lower than last summer. There are fewer visits to ED right now in TX for covid (0.18%) than influenza (0.30%). In May, when there's very little flu! 3/

Just want to say that this is absolutely crazy-pants misinfo, even for this account. Covid-19 is lower right now, *in those red counties*, than it was at any point in 2022 through 2025. The rate of emergency department visits with covid is 1 in 600. The idea that 1 in 30 have covid is nuts. 1/

(Lesson B) T-cells did what they're supposed to do. Repeated exposure to the SARS-CoV-2 spike protected us not only from present variants, but from future variants that hadn't come along yet. Biology is miraculous indeed. 4/

Here's what these gorgeous birds look like in flight. Laysan albatross seen at Ke'anu Point on Oahu, Hawaii 🪶

Of course, there's still every expectation (mine included) that Covid-19 (the disease!) will become endemic and persist while fluctuating about some long-term average. There's just no actual evidence for that (yet)! 4/

The epidemiological influenza year has ended in Denmark, and for the second year in a row influenza deaths (680 in 2025/26) outnumbered Covid-19 deaths (314 in 2025/26). It may look like covid deaths are flattening out, but... 1/

If you want to know what Hell is like, just have a scroll through the replies that this account makes.😬🤖

I was surprised. It was a bad flu season in US with the subclade K A/H3N2. But hard to argue with all-cause deaths, which were lower than 2022-23 & 2024-25. Possibly some flu deaths mis-attributed to cold weather? Or baseline is actually lower?

You can get an idea for how excess deaths associated with acute Covid-19 have changed over time from this table. (Estimates weren't produced in 2019-20 and 2020-21 seasons, but the unexplained excess is probably all covid.) 3/

I discussed the methods here. In short, they look at whether more people die when there's more covid around, and/or more flu around. They also look at deaths due to heat/cold. These days more excess deaths are correlated with higher flu (red) than higher covid (blue). 2/ bsky.app/profile/mich...

The UKHSA's annual flu epidemiological report is out. 2025-26 saw relatively low excess mortality due to acute flu (3,798 deaths, much lower than 2012-20 average of 15,713). Excess mortality due to acute covid was lower still at 1,842 deaths. 1/

The overall covid numbers are so astoundingly low that it is hard to say much with certainty, but it appears that the fraction of covid admissions that correspond to children has also returned to "normal" in Scotland. 3/

And just for perspective, during the height of the little BA.3.2 wave, Covid-19 admissions in children never exceeded rhinovirus admissions. Even over the entire last year, rhinovirus admissions are more than triple Covid-19 admissions in children. 2/

More Hawaii birds: A Common Waxbill waves some nesting material to signal to the ladies that he'd make a great mate. Seen on Oahu, Hawaii, USA🪶

Yet annual vaccination rates for Covid-19 in most countries are far below those for influenza, which is difficult to understand. (As seen below for US - influenza vaccine coverage in 18+ around 47%, covid coverage around 18%) 2/ bsky.app/profile/mich...