Week of January 9, 2023
Asking my kids to suggest opening topics for this newsletter illustrates the opportunities and pitfalls of crowdsourcing teenage boys. They get an A for humor and a D for substance. Here are their recommendations:
- The "unique anatomy" of echidnas.
- Using ChatGPT (the A.I. engine) to "write a story about 'pin the tail on the donkey,' from the donkey's perspective."
- Comment on book #1 of the Chili Cook-off Mystery series, Chili Con Carnage.
While I could find some wisdom or quippy remark, I will let these brilliant ideas stand independently. I apologize in advance.
Here are the links:
https://www.livescience.com/mystery-of-4-headed-echidna-penis-solved.html
and
https://sharegpt.com/c/T7Of5Lc
and
https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/15811558-chili-con-carnage
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The New York Times reports a 15-20% increase in hospitalizations, I.C.U. admissions, and deaths over the last 14 days.
N.Y. Times Tracker
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/us/covid-cases.html
Financial Times Data
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The C.D.C.'s weekly COVID tracker review discusses trade-offs of different methodologies of understanding how widespread a given variant is. Forward-looking projections (modeled forecasts based on week-to-week data) have more imprecision versus actual variant prevalence measurements, which are retrospective and take 2 to 3 weeks.
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/covid-data/covidview/index.html
All of this pairs nicely with a great thread on how variant tracking works:
https://twitter.com/jeffgilchrist/status/1611156533089370115
A loyal reader shared this Twitter thread summarizing an article from Cell illustrating how SARS-CoV2 infects, reprograms, and spreads from airway epithelial cells. The "[coronavirus] hijacks the cell machinery to enlarge and branch the microvilli" part is a bit creepy.
https://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(22)01505-7
and
https://twitter.com/rajeevjayadevan/status/1611655242940313601
I strongly suggest reading Dr. Celine Gounder's OpEd about the death of her husband, Grant Wahl, and how it relates to the importance of data, science, and the internet. She is a very public figure, an epidemiologist on the front lines of media regarding COVID, vaccines, and evidence-based medicine. Grant was the sports writer who died of an aortic aneurysm at the World Cup.
The C.D.C. has started exploring how to use airplane wastewater to understand the prevalence of COVID on arriving international flights.
https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/05/health/airplane-wastewater-covid-testing/index.html
Malaysian health officials have found a very high prevalence of COVID in the wastewater of flights arriving in Kuala Lumpur (like 28 of 29 flights tested)
Here is some more background on using wastewater for population health:
Medical Trends and Technology
If you are interested in nephrology (and who isn't?), Neph Journal Club (N.J.C.) posted their "Best Nephrology Stories of 2022" this week. (N.J.C. is an online moderated discussion group about nephrology research and related articles.) This article is an excellent roundup of topics and trends to discuss with your favorite kidney doctors.
http://www.nephjc.com/news/2023/1/6/top-nephrology-2022
If you want lighter intellectual fare, I offer "U.S.D.A. Approves First Vaccine for Honeybees." The vaccine protects honeybees from American foulbrood, an aggressive bacteria (Paenibacillus - a spore-forming bacillus) that kills honey bee larvae. The vaccine is the inactivated bacteria put into royal jelly (the food fed to the queen bees). Once eaten by the queen, further birthed larvae are protected.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/07/science/honeybee-vaccine.html
The company website: https://www.dalan.com/science
The vaccine study treated both bees in a lab and hives in the wild, each with 50,000-100,000 bees. The vaccine reduces Paenibacillus infection by 30-50% in lab conditions. In "wild" conditions, they measured Paenibbacillus spores in the hives, determining that vaccination reduced spore density below the threshold seen in outbreaks of foulbrood.
I am grateful to the loyal reader who sent this topic my way. There is no word yet if 1) there are honeybee vaccine refusers or 2) if dating apps (like Bumble) will include "I only eat vaccine-free honey."
https://www.datingadvice.com/for-women/dating-sites-with-covid-vaccination-status
Infographics
Like the robust infographic department at Alan's Factory Outlet (for barns and outdoor buildings), Titlemax (an online loan company) offers a wide array of peripherally related infographics for reasons I do not understand.
Here is an infographic of Ceremonial Vehicles of World Leaders. Spoiler: Mercedes is the predominant choice.
Part of the Titlemax discovery center:
https://www.titlemax.com/discovery-center/
Things I learned this week
Many Disney stories are derived or adapted from older versions by other authors. Two that recently came to my attention are The Little Mermaid and Fantasia.
Hans Christian Andersen's 1837 darker, original version of the Little Mermaid was as far from a children's story as you could imagine:
https://lithub.com/dear-internet-the-little-mermaid-also-happens-to-be-queer-allegory/
Even the Disney adaptation, with all its financial success, had a thread of provocative messaging:
Malcolm Gladwell published a fantastic 3-part podcast about The Little Mermaid in the summer of 2021 - the middle episodes of Revisionist History season 6
https://www.pushkin.fm/podcasts/revisionist-history/little-mermaid-part-1-the-golden-contract
and
https://www.pushkin.fm/podcasts/revisionist-history/little-mermaid-part-2-the-fairytale-twist
and
https://www.pushkin.fm/podcasts/revisionist-history/little-mermaid-part-3-honestly-ever-after
While less provocative, a short story by the 2nd-century A.D. writer Lucian Samosata is the basis for parts of Disney's Fantasia. Lucian was very popular in antiquity, and his writing influenced many writers over the last two millennia.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucian
The themes of "don't mess with stuff you don't fully understand" and "magic may have unintended consequences" are well preserved, even in the story's original version. The Sorcerer's Apprentice is the 10th chapter in a book called The Lover of Lies. Check out the rest of the summaries of the stories (chapters 1-9). Plots have not changed much in the last 2000 years.
https://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/2008/2008.04.28/
Topics from the newsletter through the "eyes" of our A.I. Overlords!
(What is this section? - https://openai.com/dall-e-2/)
"painting of a mermaid driving a Mercedes in the style of Gustav Klimt"
https://labs.openai.com/s/uSE1iXYt19KsYv7FzgFdF5Yh
Clean hands and sharp minds,
Adam
Adam Weinstein, MD
Chief Medical Information Officer, DaVita Kidney Care
Cell: 443-527-6333 | EA: Christine.Frazier@davita.com
Nephrologist, University of Maryland Shore Medical Group (Office ) 410-820-9823
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