u/zeaqqk

Related thread:

Paul Bieniasz: "Our new preprint on the origin of insertion mutations (including furin cleavage sites) in coronaviruses…" https://xcancel.com/PaulBieniasz/status/2089703357485068752

>Abstract

>Genetic variation in viruses is well known to arise from polymerase-driven nucleotide misincorporation. However, insertion and deletion (indel) mutations that occur at lower, largely unknown, frequencies can underly more dramatic phenotypic changes that emerge when advantageous. Using a human coronavirus (HCoV-OC43) construct that reports rare indel mutations, we show that non-structural protein-15 (NSP15), a nuclease encoded by coronaviruses, can drive the acquisition of a class of insertion mutations. Ultra-deep sequencing of both HCoV-OC43 and SARS-CoV-2 populations reveals a similar requirement for NSP15 during insertion mutant generation. Overall, the insertional mutation frequency exceeded 10-3/genome in these two coronaviruses. Analysis of thousands of HCoV-OC43 and SARS-CoV-2 insertion mutants reveals a mutational process in which NSP15 cuts viral RNA, yielding oligonucleotides that correspond to inserts that are acquired at distal genomic locations. The presence of an insertion mutation at the S1/S2 junction in the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein that generates a furin cleavage site and enhances viral transmissibility, may have been necessary for enabling the COVID19 pandemic. We found numerous examples of potential furin cleavage site acquisition and replacement through insertion mutation during the normal course of coronavirus replication. Such events are, therefore, likely commonplace in coronavirus populations of a size that occurs in nature.

-

This article: https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2026/08/07/kyjk-a07.html

Related:

• [29 July 2026] The witch-hunt against Anthony Fauci and the war on public health https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2026/07/30/omky-j30.html

From article:

>The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee voted along party lines Thursday to hold Anthony Fauci in contempt of Congress. Fascistic committee chairman Rand Paul announced that his office would hand-deliver the referral to the Justice Department that same afternoon, bypassing a vote of the full Senate. The referral of the country’s most prominent public health official for criminal prosecution is not an inquiry into the origins of COVID-19 but an effort to establish the precedent that any scientific advice which constrains profit is a criminal act.

>[…]

>The destruction of surveillance and the prosecution of scientists proceed from the subordination of science to private profit, expressed most sharply in the COVID-19 pandemic, which has now killed roughly 1.4 million people in the United States and some 30 million worldwide. No president, governor or corporate executive has been charged for the policy of mass infection that produced those deaths. The man referred for prosecution is the one who, at least initially, opposed it. Fauci’s later capitulation to that policy is a matter of record, but he is being persecuted for having told the American people that COVID-19 was real and that the government owed them protection from it.

>The claim that the virus was engineered in a Chinese laboratory takes those who died off the books of American policy and turns the scientists who traced it to its animal origins into accomplices in a supposed cover-up. Having originated as a far-right conspiracy theory, the Wuhan Lab Lie was increasingly adopted by both parties and broad sections of the corporate media, becoming state doctrine in April 2025, when the Trump administration repurposed covid.gov as a page titled “Lab Leak: The True Origins of COVID-19.” The underlying aims are bound up with the preparations of US imperialism for war with China. If Beijing engineered the virus, a mass death produced by American boardrooms becomes an act of foreign aggression.

>The Democrats built this frame-up alongside the Republicans. The House select subcommittee endorsed the lab-leak findings with Democratic votes in December 2024, and Biden, who had campaigned on following the science, presided over 900,000 further deaths and answered the frame-up his own party had certified by pardoning Fauci alone, leaving Morens, Daszak and others to the prosecutors.

>Securing the right to health and to scientific truth requires a revolutionary program. Rank-and-file committees must be built in the hospitals, health departments, fields and plants, independent of the union bureaucracies and the professional societies, with the power to enforce infection control and restore surveillance. Research must be publicly funded and freed from corporate control, and the food monopolies placed under the democratic control of the working class. These struggles must be unified through the International Workers Alliance of Rank-and-File Committees (IWA-RFC) and the building of sections of the International Committee of the Fourth International.

>The scientists facing prosecution cannot defend themselves, and the parties that presided over the mass death will not defend them. The only social force capable of defending science, and of putting its findings at the service of humanity, is the international working class.

This article: https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2026/08/10/oufh-a10.html

Related:

• [3 August 2026] Congo Ebola outbreak becomes second largest ever recorded https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2026/08/03/qoit-a03.html

Full article: https://archive.ph/4SDlv

Study: Virus reactivation in acute and long COVID-19 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-026-10740-z

>Abstract

>Chronic viral infections are ubiquitous in humans, with individuals carrying multiple viruses that can reactivate during physiological stress, including severe illness^(1). Notably, SARS-CoV-2 infection has been shown to reactivate chronic viruses such as Epstein–Barr virus and cytomegalovirus, yet the full extent, temporal dynamics and immunological impact of viral reactivation in COVID-19 remain incompletely understood^(2),^(3),^(4),^(5),^(6),^(7). Here, leveraging multi-omic longitudinal data from 1,154 hospitalized patients with COVID-19 from the Immunophenotyping Assessment in a COVID-19 Cohort (IMPACC) study, we reveal significant reactivation of Herpesviridae and Anelloviridae during acute COVID-19, with distinct temporal dynamics for different viruses, and demonstrate that reactivation correlates with disease severity, host immune effects and clinical outcomes. Although our results do not establish causation between virus reactivation and clinical outcomes, we highlight the prevalence of chronic viral reactivation during acute COVID-19 and long COVID. Our findings challenge the prevailing view that chronic viral reactivation is primarily a consequence of immunosuppression, demonstrating that reactivations occur frequently in immunocompetent individuals during severe illness and in association with increased systemic inflammation. Additionally, we demonstrate persistence of viral reactivation in convalescence, and report an association of Anelloviridae with long COVID. This study provides immune, transcriptomic and metabolomic signatures of viral reactivation that could inform future strategies to prognosticate and treat acute COVID-19 and long COVID.

