Prof. Michael Fuhrer

A regent honeyeater sits on a branch.

Fenner School scientists from the Difficult Bird Research Group have rescued the lost song of the regent honeyeater, offering new hope for the survival of the critically endangered bird: bit.ly/4l2D5Cc @teamswiftparrot.bsky.social

There is another long-running infection survey called Infectieradar in the Netherlands. They've also seen about a factor of 5 drop in year-averaged prevalence from 2022 to 2025.

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So I think the observation that covid ARIs are dropping over time is probably significant. (And anyway, not too surprising?)

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See my other replies though, I don't think there's any reason to believe that compliance is dropping over time. bsky.app/profile/mich...

Their estimate of 0.77 covid ARIs per person-year is remarkably close to my estimate of 0.8 infections, though there's not reason it should be!

On the other hand, I agree that they must be capturing nearly all covid infections in 2022. (A bit surprising.)

Flu detections in WellKiwis averaged 0.158 per person year in 2023-2025. That is biased higher because the study is done in flu season. Assuming *all* flu infections occurred during the study period (also not true) gives 0.079 flu detections per person-year. I guess the true number is between.

They admit that their estimate is on the high side of literature estimates. I guess I would take that point estimate in an unvaccinated population with a grain of salt.

It wasn't clear to me what you meant by "I don't see any reason why influenza infection rates in 2023-2025 in NZ should be lower than the pre-pandemic estimates"?

Were you comparing to the (population corrected) seroconversion rate of 32% in the study you linked in unvaccinated participants?

All non-covid virus detections:
2022: 0.91/person-year
2023: 1.03/person-year
2024: 0.95/person-year
2025: 1.03/person-year

Also not obviously dropping over time.

But at any rate, flu detections (using the annual reports, not the paper):

2022: 0.13/person-year
2023: 0.14/person-year
2024: 0.21/person-year
2025: 0.22/person-year

Flu detections aren't obviously dropping over time.

The participants are people who volunteered to participate in the program; it's not clear to me that their willingness to test would change over time?

Figure 2, screenshot. We see 2 rows with 3 panels each. Panels show grey background and white little dots, bacterial colonies. I have marked the top left and top middle panels with blue boxes, because they are identical. Legend reads: "Figure 2. The D-alanine demand identification of recombinant L. casei strain pPG-Alr-COE/∆Alr Figure 2. The D-alanine demand identification of recombinant L. casei strain pPG-Alr-COE/ΔAlr W56. The recombinant strains pPG-Alr-COE/ΔAlr W56, pPG-T7g10-PPT/ΔAlr W56, and ΔAlr W56 W56. The recombinant strains pPG-Alr-COE/∆Alr W56, pPG-T7g10-PPT/∆Alr W56, and ∆Alr W56 were streaked on de Man–Rogosa–Sharpe (MRS) plates to detect the demand of D-alanine. “+” were streaked on de Man-Rogosa-Sharpe (MRS) plates to detect the demand of D-alanine. “+” and “ and “-” represent MRS plates with and without D-alanine, respectively; Alr-COE/ΔAlr W56, pPG- −” represent MRS plates with and without D-alanine, respectively; Alr-COE/∆Alr W56, pPG-Alr- Alr-COE/ΔAlr W56; PPT/ΔAlr W56, pPG-T7g10-PPT/ΔAlr W56. COE/∆Alr W56; PPT/∆Alr W56, pPG-T7g10-PPT/∆Alr W56."

An interesting story from the @mdpiopenaccess.bsky.social archives.

First, I found this super easy #ImageForensics duplication in this 2021 Vaccines paper, doi.org/10.3390/vacc...

Shown with blue boxes.

I posted it on PubPeer, in August 2022.

pubpeer.com/publications...
/

LOL

I am in the process of re-submitting the same grant proposal I submitted in a previous round (which reviewed well) because the funding decisions won't be announced before the next round closes.

That wastes my time, and taxpayer dollars as ARC handles the same proposal a second time.

‘Complete joke’: Efforts to reduce funding wait times ends with longer blowout A long campaign to improve Australia’s sclerotic research bureaucracy has culminated in an extraordinary blowout to grant approval times, leaving scientists despondent.

“A complete joke”

After the starting gun fires, Australian researchers have to wait 2–3 years before even starting the race.

Really clear article explaining the impossibly long new time-frames for Australian Research Council grants.

By @liammannix.bsky.social

I mean, do they think the guy posting the wastewater numbers is out there dipping a bucket in the sewer once a week and running the PCR in a shed in his back garden?

Had several strange discussions in recent days in which someone said they get their covid info from amateurs on SM, and "why can't CDC provide that info" and...

...just where exactly do you think the amateurs get their info?

The WellKiwis reports for previous years don't seem to be on their website anymore, but I have them and can send them to you if you're interested.

FYI, some threads on WellKiwis.
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So I think it's highly implausible that WellKiwis detected less than half of covid infections in 2022.

But perhaps asymptomatic infections make up a greater fraction of infections in 2025. It's very hard to know.

I don't know of an NZ seroprevalence study, but Australia measured seroprevalence at 65% and 71% before and after then end of the WellKiwis study period. I would find it very hard to believe that more than 0.8 infections per person happened in the 2022 study period. Maybe 0.6?

In 2022 the WellKiwis study detected 0.39 covid infections per person in 33 weeks, a rate of 0.62 infections per year. This certainly cannot be only 10-30% of covid infections (NZlanders were not getting infected 2-6 times per year in 2022).

This change also occurred during NZ's 2020 testing regime for covid which encouraged people to test if they had any suspicion they had an ARI.

I think we can interpret the case definition as "anything that plausibly looks like an ARI".

OK, to the case definition. It is "fever OR feverishness", plus "and/or" one of the following symptoms. This is much broader than ILI. It need not include fever.

There is simply no way to infer how often people are getting covid from observations of how often people get sick in 2025. Most symptomatic ARIs are not covid.

We can also use this to rule out anecdotal observations about the frequency of covid infections among those not testing. Covid was detected in less than 5% of cases with symptoms, and less than 10% of virus detections.

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Wastewater RNA concentrations in Wellington also dropped by a factor of 5, which is a nice bit of supporting evidence.

First, setting aside the case definition, we can still use the WellKiwis study longitudinally. The original point of this thread, now lost, was whether incidence of covid has dropped.

Answer = yes. In the WellKiwis study, incidence dropped by a factor of 5 from 2022 to 2025.

These are good points. This thread has been mutilated because most of the participants blocked me. So I'll just answer briefly.

I think the only thing that was ever actually cut was the National Healthcare Safety Network (NHSN) in which hospitals report data on covid, flu, and rsv. It was cut under Biden in 2024, but then restored later in 2024 and is still running!