There is also a version with exhalation valve (1950 V) that can be useful in humid environment or for exercising.

Based on these results, if BA.3.2 can improve it's ACE2 binding, could BA.3.2 be similar to BA.1 when it first appeared and led to large waves of infections?

In supplemental figure S3 in the paper, they showed the antibody neutralization of naive mice vaccinated with 2 doses of different vaccines (WT, BA.1, BA.5, XBB.1.5, JN.1, KP.2, KP.3). From the figure, it looks like BA.3.2 strongly evades antibody neutralization from existing vaccines.

I saw this paper by Yunlung Cao's group:
www.thelancet.com/journals/lan...

In the paper, they looked at several emerging / new variants (BA.3.2, XFG, NB.1.8.1). In figure C in the paper, they showed that BA.3.2 has relatively low ACE2 binding.

Sorry to hear that.
Hope you are doing better.

My understanding is that ferrets have alpha 2,6 sialic acid in the respiratory tract, similar to humans. Could the results of the article imply that H5N1 might be potentially gaining the ability to better bind to human-type receptors?

wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/...

I saw this article where they tested a H5N1 isolate (clade 2.3.4.4b, genotype B3.13, A/Michigan/90/2024) in ferrets. It mentioned that 6/6 of the direct contact ferrets were infected, and 3/6 of the airborne contact ferrets were infected.

I am wondering if the anti-NA antibodies might be a factor in severity of H5N1 cases?
Is it known how much protection anti-NA antibodies contributes compared to anti-HA antibodies?

pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC...

I saw this article that said people who were exposed to the 2009 H1N1 swine flu has cross-reactive neuraminidase antibodies to H5N1 clade 2.3.4.4b.

On a slightly different topic, I have seen new reports that said flu activity in the US is at the highest level in 15 years.
Have there been sequencing results from patients to suggest what might be causing such a high spike? Are the circulating flu strains a bad match to the strains in the vaccine?

This seems to indicate that exposure route may play an important role in disease severity.

www.nature.com/articles/s41...
There was this paper that found intratracheal exposure of H5N1 in macaques resulted in severe systemic disease; intranasal exposure resulted in less severe disease; and oral exposure resulted in limited infection.

Also, I was following you over on Twitter/X, but there have been a lot of trolls and bots on Twitter/X.
I saw that you are also here, so I followed you here.

Having another (potentially more severe) H5N1 genotype spillover into cattle seems rather problematic.

I saw news reports that the D.1.1 genotype of H5N1 has also recently been detected in dairy cattle. I recall seeing reports that the severe H5N1 cases in Louisiana, US and British Columbia, Canada were also D.1.1 genotype.

RFK Jr Senate confirmation hearing is coming up soon. I have seen people mention a campaign to contact senators to oppose RFK Jr's confirmation.