>Background

>COVID-19 vaccination reduces the risk of long COVID; however, its role in preventing major post-COVID cardiovascular disease (CVD), and whether protection differs when vaccination is administered before or after SARS-CoV-2 infection, remains unclear.

>Purpose

>We aimed to assess whether COVID-19 vaccination reduces the risk of post-COVID CVD, including dose–response effects, and to compare the protective effects of vaccination before versus after SARS-CoV-2 infection.

>Methods

>We included 496,338 COVID-19 positive and 1,537,275 COVID-19 negative individuals, with hospitalisations and diagnoses recorded during 2019–2025. Pre-infection vaccination effects were assessed using causal mediation analysis, with SARS-CoV-2 infection and reinfection as mediators. Post-infection vaccination was evaluated using target trial emulation, and dose–response were examined with Cox models. Outcomes included total CVD, stroke, heart failure (HF), acute myocardial infarction (AMI), and acute coronary syndrome (ACS), ascertained using ICD codes.

>Results

>Vaccination was associated with lower hazard of post-COVID CVD (HR 0.68, 95% CI 0.66, 0.71), with consistent reductions for stroke, heart failure, AMI, and ACS, and a clear dose-response relationship. Vaccination before infection reduced the absolute risk by 2.00% (95% CI: 1.92, 2.04%), mainly through direct protection (ARR 1.73%) with smaller proportion mediated through prevention of infection (ARR 0.27%). Significant absolute risk reductions were for stroke (0.26%), heart failure (0.38%), AMI (0.23%), and ACS (0.33%). Vaccination after infection was also protective (total CVD ARR 1.40%) with reductions across outcomes.

>Conclusion

>COVID-19 vaccination before or after SARS-CoV-2 infection is associated with significant reductions in post-COVID CVD, preventing approximately 1–2 events per 100 individuals.

This article: https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/covid-19/can-air-purifiers-prevent-flu-and-covid-19-nursing-homes-only-if-they-re-used-properly

Related:

• Joseph Allen: «This study should be retracted for a conclusion not supported by their own work: ❌Their claim: "HEPA filters don't work" ✅Claim actually supported by their study: "HEPA filters, sized much smaller than experts recommend, and not confirmed to be ON all the time, didn't provide a benefit"…» https://xcancel.com/j_g_allen/status/2082760105200607454

The sections of this part two:

• Who died: age, class, occupation and race
• The hidden toll: cardiovascular deaths, drug overdoses and the downstream mortality of crisis
• Variants, vaccines and the unequal distribution of protections
• The political economy of mass death: a continuum
• The silence and what it means
• Conclusion: the way forward

Part 2/this article: https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2026/08/01/gjao-a01.html

Part 1: https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2026/07/30/nxww-j30.html

>…The defense of public health is fundamentally a class question and a political question. This crisis cannot be resolved by better data or improved scientific communication alone, even as both are currently being actively destroyed. Ending this nightmare requires a mass political movement of the international working class that consciously understands the profound connection between its own longevity and the economic organization of society. This movement must treat public health infrastructure as an inalienable collective right and demand its complete rebuilding on a scientific and internationalist basis. Furthermore, it must resolutely refuse to accept the normalization of mass preventable death as the acceptable cost of doing business under capitalism. There has never been a more urgent moment for a profound societal reckoning, nor a more critical time to build the revolutionary political movement that this unprecedented crisis demands….

Full thread: https://xcancel.com/LongDesertTrain/status/2083394866348806521

Related:

• [29 July 2026] Marc Johnson on X: "Fourteen more PJ.2.1 wastewater detections. It is dominant in many sites. NYC (8), Maui (2). Maine, Virginia, Florida and DC. No obvious uptick in cases in any of these places that I could find though." https://x.com/SolidEvidence/status/2082547753486311577
• [22 July 2026] Marc Johnson: "10 more PJ.2.1 wastewater detections. Mostly NYC, but also single detections in VT, CT, and FL." https://x.com/SolidEvidence/status/2079984261424386552
• [21 July 2026] Ryan Hisner: "This chronic-infection variant now has a name: PJ.2.1. See how divergent it is from other current lineages in the Neher/Roemer BA.2.86 tree below. It originated in Ontario but has been detected in wastewater by u/solidevidence in WW in New York, Florida, Alabama, & Utah…" https://xcancel.com/LongDesertTrain/status/2079677985955664359
• [21 July 2026] Ryan Hisner on X: "…Too soon to know what PJ.2.1's growth is like. Overall Covid levels still very low, though with some recent growth. New variant TA.1, w/a bevy of spike mutations, seems to be the fastest currently according to u/solidevidence's invaluable WW dashboard. 3/3" https://xcancel.com/LongDesertTrain/status/2079677990858793029
• [7 July 2026] Ryan Hisner: "Quick 🧵on previous variants that resemble the recent Ontario SARS-2 saltation variant that's now been detected in 4 sewersheds in NYC and one in Utah. The practical impact of these variants ranged from ~zero to modest to major…" https://xcancel.com/LongDesertTrain/status/2074503992403456170
• [4 July 2026] Ryan Hisner: "A mysterious, unusually diverse saltation lineage descended from KP.3.1.1 (last seen early 2025) has circulated at a low level for ~8 months in Ontario (see 🧵on next post). Seemed a local anomaly, but u/solidevidence just spied a weird spike in NYC WW—& it's the same one!…" https://xcancel.com/LongDesertTrain/status/2073445573051490391