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What is up Seqers! Maddie here, welcome back to the newsletter. I wrote about my fears a while back vis-à-vis avian influenza, a pathogen with pandemic potential. Bird flu in general is something many public health people have worried about on and off since the ‘90s: I thought this page from the CDC is a good primer if you’re not freaked out easily. Point is, there are many types and subtypes of avian influenza that could and have caused severe disease in humans, but there are so many other diseases that could cause the next pandemic/was already causing one that it feels like bird flu took a backseat until quite recently. The concern this year has stemmed from a few new (read: bad) things the virus is doing, from infecting cows (which are closer to humans than birds are) to spreading to at least one human who did not even come into contact with cows. The human case is the most recent development in the saga: best-case scenario, it’s a fluke that we only picked up because we’re doing more surveillance for human cases of H5N1. Worst-case scenario, the opposite is true, and we’re not doing enough surveillance and actually this case is indicative that bird flu is spreading from person to person (not just cows → people) and we are just catching wind of it now! Haha, I hope it’s not that option. There was another interesting bird flu development that I thought got overshadowed by last week’s news, which was this New England Journal of Medicine paper from researchers at Baylor and others. They presented results from wastewater testing for influenza A in cities across the state of Texas. It’s a very striking visual: from 2023 to about March of 2024, the virus they found in wastewater consisted pretty much exclusively of H1N1 (swine flu) and H3N2. Starting this spring, though, H5N1 virus has come to dominate the mix. The researchers write: “The widespread detection of influenza A(H5N1) virus in wastewater from 10 U.S. cities is troubling. Although the exact origin of the signal is currently unknown, the lack of clinical burden along with genomic information suggests multiple animal sources.” To go back to the best-case/worst-case framework, “multiple animal sources” definitely strikes me as one of the better-case scenarios for why a literal crap-ton of H5N1 virus is showing up in Texas’ sewers. I was almost certain that COVID-19 spurred the national and international movements for wastewater surveillance, and in particular this Texas initiative, but to be sure I followed a citation in the NEJM paper and came upon this really neat summary of the field. TL;DR, yes, wastewater surveillance made leaps and bounds due to the pandemic, but the technique was potentially used first in the 1930s for polio. If there’s any silver lining here, it’s that wastewater surveillance is one clear example of how we are actually more prepared for the next pandemic because of COVID-19. I feel like learning from our mistakes is often a squishy concept that’s hard to measure, but the infrastructure that states like Texas have now built up around wastewater surveillance is just so broadly useful that it’s inarguably a step in the right direction. On a very different note — check out Kim's new article about a new dinosaur fossil discovery in southern Brazil. As always, your support fills our sails and lifts our spirits. Another thing that would definitely do that is if you forwarded the newsletter to someone you think would like reading it! Or better yet, send it to a friend and then quiz them on it. Then you’ll really know who’s the bigger Sequencer stan. May you dream of pandemic preparedness and not of bird flu jumping between people <3 -Maddie What we’re working on: Max: Ok I've unlocked a new obsession. It's called Hexcodle, a Wordle-style game where you figure out the hexadecimal RGB code for some daily color. Something to know about me is that I'm moderately red-green colorblind but I'm also deeply interested in color theory. This game is FUN. It’s nerdy, SURE, but it’s fun. Probably more so if you're not as limited by your rods & cones as I am. Unlike Wordle, getting a great score is more about skill than luck. I recommend starting with Hexcodle Mini to get a feel for it. Lmk how you do. And yes, I'm working on a lil essay about this. Stay tuned. Maddie: Will have to check out Hexcodle! My boyfriend and I do Songle and Bandle. From the day job: Here is the big piece I mentioned in the last newsletter. It’s a data story at its heart but equally important, it’s about people and reckoning with how poor planning leads to uninformed decision-making. I care about this topic a lot, so would appreciate a read or listen! Also dengue, sweat, and birth control for rats. Kim: This weekend, I took out my dusty pencil and decided to draw again. Here’s the result. I was reminded of how much I love drawing textured animals. What do you think I should draw next? If you have any art requests, feel free to email kim@sequencermag.com. What we’re reading: Maddie: After finishing Eve (which I’ve gushed about in the newsletter previously) I’m finally cracking into Fuzz by Mary Roach. She is so masterful at what she does, and so far I’m devouring the chapter on bears breaking into dumpsters and homes for snacks. Also recently turned back to CivilWarLand in Bad Decline by George Saunders — talk about two very different vibes but I’m taking them both to the beach, baby! Dan: I’ve been reading Farewell Transmission by Will McGrath. I learned about it in the way I find out about new books: wandering through a Barnes and Noble and then getting what I’m interested in from the library. Yes — I was into it because I thought it might be about Songs:Ohia, which it has no relation to. Yes, the back cover promised something akin to Hunter S. Thompson-type gonzo, reporting-from-the-fringes journalism (unfortunately I’m both a DFW and Hunter Thompson apologist). And as much as Thompson had his terrible moments (Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas is a genuinely bad book whose fame is absolutely inexplicable to me. Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ‘72 is great) his writing and insights into the minds and motivations of politicians, schemers, and grifters was second-to-none and like DFW I think that much of his latter day reputation is driven by the fact that college boys frequently gravitate to their writing out of some seeming cool or intellectual veneer. This is all to say that when someone does a pastiche of a famous if uneven writer, it really strikes deep how much you miss the original version. It’s extremely classic “Mom I want Hunter S. Thompson/We have Hunter S. Thompson at home” shtick. It’s an issue of baseline personality, maybe the most important part of what makes a writer interesting to me. Thompson was, by all accounts, an absolute maniac, willing to indulge, in every sense of the word: rants, drugs, excursions, etc. McGrath is a good writer and Farewell Transmission includes run-ins with interesting people in interesting places, but he seems positively normal. I would never in a million years want to be friends with Thompson, but McGrath seems like a nice guy. This is the same dynamic at play with writers like Edward Abbey (of Desert Solitaire) or even Philip Roth. Max: I'm finally reading Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow. Feelin’ a lot of feelings. Also I read this nice op-ed on MedPage from an MD/MPH candidate (The Emotional Toll of Chronic Illness in Childhood). And Grist is always essential reading on climate, so check out this story about the debate (At the presidential debate, fossil fuels and energy politics took center stage). Or don’t!! Here’s some slightly happier reading in Nautilus: How to Find Baby Sharks. Kim: Re: Max: I was just about to start Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow as well! This NPR piece by Kamala Thiagarajan is giving me reporter envy. Instead of relying on AI to suss out breast cancer in patients, why not harness the tactile sensory superpowers of… blind people?
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