Week of November 28, 2022
The long holiday weekend provided me time to see family, enjoy meals, and cut a recently felled dead tree for firewood. Amongst the many things to give thanks for, the break from travel and email was delightful. And having a few hours to step away from my typical "grown-up" roles (like the doctor and parenting stuff), I had the time and space to again marvel at the fact that I own and use a chainsaw without adult supervision.
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COVID rates are rising by all measures, and I expect increased rates in the coming weeks, given the holiday travel and international trends (like Chinese case rates) last week. There is also data from Canada about the increasing incidence of COVID + flu + RSV in children.
N.Y. Times Tracker
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/us/covid-cases.html
Canadian data reviewed:
https://twitter.com/Aaron_Derfel/status/1596330037833535488
Financial Times Data
https://ig.ft.com/coronavirus-chart/?areas=eur&areas=usa&areas=e92000001&areasRegional=usny&areasRegional=usnm&areasRegional=uspr&areasRegional=usaz&areasRegional=usfl&areasRegional=usnd&cumulative=0&logScale=0&per100K=1&startDate=2021-09-01&values=deaths
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Moving from anecdote to data is critical for sound decision-making in medicine. Earlier in the pandemic, some women reported altered menstrual cycles in the weeks after vaccination. Further studies have indicated that COVID vaccines have NO impact on fertility but are associated with minor deviations in menstrual cycle timing (of about 3-4 days. Science.org reviews this data in detail, along with the most recent proposed mechanisms of why these changes are happening.
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.ade1051
In addition to decreasing hospitalizations and deaths, COVID vaccination campaigns have a good financial ROI per a recent analysis of the New York City vaccination campaign from December 2020 through January 2022. All told, every $1 invested yielded more than $10 in improved economic outcomes.
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2798827
light Twitter commentary
https://twitter.com/DrJayVarma/status/1596526933180751872
The greatest good to come out of the pandemic will be the rapid approval and varied uses of mRNA vaccines. STAT news reports on a (pay-walled) article on a new mRNA flu vaccine that "would not be a vaccine that would block all flu infections, nor would it replace the need for an annual flu shot. Instead, it would prime the immune system to better respond to new flu viruses, lowering the risk of hospitalization, death, and social disruption [in the event of a periodic more virulent flu strain]." In other words, invest now to protect against future pandemics.
https://www.statnews.com/2022/11/24/experimental-flu-vaccine-developed-using-mrna-seen-as-potential-game-changer/
Medical Trends and Technology
A potpourri of medical articles I found the week of thanksgiving:
The NY Times reviewed the science of obesity. It is far more complex, and we know far less than we think.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/21/opinion/obesity-cause.html
Commentary
https://twitter.com/juliaoftoronto/status/1594668512114790400
Dental care is tightly related to all sorts of health outcomes. Oral health is not a cosmetic or optional health issue.
https://www.statnews.com/2022/11/21/oral-health-who-report/
And while this consumer article cites correlative (not causal) data, it is interesting to see how many health issues are associated with poor dental hygiene. (And I did not realize mice were an animal model for periodontal disease.)
https://dentistry.uic.edu/news-stories/the-surprising-connections-between-oral-health-and-well-being/
Infographics
Despite a dearth of information, it felt like an apropos week to explore the everpresent confusion between sweet potatoes vs. yams.
https://extension.msstate.edu/blog/sweet-potatoes-vs-yams-what%E2%80%99s-the-difference
You can read more on the storied history of these tubers thanks to the Library of Congress:
https://blogs.loc.gov/inside_adams/2010/11/a-sweet-potato-history/
including a link to the 1919 edition of the Barrett Company's eponymous pamphlet "Sweet Potatoes and Yams."
https://archive.org/details/sweetpotatoesyam00barr/page/n1/mode/2up
Topics from the newsletter through the "eyes" of our A.I. Overlords!
(What is this section? - https://openai.com/dall-e-2/)
"Photo of a man wearing goggles and holding a potato cutting cheese with a chainsaw."
https://labs.openai.com/s/HhM1oMI8FZbSmCULr6ivPv3h
Things I learned this week
U.S. history is marked by a surprisingly large number of politically contentious giant wheels of cheese, starting with the Jefferson administration in 1802. And thanks to Jefferson's political enemies, the adjectival form of "mammoth" was coined to mock Jefferson's belief that mammoths were still alive and to describe the giant wheel of cheese gifted to him by New England dairy farmers celebrating his inauguration. Andrew Jackson was also given a wheel of cheese in the late 1820s. The lack of refrigeration played a role in these stories.
https://wiltonhistorical.org/2017/09/thomas-jefferson-mammoth-cheese/
I highly recommend reading the poem composed by political allies of Jefferson who decided to "own" the mammoth label. It may be the best example of a politicized ode to cheese I have encountered.
https://wiltonhistorical.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/Mammoth-Cheese-Ode-to-Giant-Cheese.jpg
I remember the home chemistry set I received for my 7th birthday in 1982. I cannot recall safety goggles or gloves, which in retrospect, is concerning. But had I been born 30 years earlier, I could have received a seemingly even more dangerous set - the "Gilbert Radioactive Atomic Energy Lab Kit with Uranium" with a Geiger counter. It wasn't as bad as it sounds, apparently.
https://thebulletin.org/virtual-tour/worlds-most-dangerous-toy-radioactive-atomic-energy-lab-kit-with-uranium-1950/
I recommend reading about how Peter Jackson's work on the 2021 Beatle's Rooftop Concert documentary led directly to the recently released remastered Revolver album. Using A.I. and machine learning, Jackson's team and Beatles producers separated the overlapping audio tracks.
https://www.vulture.com/2022/11/the-beatles-revolver-super-deluxe-peter-jackson-get-back.html
and
https://open.spotify.com/album/7C221PnWhYGv8Tc0xSbfdc?si=FCUPodsbTh-Nj_W8LUv9eA
Clean hands and sharp minds,
Adam
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