Week of January 16, 2023
A text message coupon from the nature store where I buy birdseed sparked a rapid cycle of excitement to self-aware embarrassment this weekend. I am not sure where I am on the slippery slope of becoming my parents, but finding myself in the center of a Venn diagram of bird watching, discount shopping, and things to get excited about is a sure sign of aging.
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Deaths have risen, but case rates and hospitalizations have plateaued for the last 14 days, per N.Y. Times data. The southeast has the highest daily case rates as the omicron XBB.1.5 variant spreads.
N.Y. Times Tracker
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/us/covid-cases.html
Financial Times Data
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The NY Times offered a comprehensive FAQ on omicron XBB.1.5
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/11/briefing/the-kraken-subvariant.html
As I have watched the data from the latest wave of the omicron variant, I have wondered if and when we will see that a vaccinated and previously infected population has any protection from an evolving virus. Virologist Jesse Bloom offered a thoughtful compare and contrast of how mortality rates changed following the deadliest flu outbreaks in 1918, 1951, and 1968. While not entirely comparable to COVID, he does a great job of looking at previous data to form some imperfect hypotheses.
https://twitter.com/jbloom_lab/status/1613916983162204160
Axios covers Fed Chairman Jerome Powell's remarks about the 3.5 million people missing from the U.S. workforce due to COVID.
https://www.axios.com/2022/12/16/the-missing-workers-who-are-never-coming-back
There have been numerous comments on social media about "vaccines drive the coronavirus to mutate and make it easier to get infected." This comment is not valid but requires nuance to understand:
Viruses evolve. They evolve more quickly when they have multiple hosts to reproduce or multiple strains interact in the same host. So, not getting infected is the best way to slow viral evolution (masks, good ventilation, etc.). Conversely, getting repeated infections and being an easy reservoir for spreading the virus will promote variant formation.
Vaccines reduce the risk of death and severe illness in infected people. In and of themselves, the vaccines do not impact viral evolution. However, vaccinated individuals who get infected become a host for viral evolution. So, I suspect vaccines may 1) provoke behaviors that could perpetuate viral spread and 2) keep more people alive longer to get infected for a second or third time. One could explore more nuance, but I see no data suggesting vaccines cause viral mutation.
Article:
Medical Trends and Technology
I did not have gas stoves become a medical-political football on my 2023 bingo card, but here we are. Dr. Jeremy Faust does an outstanding job reviewing some data on the SCIENCE of this issue:
https://insidemedicine.substack.com/p/my-weird-arc-with-gas-stoves
More broadly, there are data on aerosolized cooking particles as well. Wait till the media learns the potential hazards of frying, irrespective of gas or electric burners. (You can pry the bacon from my cold dead hands!?!) While I cannot find much about Sri Srikrishna's background, his review of data and home experiments on aerosolized particles are worth reading.
https://twitter.com/sri_srikrishna/status/1614550657020858369
Infographics
I imagine most of you woke up this morning saying, "What I need is a 10-minute-long video infographic set to elevator music about the wide variety of berries found in North America." I got you covered:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IrVN7Q5aMi8
For the impatient, here is a 40-second version as an animated GIF
https://twitter.com/i/status/1614006911636045825
For the VERY interested, I offer the source subreddit discussion in which various people attempt to impugn the berry atlas data with anecdotal observations ("But I have blueberries in Alaska! They are not on your map!").
Things I learned this week
To obtain a copyright, the U.S. Copywrite office requires that a work of writing or art be "created by a human." Stephen Thaler, a software engineer, is using the courts to redefine ownership and authorship of A.I.-generated art.
https://news.artnet.com/art-world/ai-art-intellectual-property-lawsuit-stephen-thaler-2242031
Topics from the newsletter through the "eyes" of our A.I. Overlords!
(What is this section? - https://openai.com/dall-e-2/)
"A photo of old man feeding birds while frying bacon on a gas stove."
https://labs.openai.com/s/mlZlmP2GTHgpm8n4PzSw7ksS
Clean hands and sharp minds,
Adam
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