state of the plagues

Possibly you haven't heard about covid much recently. Is it over? Nah. Going by wastewater models, as described in the various reports here, 1 in 96 Americans is estimated as infected with covid-19 as of April 8. Different groups estimated 1 in 139 for Canada (wastewater, March 31) and 1 in 143 for UK (surveillance testing, March 14, project discontinued then). And the forecast based on past years is to go up again, before another trough in June-July, and then going back up again a lot.

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As for bird flu, I dunno. This article is more comprehensive than most, talking about genetics, and why the probable cow-to-cow transmission going on may not mean it's airborne between mammals (yet). Infections don't seem that bad for cows, but have been devastating for sea mammals.