Virus

The most closely related viruses were sampled in May 2026 in Texas cattle.

Several months of unsampled transmission chains between the Texas cattle and Utah mink outbreaks leave many open questions about how the virus actually entered the mink farm.

Now, additional PB2 mammalian adaptations were not selected for in mink since the cattle adapted B3.13 virus already had a PB2-M61L amino acid substitution.

I just, I can't believe they can't.

Because they get it straight in the next sentence.

And that amino acid substitution is associated with increased replication in mammals.

All 10 Utah mink viruses that they sequenced had a PB1 K388R, so a K to R substitution at 388.

This was previously observed in an H5N1 mink outbreak in Spain.

And so here's the study in Annals of Internal Medicine.

We have the article, Projected Effect of 2026 Federal Changes to the Childhood Immunization Schedule on Chronic Hepatitis B Virus Infections in United States.

So here we have analysis where they... determined that compared with the universal birth dose strategy, 255 childhood infections, the deferred and shared decision-making strategies would increase chronic HPV infections in the 2026 birth cohort by 19% from that 255 to 303, and by 83% to 467, if you kind of follow that so these strategies would also increase the number of h hepatitis b virus susceptible people at age 20 and this is actually um 400 474 000 and 1 806 compared with this universal birth strategy where you'd only have 232 so pretty dramatic increases if we go down this road

This from a man who knows nothing about science.

There's no reason to change this schedule.

So this is a nature paper.

And despite longstanding immunization programs, pertussis remains a major cause of vaccine preventable mortality, particularly among infants, right? So I will point out pertussis, it's a bacterial infection.

It's not a virus, but This is a clinical update, so we're hitting pertussis hard this time.

The X-Men and the Fantastic Four, well, the Terrific Two, Ben and Johnny, they collectively defeated 3K and those fake X-Men, but Sherman Beast had a backup plan.

If he couldn't release the X-Virus in the real town of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania...

He would do it in the fictional town of Juniper, Pennsylvania, which actually makes me think that this release might have some larger repercussions because Marvel probably wasn't going to kill off Philadelphia or make it just a town full of nothing but mutants and wall it off like No Man's Land and Batman.

But they could certainly do that with fictional Juniper, Pennsylvania.

Reed says, hey, I got this iPad thing here, Beast.

Maybe you want this.

Beast looks at the iPad and says, oh yeah, this is exactly what we need to stop the X-Virus.

Yeah.

Basically, everything that happened during Age of, uh, Age of Rev- Revelation.

How the X-virus was released, a bunch of humans were turned into mutants, mutate, stuff like that.

Some were turned into non-speaking beings, and the X-Men still wanted to help.

So in the present day right now, in Philadelphia, Cyclops and the X-Men are there.

They do not trust each other.

They are not a good group by any means, and we see that throughout this series.

But today is the day they're gonna release the X-virus.

So they plan to do that.

He also did a vampire film called Martin.

And then he did this Other virus film called the crazies, which I'm super curious about and I wanted and I want to see how Similar the the sort of virus infected folk are to zombies and whether he may also have he and whether he is potentially also responsible for like this the the Virus zombie to I don't know

Just

curious.

Now, Haemophilus influen- this is very confusing, the name, right? People never understand.

Why do we call it? Now, the reason Haemophilus influenzae, this is not a virus.

This is not influenza.

This is a bacteria.

... big Spanish flu, Dr. Pfeiffer believed that this was what was causing the influenza outbreak.

They had no vaccines back then.

They, they didn't really understand viruses back then.

And so it h- still has this remnant.

Johnny is flame-onning all over the place.

But Chairman Beast is able to bound away, hit the launch button to just get that X-Virus sprayed around downtown Philly.

Except that doesn't work.

There is one thing I laughed about when they're talking about, like, trying to solve the magneto problem and Reed's like, oh, we need Ben and Johnny.

This Week in Virology, the podcast about viruses, the kind that make you sick.

[upbeat music] From microbe TV, this is "TWIV," This Week in Virology, episode 1363, recorded on October 2nd, 2026.

I'm Vincent Racaniello, and you're listening to the podcast all about viruses.

Joining me today from Montreal, Canada, Angela Mingarelli.

Hello, everyone.

Tomorrow, uh, October 3rd, and Cathy put this in the notes, is Virus Appreciation Day, and some people are gonna say, "What?" [laughs]

I, uh [laughs]

"Why, why should I appreciate viruses?" Actually, there is a website called daysoftheyear.com, and you can find every day what's going on.

Yeah, and there's no T-virus, G-virus, there's just nothing.

That's another thing I was going to bring up.

We know it's A-virus.

Why not throw in a T or a G virus, you know?

And also, more to the point, he's a courier taking that vaccine.