Any fire in the sky photos? "Sunflower Sunrise "

Fun flowers photographed at home with natural light. I'm working on editing some dreamy summer images taken with my new Lensbaby Velvet 56 1.6 lens. I used it for my nature walk this week. It's so versatile and also light weight compared to my macro - you can get as close 5 in.

PMC COVlD Update, Sep 28, 2026 (US): 🔸We're in a 13th COVlD wave. 🔸40 states and territories continue to have COVlD outbreaks, stable from last week. 🔸Levels likely peaked between Sep 7-13 at a PMC-estimated 580,000 new daily infections, though there are data quality issues noted below. Use layered COVlD safety: 🔹Get boosted ASAP, especially if high transmission nearby. Novavax has a lower side effect profile than other boosters and comparable effectiveness. 🔹Mask up with a well-fitting N95 respirator. 🔹Improve air hygiene: Open windows, flip the HVAC from auto to on, shut off the car's recirculation 'feature,' add air purifiers, and / or use air quality monitors. 🔹Test daily when sick, exposed, or gathering, and stay home when sick. 🔹Monitor your blood pressure to reduce the risk of surprise post-acute cardiovascular sequelae. 🔹Spread accurate information by sending dashboard screenshots to family, checking the public health credentials and experience of information sources, and avoiding sharing 'miracle' interventions. Details: The US has at least 40 states and territories with COVlD outbreaks, the same number reported last week. These include Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Guam, Hawaii, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Puerto Rico, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Texas, the U.S. Virgin Islands, Utah, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, and Wyoming. There are likely outbreaks in additional states. The summary statistic of 40 only includes counties with observed data, rather than estimated data. For example, Idaho, Louisiana, Maryland, and Tennessee likely have outbreaks, but monitoring is poor. Nuance: Note that while PMC uses forecasting to estimate national statistics through Sep 28 and beyond, the state-level data do not, meaning they are now 9 days old. If the national forecast is correct, levels peaked between Sept 7-13, closely aligned with our prior forecasts. This would mean that levels are declining more so than depicted in the map. Levels often decline slowly, suggesting the need for ongoing precautions. Additionally, Biobot and 200 CDC sites are offline this week, and both have experienced major retroactive corrections of late, so the national forecast has more uncertainty than usual. For example, we could see the peak adjusted upward or a double peak. It is unclear how quickly reporting will resume at the offline sites. Links: 🔗PMC home page: pmc19.com 🔗Interactive map (best on a computer): pmc19.com/map 🔗Technical Appendix: pmc19.com/PMC_COVID_Appendix… 🔗Recent NBC News Coverage: nbcnews.com/data-graphics/cd… 🔗Recent Detroit Free Press Coverage: freep.com/story/news/health/…

🚨🚨🚨Six consultations for Long COVID in the last two weeks - four of which are severe - developed in the last three to six months. I challenge the narrative that new cases are on the decline.

@NBCNews, please give credit to the person who broke the story, @michael_hoerger. He is doing the work, every day, to help us stay current on Covid news. Mike does it without the money and resources of NBC, the least you could do is credit him.

Thanks for publishing this. Kindly, please cite the source that broke the story.

The CDC raised its benchmark for levels of the Covid virus in wastewater, adjusting a key metric for assessing the disease’s transmission. As a result, officials may now classify a level that once counted as high transmission as moderate instead. nbcnews.com/data-graphics/cd…

The top graph shows our county-level COVlD map using the CDC's Standard Benchmarks. The bottom map shows the downshifted levels under the CDC's new system. This really makes a difference for early warning in the middle categories. I've highlighted 5 areas.

