Week of December 19, 2022
I finished the coffee creamer on Sunday morning. My belief in the existence of additional supply did not prevent our household's Coffee Creamer Crisis of 12/18/22. Hyperbole akin to the Spanish-American war ("I just need a tablespoon!" like "Remember the Maine!") were the opening salvos. The crisis escalated with running verbal skirmishes employing snark typically reserved for debating the optimal loading of the dishwasher. Strategies learned from the "last communal cookie problem" seemed unhelpful. And I learned The Prisoner's Dilemma is true. During police interrogations and scarcities of coffee condiments, "two rational individuals making decisions in their self-interest cannot result in an optimal solution."
The Last Communal Cookie Problem
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/one-among-many/201508/cookie-dilemma
Prisoners Dilemma
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner%27s_dilemma
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From the NY Times 12/15 update, "By any metric, conditions have worsened markedly at the national level this month. Reported cases and hospitalizations have seen particularly large increases, with both figures more than 40 percent higher in recent days than they were at Thanksgiving."
N.Y. Times Tracker
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/us/covid-cases.html
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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Ensuring your family members are up-to-date with vaccinations and are symptom-free before family gatherings is the best we can expect in protecting older adults. Only ~ 35% of adults over 65 in the U.S. have received the Pfizer bivalent boosters. Infected individuals should attempt to get Paxlovid within five days of symptom onset.
The CDC published data on bivalent boosters' effectiveness in reducing hospitalization risk. "Among immune competent adults aged ≥65 years...a bivalent booster dose provided 73% additional protection against COVID-19 hospitalization compared with past monovalent mRNA vaccination only."
https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/71/wr/mm715152e2.htm
Excellent commentary
https://erictopol.substack.com/p/a-quick-update-on-the-bivalent-boosters
The bivalent boosters decrease the likelihood of long COVID as well.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2022-11-27/will-the-covid-vaccine-protect-me-from-long-covid
Here is a detailed (and consumer-friendly) review of the pathophysiology of Long COVID in the lungs. You do not want long COVID.
https://twitter.com/jeffgilchrist/status/1604112214788640768
And, while I'm on a roll of scary data regarding COVID, I will add this April 2022 Lancet article on long-term mortality post-COVID infection.
"People infected with SARS-COV-2 had more than three times the risk of dying over the following year compared with those who remained uninfected." "For [those] aged 60 years or older, increased mortality persisted until the end of the first year after infection, and was related to [a wide variety of illnesses, including] cardiovascular, cancer, respiratory system diseases, and other causes of death."
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanepe/article/PIIS2666-7762(22)00087-4/fulltext#section-3d6acba1-acea-4be2-8dc9-b7e14e5b6583
Please get and advise your loved ones to get the bivalent boosters.
Medical Trends and Technology
mRNA vaccines will offer numerous new tools in fighting diseases well beyond viruses.
Here are some promising Phase 2 trial data of mRNA vaccine against melanoma:
https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/moderna-says-personalized-mrna-cancer-vaccine-effective-advanced-melan-rcna61526
On the horizon: mRNA vaccines against Zika, metapneumovirus, parainfluenza, EBV, CMV, HSV, RSV, and bacterial infections too.
https://www.genengnews.com/topics/translational-medicine/infectious-diseases/whats-next-for-mrna-vaccines/
The bacterial vaccines seem more challenging - but certainly possible.
https://www.auckland.ac.nz/en/news/2022/03/21/team-develop-superbug-vaccine.html
Infographics
The science of nuclear fusion. Stop staring at my hohlraum.
https://www.visualcapitalist.com/science-of-nuclear-fusion/
Things I learned this week
Teddy Roosevelt's great, great grandson is a constitutional law professor at the University of Pennsylvania. He recently published a fantastic book that looks at the tension between the myths and realities of American democracy from 1776 to now. The topic is heavy, but it is the best analysis of the struggle to reconcile the notions of "American Exceptionalism" and the lack of equality and justice we often see and experience in the U.S. I STRONGLY recommend reading or listening to this book.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/58975511-the-nation-that-never-was
On December 16, 1997, episode 38, season 1 of Pokémon anime (entitled "Electric Soldier Polygon") induced seizures in at least 685 Japanese children. In subsequent days, 12,000 more children reported symptoms. It took years to reconstruct the details differentiating between photosensitive epileptic seizures and the mass psychogenic illness from the news of the seizures. Thanks to a lo l reader who shared this article, we can all learn about mass psychogenic illness events.
https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2022/dec/16/pokemon-explosion-tv-japan-children-hospital
Topics from the newsletter through the "eyes" of our A.I. Overlords!
(What is this section? - https://openai.com/dall-e-2/)
"An oil painting of Pikachu wearing a pith helmet hunting giant virus particles with a syringe"
https://labs.openai.com/s/zqdK5utQQt3mTzZL6Fw9qup0
Several readers have sent me this latest A.I. use of the week: doctors using ChatGPT to write appeal letters in response to insurance company denials.
https://twitter.com/stuartblitz/status/1602834224284897282?s=42&t=7e76HazflBNTmNPJUSLisw
I'll be out of the newsletter job soon, too.
"write an article about recent COVID information with links to sourced articles."
https://www.dropbox.com/s/jiuaqnwwu6q50n5/New_Chat.jpg
Clean hands and sharp minds,
Adam
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