Brandon Hayes

H3N2 preprint: there are concerns of a severe incoming influenza season due to the drifted H3N2 K clade. We at @psioxford.bsky.social analysed epi data and ran scenario models to see what we could discern about K clade transmission dynamics: zenodo.org/records/1770....

(1/18)

Adding 'Relisten to The Three EPs" to today's to-do list!

Fresh start to the day with some Grade-A LinkedIn AI slop

Happy birthday! Keep spinning those fantastic deep cuts! 🤘🔥🎶

– rainbowR conference

🌈 The website for the inaugural rainbowR conference is now live! 🎉

🗓️ Save the date: Feb 25th-26th, 2026

📣 Call for submissions is open

👯 We're bringing together LGBTQ+ R users to promote our work and foster connections among community members

conference.rainbowr.org

Sure academic spam and predatory journal solicitations are unwanted clutter, but starting the day with being called "eminent" and told "your recent publication has been provisionally selected for the "Best Researcher Award."" Why yes go off queen 🥰

(With apologies to Randall Munroe)

@dieworkwear.bsky.social thoughts on the fit? can the future be this comfy?

👆

This is today at 3pm uk time. As a change of pace I think there will be a fairly heavy #julialang component

I love this. Explainer: There are 100 outcomes (all squares) each equally likely. Wiggly lines event happens 20% of the time; grey event happens 30% of the time. >

A herd of sheep move across a marshy bridge.

yeah we're into LLMs (Large Lamb-bridge Models)

Incidentally, in my experience this is the ultimate way to tell an arts nerd from a stem nerd. Arts nerd like the aesthetics of the left side, stem nerds like the logic of the right side. Linguists, being right at the periphery, refuse to choose sides.

Poultry farm density and proximity drive highly pathogenic avian influenza spread - Communications Biology A study using phylodynamics to investigate highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) H5N8 spread in southwestern France in 2020 and 2021 demonstrates that a single introduction led to rapid spread, mainly in duck farms, with farm density driving transmission.

a bit delayed, but still hot: ‪‪A phylodynamic study, conducted in southwestern France, on the importance of farm density when it comes to avian influenza spread: www.nature.com/articles/s42... @claireguinat.bsky.social @epidesa.bsky.social

Chuffed to announce that registration for the HPAI Modelling Challenge is now open! Interested in testing your modelling team's outbreak response capabilities in a synthetic, peacetime setting? Want to contribute to the improvement of HPAI epidemic preparedness? Check out below:

Learn to love the Moat of Low Status It hurts, but less than you think

Recently came across the really useful term 'Moat of Low Status' from Cate Hall. It describes why we find it so difficult to take steps required to fulfil our ambitions - if we're already good at one thing, it's hard to endure being bad at something else.

Whether it's Democrats making it harder for kids to get cigarettes or Republicans making it harder for kids to get vaccines, both sides have imposed the will of government on America's children.

YouTube video by Jesse Welles The Ballad of Big Balls

When Woody Guthrie proclaimed “This Machine Kills Fascists” this is exactly what he meant 🇺🇸 youtu.be/PL0oB1gbZE4?... #SongoftheYear

Bsky is so disseminated that you never know who is seeing what. So I want to be sure that people see that the foremost public and global health law theorist in the US, Lawrence Gostin of Georgetown Law, is here on Bsky and doesn't have nearly enough followers. Fix that, folks.

2 x Postdocs (Berkeley, CA, USA)
Infectious-disease modelling & phylodynamics for pandemic preparedness
with ‪@charleswhittaker.bsky.social‬
at @petal-team.bsky.social‬ @ucberkeleyofficial.bsky.social‬ ‪@berkeleypublichlth.bsky.social‬
More details: http://iddjobs.org/jobs/2351

Great opportunity in Happy Valley! Would recommend cross-posting to @iddjobs.org

nothing innocent about a pie chart!

The most important takeaway: this is *not* a situation where reaction will be sufficient. If prevention measures fail—and by all current appearances, they appear to be heading in that direction—the human, animal, and economic toll may be staggering. 7/7

Vector-borne epidemics tend to explode once a threshold is crossed. Individual livestock cases will go unnoticed until there are simultaneous outbreaks, and by the time an infestation is noticed, multiple herds in a region will be affected, requiring a large coordinated response. 6/7

Look at West Africa’s battle with Old World Screwworm since 2023: 1000s of cases, freq wound care and anti-parasitic administration, huge cross-sector response… Btw, there isn’t an approved treatment for NWS—all parasiticides would be off-label. Veterinary demand alone would be staggering. 5/7

What human health tolls? Agriculture is already one of the most stressful occupations, and no shortage of studies show the *intense* physical and mental health toll epizootics have on farmers and ag workers. 4/7

†i am very much not an economist

Texas is home to ~12 not 7 million cattle. Herd sizes and production systems in the report are outdated, there's no trade disruption, it assumes rapid SIT deployment, doesn't include response costs, etc. I'd venture† the $1.8B figure is off by *an order of magnitude* (at least in final costs) 3/7

Economically? NWS isn't just loses to cattle futures. The USDA economic estimates are a useful start, but the (conservative) conclusions were extrapolated from data from *50 years ago*. 2/7