Cool capture John! STYLE ... Holiday Best

This is a special graph we only post periodically. It shows 2 things that have considerable implications. 1) Transmission has been lower than anticipated since December, and *only* since December. It's a recent phenomenon, not a long-term trend. WastewaterSCAN has poor longitudinal standardization so sometimes people mistakenly believe waves are getting smaller and smaller (or they say this because their listserv subscribers like to hear it). CDC and Biobot make very long-term data difficult to find. On the PMC 13-wave graph (which integrates long-term CDC and Biobot data, some of which is measured weekly by hand!), wave height gets smaller, but the waves are wider (hard to perceive visually). The take-home is we're in a very weird place in the pandemic, not a trend, but either an aberration or shift. 2) Cumulative levels for the current year (Y7) closely resemble that of Year 2. This is where the debate of aberration vs shift gets interesting. If we are in an aberration of lower than typical transmission, that means many people are walking around with limited short-term infection-derived immunity, and most people are not recently boosted. That would be a tinder box for a saltation variant (MANY variants are circulating), and put us on that scary Y2 path. The alternative is that this is not an aberration but a more meaningful shift, some population-level immunity building through a combination of boosters, infection history, and the most vulnerable dying (social murder), meaning time between infection starting to increase. These divergent hypotheses are the difference between 150 million vs 325 million infections for Y7. If I were a gambler, I'd bet about 200 million. However, you can see the uncertainty. This is a time like no other to monitor the data closely. The good news is that wastewater monitoring is not going away. PMC will keep posting. Retired NASA scientist, Dr. Eastman at WHN (@jlerollblues), is close to having localized *forecasts* too. On Instagram, a new entrant is integrating different data sources with other methodologies. @CyFi10, @amethystarlight, and @CovidDataReport post nuanced updates frequently. My advice would be to talk to the people who will listen and remember that much more important than understanding the risk is knowing you can do something about it. Boosting is the easiest intervention. If someone will mask, teach them how to properly fit their nose wire and do a seal check, get them to upgrade from a KN95 with cheek and chin gaps to an N95 like 3M Aura or 3M VFlex in the riskiest or socially easiest contexts. Easier said than done, but if that pessimistic scenario plays out, they may be ready to listen.

I invite you all to join me this Friday for a Zoom Town Hall. I'll cover the current wave, what to expect in the coming months, and other topics related to SARS-CoV-2. We will also briefly touch on other pathogens of concern. Here is the link to register:necsi-edu.zoom.us/meeting/re…

Beautiful Portugal ... I've never loved anything more than photographing landscapes in this beautiful country. It's probably one of the few places that you rarely see photographers posting on social media. I don't think people realize the scope of its pristine beauty.

Sunset Favorites!

That is quite an honor from my favorite newspaper growing up in Michigan. My education K-PhD was funded by the taxpayers of Michigan, including fostering early web design skills. That is part of the reason all PMC graphics are free to use, share, and improve. Pay it forward.

The PMC COVlD map is above the fold on the front page of the Detroit Free Press today. Get boosted. 💉💪😷

"Renditions in Mist" Enjoying some fun with color creation and adjustment. My normal process in post is to subtly enhance the natural colors I find in nature, but in rare moments of epiphany, my vision becomes more fluid and moves toward a more artistic expression.

Photo challenge: Dandelion Dandelion you say? Okay… yeah… I can do dandelion. 😏 Can you?

Goodbye Summer! It's hard to say goodbye to any given season, especially summer. I get attached and it's hard to let go. Still, Autumn's coming with all the beautiful landscapes and colors that go with it ... something to look forward to. 🌻🍁🍂

“Nature always wears the colors of the spirit.” 💙🦢 A perfect moment of stillness. I love how a calm water surface acts as a second canvas, pulling the colors and clouds down from above to create total symmetry around this blue heron.

Last week, Biobot had levels falling. They have retroactively corrected that upward & added an additional week of data with levels higher still. 🙃 This is more in line w/the PMC forecast. The national peak has likely passed (lagged data), but corrections add uncertainty.

“Unfortunately, when Covid hit, there was very little attention paid to aerosol transmission as a means of Covid infecting from one person to another,” Ungrin said. “Warnings were provided by scientists, engineers, occupational health and safety...(1/🧵) ctvnews.ca/calgary/article/o…