Hantavirus kills relatively quickly. It comes from rats, but can be spread from human to human by close contact. Although it is deadlier than Covid if you get it, it is easier to contain because it doesn’t linger in the air for a while and tends to spread by closer contact. The World Health Organization is organizing a global response to contain the virus. Trump left this organization. The US is responding with its CDC, although it’s not communicating with doctors and the public as much as it should be.
The virus mutates slowly, so that should help contain it. If it does mutate in a way that makes it spread faster, God help us all.
“An Iran-linked hacker group has claimed responsibility for a cyberattack on a medical tech company in what appears to be the first significant instance of Iran’s hacking an American company since the start of the war between the countries.
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A Stryker employee, who requested to not be identified because they are not authorized to speak for the company, said that employees’ work-issued phones stopped working, grinding work and communications with colleagues to a standstill.
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“Stryker is experiencing a global network disruption to our Microsoft environment as a result of a cyber attack. We have no indication of ransomware or malware and believe the incident is contained,” the statement said.”
Early on, there was a real disagreement between specialists on the origin on Covid, with some supporting natural origins and some supporting a lab leak. But that debate is now essentially over. With more data carefully examined, the evidence best supports natural origins.
The virus was initially repeatedly found in a specific animal market, and even a specific stall that appeared to be the source. For a lab leak to be the source, the person or people who leaked the virus would have to have repeatedly visited that market every time they leaked it and nowhere else so that it looked like that market was the source.
Donald Trump said he lied about public health during Covid in order to prevent a panic. He said he played down the deadliness of Covid in order to not create a panic.
“The researchers followed 22.7 million vaccinated individuals and 5.9 million unvaccinated individuals for nearly four years. They found not only that vaccinated people have a 74 percent lower risk of death from severe COVID-19, but also that those individuals have a lower risk of death, period. Specifically, people who received the shots have a 25 percent lower risk of all-cause mortality.
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The researchers sought to control for various confounders, such as a healthy-vaccinee effect, where healthier individuals are more likely to opt for vaccination, or a frailty-related bias, where those in poorer health may avoid it.
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“This study helps to put an end to the misinformation spread about mRNA vaccines,” the study’s lead author, Mahmoud Zureik, told Le Monde. “Providing data on the absence of long-term risks helps strengthen confidence in these vaccines, which will be developed for other viruses and diseases.”
Their results should indeed strengthen confidence. But Kennedy, who has been shifting research dollars to purportedly “safer” vaccines, will likely ignore it.”
“in June, vaccine manufacturer Moderna reported the results of a clinical trial pitting its mRNA influenza vaccine against both high-dose and standard-dose licensed seasonal influenza vaccines. The conventional vaccines used inactivated flu viruses to induce an immune response. Moderna’s mRNA-1010 achieved a relative vaccine efficacy against influenza illness of 26.6 percent in the trial. That means that the mRNA-1010 group had 26.6 percent fewer influenza cases than the group that got the standard-dose flu shot. For example, if the standard flu vaccine group had 100 cases per 1,000 people, the mRNA-1010 group would have had about 73–74 cases per 1,000.
The clinical trial roundly contradicts RFK Jr.’s claim that mRNA vaccines fail to protect effectively against upper respiratory infections, especially in comparison to old-fashioned flu vaccines.
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A simple Google Scholar search for mRNA vaccine trials for infectious diseases turns up over 10,000 results for just 2025 alone. But let’s just take a look at a comprehensive new review of promising vaccine formulations for emerging infectious diseases. In that study, a team of Korean researchers compares the pros and cons of different vaccine production platforms, including whole-organism-based, live-attenuated, subunit, virus vector-based immunity, and nucleic acid-based (DNA and RNA) vaccines.
The researchers’ analysis concludes that “mRNA vaccine formulations offer significant advantages, such as rapid development and production, over other vaccine platforms.” They also note that it is “necessary to develop an analysis system that can verify the effectiveness and safety of the mRNA vaccine, as well as the development process of the vaccine itself.” Just what the now-cancelled BARDA mRNA vaccine contracts could have helped to figure out.
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These vaccines might indeed have a significant impact on mitigating the spread of infectious diseases, if RFK Jr. would just stop standing athwart biomedical progress yelling, “Stop.””