Thursday, November 19, 2020
Scenes from people working at home: My 15-year-old son and I had an unexpected lunch discussion yesterday - our schedules aligned in a harmonic convergence of eating and talking. He was preparing for his modern civilization class, for which he is reading a variety of 18th-century political philosophers. And, for just a brief moment, thanks to Thomas Hobbes (who said, "...the [natural state] of man [is] solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short") I was not annoying, and we had a near adult-like moment of camaraderie. I will miss these moments.
-----Latest Data---
It is hard to wrap your mind around such massive numbers rising at the rates we are seeing.
Global-View:
https://www.ft.com/content/a2901ce8-5eb7-4633-b89c-cbdf5b386938
Nationally:
https://ig.ft.com/coronavirus-chart/?areas=usa&areas=gbr&areasRegional=usny&areasRegional=usca&areasRegional=usfl&areasRegional=ustx&areasRegional=usco&cumulative=0&logScale=0&perMillion=1&values=cases
Also, look at https://covidtracking.com/data
The US Regionally - NY. Times:
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/coronavirus-us-cases.html
About the data:
https://covidtracking.com/about-data/visualization-guide is the best resource to understand data visualization and data integrity.
-----
I found a few articles and threads of high value to arm yourself (intellectually speaking) for any upcoming family interactions (outdoors/distant/masked or remote, I hope).
1) A book editor whose 12-year-old daughter was exposed to COVID in team sports. She is articulate and poignant about the guilt, logistical disruption, and concern. https://twitter.com/bookgirl96/status/1328821328225382401?s=10
2) A Cambridge physician who works on clinical trials discussing his impressions of COVID vaccine safety. This content is more good fodder to share with your crazy uncle.
https://twitter.com/mark_toshner/status/1328837111869566976?s=10
3) A CNN article, shared by a loyal reader, that attempts to put the magnitude of loss from COVID in context to more routinely experienced events, such as car crashes.
https://www.cnn.com/2020/11/18/health/covid-19-deaths-us-250k-trnd/index.html
4) Updated Swiss Cheese Pandemic Defense graphic and commentary from Australian virologist Ian Mackay.
https://twitter.com/MackayIM/status/1319901144836026368/photo/1
https://twitter.com/MackayIM/status/1319901144836026368
5) A discussion about an article from Denmark demonstrating limited protection from wearing masks. The Twitter discussion highlights the many easily made logical fallacies in reading science papers - appreciating absolute vs. relative risk, parsing a study to understand where and how bias crept in, and statistical significance. Two sides vehemently arguing over a data set that cannot support either a positive or negative conclusion is a sad metaphor for much of life these days.
https://twitter.com/MartinKulldorff/status/1329078265630257159
More discussion you should arm yourself with:
https://twitter.com/trishgreenhalgh/status/1329163949732933633?s=21
As I have said, some of the many positive side effects of COVID is the rapid and more in-depth understanding of viruses and immunology. And, there is the opportunity to make such knowledge more accessible. Here is a pre-release paper from the La Jolla Institute for Immunology. The article explores the multi-faceted nature of the immune system's response to coronavirus. It offers data suggesting the immune response is durable and complex. In turn, this may explain why vaccine efficacy and duration may be higher than anticipated and why re-infection is not common.
Article.
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.11.15.383323v1
Author's Twitter thread on the paper
https://twitter.com/profshanecrotty/status/1328760517184212993?s=20
Infographic of the day: Animal Crackers.
https://preview.redd.it/op4sj99jswz51.jpg?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=4eff59f634979bfd83b4b937c17ca71ac31a6c0e
It turns out this is a far more complex menagerie than I would have anticipated. Read these two follow up articles:
https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2002-jan-02-lv-crackers2-story.html
and https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/78447/11-wild-facts-about-animal-crackers
---Bonus Round-- History of seemingly mundane Thanksgiving foods and random commentary
I was unaware of the complexity of 19th Century apple pies. Marlborough pie sounds extraordinarily good. I enjoyed the discussion of how hard it was to procure more exotic spices and ingredients in the 1800s, which I had not spent a lot of time thinking about before.
https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/what-is-marlborough-pie
And, of course, this WaPo article from 2013 discussing numerous historical facts about Thanksgiving food.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/food/a-short-course-on-the-history-of-8-thanksgiving-foods/2013/11/22/944b345e-40b3-11e3-9c8b-e8deeb3c755b_story.html
On a related note, this article, in particular, further sealed my distaste for renaissance festivals. Follow me here. Turkey was brought from Mexico to Europe in the 1500s by the Spanish. Why then are turkey legs a seemingly universal food at renaissance fairs? Historical fudging for the sake of entertainment and convenience (you can eat it with your hand while standing). I am not the only one who has thought about this problem of the RenFaire trade-off of historical accuracy for entertainment:
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-10-22/the-utopian-vision-that-explains-renaissance-fairs
Clean hands and sharp minds, team
Adam
Back on Monday. I see patients tomorrow.
