Week of July 11, 2022
The topic of missing luggage still predominates in our house. Insurance forms, attempted communications with the airline, and replacing the necessities are shockingly time-consuming. On the other hand, righteous indignation at Air France's poor customer service (and not other news items) is (satisfying? comforting? pleasantly distracting?) for a while. I have commiserated with many social media users - some of whom espouse strongly differing beliefs from me (on other topics). I have learned that mutual anger at an airline transcends differences. At least in the Facebook/Twitter/Insta ecosystems, there appears to be a hierarchy of contempt and scorn, with airlines at the top.
A bit like this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_enemy_of_my_enemy_is_my_friend
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Case rates and hospitalizations are rising. Death rates are down across the U.S. But the under-reporting of cases is still prevalent with antigen testing at home, recurrent infections, and household spread.
Dr. Eric Topol talks about the COVID disreality in which we are living.
https://twitter.com/EricTopol/status/1545449245028716544
N.Y. Times Tracker
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/us/covid-cases.html
Country Comparison from FT.com
https://ig.ft.com/coronavirus-chart/?areas=eur&areas=usa&areas=twn&areas=nzl&areas=e92000001&areas=fra&areasRegional=usny&areasRegional=usnm&areasRegional=uspr&areasRegional=ushi&areasRegional=usfl&areasRegional=usco&cumulative=0&logScale=1&per100K=0&startDate=2021-06-01&values=deaths
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HVAC engineer Joey Fox offered succinct tips on safer traveling during the BA.5 surge.
https://twitter.com/joeyfox85/status/1545148594289868802
And an analysis of personal HEPA filters (which are probably not helpful).
https://twitter.com/joeyfox85/status/1545148594289868802
Ian MacKay, an Australian virologist, wrote a new blog post on how masks reduce viral load. Here is one provocative quote, "Nonhuman primate studies have reported between 10s of SARS-CoV-2 viral particles required for the body to recognize infection (mount an immune response) to 100s of viral particles for the body to develop a fever in response to an infection after being inhaled.[10]"
https://virologydownunder.com/masks-matter-for-more-than-mandates/
and the associated Twitter discussion
https://twitter.com/mackayim/status/1544823698007392257
The Boston Globe had a summary of a pre-release (non-peer-reviewed) article detailing findings from Harvard about long covid.
Twitter thread:
https://twitter.com/BostonGlobe/status/1545467980825468929
Article:
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.06.14.22276401v1.full.pdf
As a result, I learned that Brigham and Women's Hospital has a COVID recovery center:
https://www.brighamandwomens.org/lung-center/infectious-and-immunologic-disorder-programs/covid-recovery-center
Monkeypox is still out there. Here is an anonymous person who is posting about their infection. Sadly, collectively, we have applied only limited lessons from COVID. I suspect there is a capacity and a wisdom problem.
https://twitter.com/MyMonkeypoxLife/status/1545868989187985413
Random Medical Realities and Technology:
I am reading Lindsey Fitzharris's The Facemaker, a history of early 20th century reconstructive surgery. It reminds me of how healthcare evolves and the many under-explored ideas that still need attention. A great example is bacteriophages or viruses that evolve to infect specific bacteria - viruses that kill bacteria. While many technical challenges to identifying and purifying phages exist, it is a fascinating area of science that holds promise for treating drug-resistant and atypical bacteria:
https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2021/10/scientists-biotechs-look-unlock-potential-phage-therapy
I ran across a CNN article about a college professor who was one of the first recipients of phage therapy in 2016.
https://www.cnn.com/2022/07/08/health/phage-superbug-killer-life-itself-wellness/index.html
I also found this article on the medicinal use of arsenic to treat syphilis in the pre-antibiotic era, under the tradename Salvarsan. Imagine the marketing had there been TV and pharma ads back then.
https://www.sciencehistory.org/distillations/early-solution#:~:text=Salvarsan%20was%20used%20to%20treat%20syphilis%20until%20the%201940s.&text=In%20the%2019th%20century%20arsenic,of%20those%20suffering%20from%20syphilis
Infographics!
The 1944 W.M. Welch Chart of Electromagnetic Radiations is incredible. And another good reminder of how progress and technology are iterative.
https://i.redd.it/s2ren73klna91.jpg
Things I learned this week
I learned that my family is not alone in our prolonged missing luggage problem.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/ceciliarodriguez/2022/07/05/traveling-to-europe-beware-of-flying-chaos-flight-cancellations-delays-lost-luggageand-its-just-starting/
and
https://t.co/wINIsn6WC3
The Celts of iron age Ireland used butter as currency and, sometimes, placed it in peat bogs for either storage or, possibly, ceremonial purposes. It is (apparently) not surprising to find large, buried containers of prehistoric butter. "The widespread occurrence of these enigmatic butter deposits fits with our increasing knowledge of the central importance of dairying in prehistoric northern Europe." I would like to have heard the conversation about how "they" determined that 2000-year-old butter is edible.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/a-brief-history-of-bog-butter-180959384/
and
https://www.ucd.ie/newsandopinion/news/2019/march/14/irishbogbutterproventobe3500yearspastitsbestbeforedate/
Clean hands and sharp minds, team
Adam
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