additional changes highlighted here: www.statnews.com/2025/01/31/c...

Historical page here: web.archive.org/web/20250129...

Rather than normalizing the morbidity/mortality associated with these infections, we should work towards normalizing our mitigations strategies or layered approaches (vax, mask, ventilate, test, treat, isolate when ill).

Even before the pandemic, nosocomial respiratory viral infections were associated with morbidity and mortality in patients. Now with COVID-19 in the mix, carrying over pandemic era lessons learned is that much more important. academic.oup.com/ofid/article...

And this State of the Science review on masks and respirators for prevention of respiratory infections: journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/...

And this one: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Masks work in reducing respiratory illnesses including in our objective to reduce nosocomial respiratory viral infections. Here are a few notable publications detailing this: www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

COVID-19 epidemiology continues to evolve in ways that are unpredictable and a continuous evaluation of different metrics that could be used is necessary. Data sources should be timely, provide guidance ahead of increased infections and ought to be simple to message to interest holders.

To calculate our alert thresholds, we use the established moving epidemic method approach which had previously been used to determine the arrival of the seasonal epidemics of influenza. Our methods are described here: www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

As of data updated this week (December 26, 2024), both flu and RSV are above their transmission alert thresholds while COVID-19 diagnoses are still occurring but at far lower levels than we have seen since the earlier days of the pandemic.

In the WA regional masking approach, universal masking implementation is guided by community respiratory viral burden metrics. A primary metric that we are using is ED syndromic surveillance for the big 3: #COVID19, #RSV, and #Influenza. kingcounty.gov/en/dept/dph/...

We previously outlined our stance on masking as we transitioned from the emergency phase of the COVID-19 pandemic highlighting the importance of integrating regular mask wearing into our healthcare practices: www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/...

Masking has been one of the most important pandemic era lessons learned and has an ongoing important role in mitigating the spread of respiratory illnesses including COVID-19, flu and RSV. Prevention of infections in healthcare is critical given the impacts on staff and patients.

I have broad interests across public health and communicable disease epidemiology. I got my start in #influenza, #COVID-19 and #immunizations so respiratory viruses and their clinical manifestations are of particular interest to me.

Look forward to learning from all of you and sharing knowledge.