Scenes from people working at home: My 15-year-old son and I had an unexpected lunch discussion yesterday - our schedules aligned in a harmonic convergence of eating and talking. He was preparing for his modern civilization class, for which he is reading a variety of 18th-century political philosophers. And, for just a brief moment, thanks to Thomas Hobbes (who said, "...the [natural state] of man [is] solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short") I was not annoying, and we had a near adult-like moment of camaraderie. I will miss these moments.
-----Latest Data---
It is hard to wrap your mind around such massive numbers rising at the rates we are seeing.
Global-View:
https://www.ft.com/content/a2901ce8-5eb7-4633-b89c-cbdf5b386938
Nationally:
https://ig.ft.com/coronavirus-chart/?areas=usa&areas=gbr&areasRegional=usny&areasRegional=usca&areasRegional=usfl&areasRegional=ustx&areasRegional=usco&cumulative=0&logScale=0&perMillion=1&values=cases
Also, look at https://covidtracking.com/data
The US Regionally - NY. Times:
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/coronavirus-us-cases.html
About the data:
https://covidtracking.com/about-data/visualization-guide is the best resource to understand data visualization and data integrity.
-----
I found a few articles and threads of high value to arm yourself (intellectually speaking) for any upcoming family interactions (outdoors/distant/masked or remote, I hope).
1) A book editor whose 12-year-old daughter was exposed to COVID in team sports. She is articulate and poignant about the guilt, logistical disruption, and concern. https://twitter.com/bookgirl96/status/1328821328225382401?s=10
2) A Cambridge physician who works on clinical trials discussing his impressions of COVID vaccine safety. This content is more good fodder to share with your crazy uncle.
https://twitter.com/mark_toshner/status/1328837111869566976?s=10
3) A CNN article, shared by a loyal reader, that attempts to put the magnitude of loss from COVID in context to more routinely experienced events, such as car crashes.
https://www.cnn.com/2020/11/18/health/covid-19-deaths-us-250k-trnd/index.html
4) Updated Swiss Cheese Pandemic Defense graphic and commentary from Australian virologist Ian Mackay.
https://twitter.com/MackayIM/status/1319901144836026368/photo/1
https://twitter.com/MackayIM/status/1319901144836026368
5) A discussion about an article from Denmark demonstrating limited protection from wearing masks. The Twitter discussion highlights the many easily made logical fallacies in reading science papers - appreciating absolute vs. relative risk, parsing a study to understand where and how bias crept in, and statistical significance. Two sides vehemently arguing over a data set that cannot support either a positive or negative conclusion is a sad metaphor for much of life these days.
https://twitter.com/MartinKulldorff/status/1329078265630257159
More discussion you should arm yourself with:
https://twitter.com/trishgreenhalgh/status/1329163949732933633?s=21
As I have said, some of the many positive side effects of COVID is the rapid and more in-depth understanding of viruses and immunology. And, there is the opportunity to make such knowledge more accessible. Here is a pre-release paper from the La Jolla Institute for Immunology. The article explores the multi-faceted nature of the immune system's response to coronavirus. It offers data suggesting the immune response is durable and complex. In turn, this may explain why vaccine efficacy and duration may be higher than anticipated and why re-infection is not common.
Article.
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.11.15.383323v1
Author's Twitter thread on the paper
https://twitter.com/profshanecrotty/status/1328760517184212993?s=20
Infographic of the day: Animal Crackers.
https://preview.redd.it/op4sj99jswz51.jpg?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=4eff59f634979bfd83b4b937c17ca71ac31a6c0e
It turns out this is a far more complex menagerie than I would have anticipated. Read these two follow up articles:
https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2002-jan-02-lv-crackers2-story.html
and https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/78447/11-wild-facts-about-animal-crackers
---Bonus Round-- History of seemingly mundane Thanksgiving foods and random commentary
I was unaware of the complexity of 19th Century apple pies. Marlborough pie sounds extraordinarily good. I enjoyed the discussion of how hard it was to procure more exotic spices and ingredients in the 1800s, which I had not spent a lot of time thinking about before.
https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/what-is-marlborough-pie
And, of course, this WaPo article from 2013 discussing numerous historical facts about Thanksgiving food.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/food/a-short-course-on-the-history-of-8-thanksgiving-foods/2013/11/22/944b345e-40b3-11e3-9c8b-e8deeb3c755b_story.html
On a related note, this article, in particular, further sealed my distaste for renaissance festivals. Follow me here. Turkey was brought from Mexico to Europe in the 1500s by the Spanish. Why then are turkey legs a seemingly universal food at renaissance fairs? Historical fudging for the sake of entertainment and convenience (you can eat it with your hand while standing). I am not the only one who has thought about this problem of the RenFaire trade-off of historical accuracy for entertainment:
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-10-22/the-utopian-vision-that-explains-renaissance-fairs
Clean hands and sharp minds, team
Adam
Back on Monday. I see patients tomorrow.
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