Week of December 27, 2022
This weekend's rewatching of Rudolph (the Red-Nosed Reindeer) was unexpectedly jarring. The 1964 Rudolph animated holiday special has not aged well. Judging older art and media by today's cultural standards is not always fair. But Rudolph was filled with messages of shaming (the red nose), animal cruelty (the abominable snowman), and the denial of Elf self-determination (one elf didn't want to make toys). A nostalgic rewatching of childhood media can be like finding your toys in an intellectual antique shop. And underlying all of this is the problem of living through shifting cultural norms - reconciling fond memories of the shows, acknowledging the problematic messaging, and not sounding like a grumpy old man ("this was OK in my day!").
My wife found a 2020 Atlantic article discussing the problems of the Rudolph special:
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/12/rankin-bass-rudolph-the-red-nosed-reindeer/616932/
And, for the truly interested, here is the 1964 animation on YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IOmbMQEQMN4
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Those that aggregate state-level data are likely off for the holidays. I suspect we won't have a good sense of any change in cases, hospitalizations, or deaths until the second week of January.
China is experiencing a significant outbreak:
https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/23/china/china-covid-infections-250-million-intl-hnk/index.htm
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&areas=chn&areasRegional=usny&areasRegional=usnm&areasRegional=uspr&areasRegional=usaz&areasRegional=usfl&areasRegional=usnd&cumulative=0&logScale=1&per100K=0&startDate=2021-09-01&values=cases
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A loyal reader shared epidemiologist Dr. Ellie Murray's fantastic thread on understanding the data behind words like outbreak, pandemic, and endemic. Here is the takeaway: it is hard to classify an increasing case rate of a specific disease when we don't understand the typical or expected number of cases. The number of both flu and RSV cases is greater than expected this year. We don't have enough data to know if COVID is endemic or if we are still in episodic outbreaks. However, it may be all academic since we (collectively) have disconnected our behavior from any data.
https://twitter.com/epiellie/status/1606676615655788544
Eric Topol offers a detailed review of the latest coronavirus variant -Omicron XBB.1.5. The article provides a detailed description of the ongoing evolution of the virus, including the potential advantages XBB variants have acquired. Takeaway points:
- XBB is contagious and possibly driving case rates and hospitalizations in New York and New England.
and
- "The BA.5-containing bivalent booster had better neutralizing activity against all Omicron subvariants (especially against BA.2.75.2, BQ.1.1 and XBB) than those who received 1 or 2 monovalent [original] boosters."
https://erictopol.substack.com/p/a-new-variant-alert
Retraction Watch is an organization that monitors academic and scientific journals for retracted papers. Their "Top 10 retractions of 2022" is a collection of plagiarism, data falsification, and careless acts. There were no COVID-related papers this year.
https://www.the-scientist.com/news-opinion/the-top-retractions-of-2022-70852
Compare to 2021
https://www.the-scientist.com/news-opinion/the-top-retractions-of-2021-69533
https://retractionwatch.com/
And while I share a broader array of articles this week, look at Dr. Kristen Panthagani's review of data behind headlines. AHRQ published an article reporting that E.R. physician misdiagnosis is the cause of 250,000 deaths per year (in the U.S.). Her Twitter thread dissects this article - exposing data mishandling, logical fallacies, and extrapolation errors. This thread is an excellent example of why reading medical literature is so challenging. Digging into data and questioning assumptions is time-consuming and requires some expertise - often specific to a specialty.
https://twitter.com/kmpanthagani/status/1604638932817178624
Here are the articles that spawned her thread:
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/15/health/medical-errors-emergency-rooms.html
and
https://effectivehealthcare.ahrq.gov/products/diagnostic-errors-emergency/research
Medical Trends and Technology
Something older and something newer:
This JAMA article commemorates 50 years of the United State's national program for patients requiring dialysis.
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2799950?guestAccessKey=87ab1dc6-1fa4-4a1b-bc96-dd4e12c461e2&utm_source=silverchair&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=article_alert-jama&utm_content=olf&utm_term=121922
And the start of BioNTech's trials of an mRNA vaccine for malaria.
https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/biontech-initiates-clinical-trial-mrna-based-malaria-vaccine-candidate-2022-12-23/
Infographics
FiveThirtyEight.com offered their 2022 infographic year in review, "33 cool charts we made this year."
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/best-charts-2022/
Things I learned this week
Chocolate's history is far more complex than I realized, and I learned historical archeologist is a career that facilitates writing about such history. (Note that this article has links to the data sources referenced, not a separate sources section.)
https://theconversation.com/the-history-of-chocolate-when-money-really-did-grow-on-trees-196173
I don't know if this is marketing genius or a practical joke - but Hellman's (the mayonnaise people) wants you to make holiday Mayo-nog.
https://www.thedrinksbusiness.com/2022/12/hellmanns-releases-mayo-nog-cocktail-for-christmas/
The Washington Post reviewed this nog with the headline, "Hellmann's 'mayo-nog' is the holiday drink no one asked for."
https://www.washingtonpost.com/food/2022/12/20/hellmans-mayo-nog-mayonnaise-egg-nog/
Topics from the newsletter through the "eyes" of our A.I. Overlords!
(What is this section? - https://openai.com/dall-e-2/)
https://labs.openai.com/s/cEYB2jkYHkNRiNy8b285hiR8
"Rudolph the red nose reindeer wearing sunglasses sipping egg nog on a beach and eating a chocolate bar"
One last A.I. article for this week - A Psychology Today article about navigating the risks of A.I. text-generating engine ChatGPT written by ChatGPT. The author spawns a recursive intellectual exercise that reflects our coming reality.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/big-picture-parenting/202212/navigating-the-risks-of-chatgpt
Clean hands and sharp minds,
Adam
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