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Flu Vaccine Mandate Removed

1:41:43 recording · AUTO · 4 speakers

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Brief overview

TWIV 1317 covers the military flu mandate, the human DNA virome, and a shrimp virus infecting eyes.

  1. Military vaccine mandates go back over two centuriesWashington ordered variolation of the Continental Army in 1777, and a 1965 court refused religious exemption for Marines.
  2. Viral DNA load tracks genes, age, sex and seasonAcross ~900,000 genomes, 82 loci associated with load, MHC dominated, men carried more, and EBV reads rose 1.3-fold in winter.
  3. A shrimp virus is the first aquatic zoonosis causing human diseaseCMNV was found in 100% of POVAL eye-disease patients, with puncture wounds from handling fish and shrimp the highest-risk exposure.
Executive Summary AI
  • Rich Condit presents a Washington Post article reporting that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has ended the annual flu vaccine mandate for the U.S. military, billing it as an effort to "restore freedom and strength to our joint force."4:19
  • The panel sets that against George Washington mandating variolation of the Continental Army in 1777 and the 1965 court ruling in United States versus Chadwell, and calls the new policy strictly ideological, noting that until the mid-20th century disease killed more soldiers in every war than enemy action.5:31
  • The first paper, a four-author Nature study by Nolan Kamitaki, David Tang, Stephen McCarroll and Po Ru Lo, screened almost a million samples — 490,000 UK Biobank blood samples plus 12,519 SPARC saliva samples — against 31 common viruses, finding viral DNA rare in blood but abundant in saliva, higher in men, and varying with age, time of day and winter versus summer.12:07
  • Genome-wide association on those loads found 82 loci, with MHC the strongest signal for six of seven viruses, a Duffy-null variant explaining 28% and 48% of African versus European ancestry differences for EBV and HHV-7, and 181 disease associations in which EBV DNA load looks causal for Hodgkin's lymphoma but not for MS or lupus.40:34
  • The second paper, in Nature Microbiology from a largely Qingdao-based team, ties an emerging eye disease (POVAL) in 70 enrolled patients to covert mortality nodavirus from farmed shrimp and krill, with 100% PCR positivity in cases, infection reproduced in mice and cell culture, and the virus detected worldwide, highest in Antarctica at 35%.47:28
Key Quote
“We are so not surprised.”
— Brianne Barker32:01
Key Quote
“Bioinformatics is a good way to make a living.”
— Vincent Racaniello45:29
Key Quote
“I would be interested to know if it replicates in cats.”
— Brianne Barker1:10:08