Conor Browne

A landscape photograph. The foreground is the edge of a forest. A rainbow begins at the edge of the forest, to the left of the shot, and arcs skywards towards the left upper corner of the photograph. Beyond the edge of the forest, in the left midground of the photograph, are green fields, crisscrossed by hedgerows and stone walls. A cluster of buildings is visible in the centre of the foreground of the shot, just past the edge of the forest. The right midground of the photograph is dominated by the steep slope of the side of a valley, with the ocean just visible in the centre midground. The sky is light blue, filled with large, wispy, white clouds.

Glenariff Forest Park, Northern Ireland, earlier this afternoon.

Why acute infections can lead to neurodegeneration Researchers are uncovering the mysteries of why early-in-life acute infections can lead to neurodegenerative diseases in later years.

As I've said before, the distinction drawn between acute infectious diseases and chronic diseases is, in many cases, artificial. This is the huge flaw in MAHA: infections can and often do cause chronic disease; vaccines can thus prevent some chronic diseases.

stanmed.stanford.edu/infections-l...

I'm very sorry to hear that!

International Men's Day. Guys, check in on your friends; if you need help, ask, and, importantly, remember the version of masculinity you're being sold online and by many politicians isn't masculinity, it's cruelty. Last, there's nothing unmasculine about protecting your health.

This has been obvious for quite some time now:

www.propublica.org/article/bird...

Reassortment is when two different influenza viruses infect the same host cell, potentially leading to the creation of a novel influenza strain. H5N1 reassorting with H1N1 or H3N2 could produce a strain with increased lethality and effective human to human transmission.

Everything about SARS-CoV-2 weakens us as a species. Population-level immune dysregulation leading to both reactivation of latent pathogens and creating niches for new ones; the politicisation of our response regressing public health and massively amplifying anti-vax ideology.

Increasing prevalence of H5N1 globally, drastically reduced surveillance in the US, H3N2 driving a severe flu season in the Northern Hemisphere, a mismatched flu vaccine, and the possibility of undetected human - human transmission of H5N1 is a recipe for a reassortment event.

Preliminary case of bird flu in Washington state would be U.S.'s first in 9 months Health officials in Washington state say they have identified the nation’s first human case of bird flu since February, pending confirmatory testing

Potential human case of bird flu in the US.

abcnews.go.com/Health/wireS...

The Virus That Causes Mono May Also Cause Lupus Early findings indicate that Epstein-Barr Virus may also cause the autoimmune disease lupus

In the light of this, it's important to establish the relationship between reactivation of EBV (which, of course, can be triggered by SARS-CoV-2 infection) and the development of new-onset lupus.

www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-...

I use PlusLife NAT testing for visitors to my home. If they test negative, masks can come off.

Masking indoors in public spaces boils down to this for me now:

I love never being sick from airborne infectious diseases.

The last cold I had was in early 2019, with not even a sniffle since. The only thing I don't do is dine indoors in public spaces; a good trade for health.

A landscape photograph taken at sunset. The left foreground of the shot is a sandy beach that snakes to the outskirts of a small town just visible in the distance; the spire of a church marks where the town begins. The remainder of the foreground is the still water of Belfast Lough, with only small ripples visible on the surface. The reflections of clouds and the setting sun can be seen on the water. The horizon is a line of lights, with the signature cranes of Harland and Wolff shipyard, where The Titanic was built, just visible rising above the line of lights. Behind the lights, to the right of the shot, the glow of the sunset is visible across low hills on the far shore. The sky is light blue, with thick clouds covering the sky to the left of the shot.

Sunset over Belfast Lough yesterday evening from Holywood, County Down, Northern Ireland.

2. archive.ph/2025.11.10-0...

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Long-Covid is still here. I can’t walk, cook, work, socialise or live independently – and I am not alone The country, and the rest of the world, was in the grip of a global pandemic, so when Lydia Fischer Dooley, developed a dry cough, fatigue, weakness and lack of appetite at the start of 2022, she righ...

1. Non-paywalled link in next post.

www.independent.ie/life/health-...

New flu virus mutation could see ‘worst season in a decade' Leading flu experts say they will not be surprised if this year's is the worst flu season for a decade.

H5N1 infections in wildfowl and poultry are increasing quickly in North America and Europe as a result of the southward migration of wild birds. With a severe flu season ahead of us, driven by H3N2, the risk of reassortment has significantly increased.

www.bbc.com/news/article...

4. ... patients even more sick. Co-infection with influenza and Covid-19 is bad enough; with potentially no vaccination coverage for either disease it carries a significant risk of fatality. Simply put: the eligibility criteria for Covid-19 vaccination will lead to deaths.

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3. Record numbers of people will be hospitalised for influenza. Because a large percentage of these people will not have had a recent Covid-19 booster (due to this year's extremely tight eligibility criteria), nosocomial SARS-CoV-2 infection will make hospitalised influenza...

2. ... It is perhaps worth considering an alternative hypothesis, namely that the immune dysregulation effect of SARS-CoV-2 infection is contributing to the severity of recent winter flu seasons.

*my emphasis

Regardless, here's what's going to happen:

UK facing long, tough flu season, NHS chiefs warn Vulnerable urged to come forward for flu jab quickly as virus has come early this year.

1. Rather than, 'Two of the worst winter flu seasons of the past decade have been seen in the last three years, something partly attributed to the *bounce-back of the virus after Covid restrictions were lifted combined with immunity being low*'...

www.bbc.com/news/article...

Perfect!!

Britain sliding 'into economic crisis' over £85bn sickness bill, ex-John Lewis boss warns The number of people who are out of work for health reasons has grown by 800,000 since 2019.

The reason for this is multi-factorial, but the fact that Long Covid is not mentioned once is extremely telling. Especially since the article makes an explicit comparison with 2019.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Thank you, Tania!

Considering the vast amount of evidence that Covid can cause serious long-term health problems, mitigating risk of infection is absolutely logical. This should be utterly uncontroversial. But alas, politics, tribalism, and a desire to conform trump logic for most people. Not me.

5. *This thread was copied from my Twitter / X account, and applies predominantly to comments I have seen there.

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4. These embedded notions of vaccines as poisons and defence against infectious agents as somehow representative of fear or evidence of a mental health condition are a gift to adversaries of the US, be they states or non-state actors. A gift.

3. With that in mind, let me be very, very clear.

The mainstreaming of anti-vax ideology and the disregard and vilification of non-pharmaceutical interventions, including masking, has rendered the US more vulnerable to biological attack than at any time in its history.

2. The current US administration communicates, and arguably governs, through social media. This means that comments on this platform* from Americans can no longer be discounted as simply bots; they are representative of the views of a significant proportion of the US population.

1. My background is in CBRN defense. I was involved in the field long before the emergence of SARS-CoV-2.

I used to essentially discount comments on social media - especially this platform - as fringe, not representative of the real world. Sadly, this is no longer the case.

9. As such, and this is vital to understand, anything that disrupts the immune system of a population, even temporarily, becomes a gap that pathogens *can and will* exploit.

In short, listen to what people say, not just the data, and think like a pathogen, not a human.

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