Week of April 17, 2023
On Sunday, my older son and I visited the college he will attend next year for an "admitted student day." My son drove, and along Interstate 95, I discovered I could see the shoe factory building in Baltimore where my grandfather (who dropped out of elementary school) spent most of his working life. Just a few moments in a 2-hour drive but a solid reminder about how much of life is dependent on the sacrifices and work of others.
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The N.Y. Times updated its COVID Tracker based on CDC-gathered hospital data as a surrogate (lagging) indicator.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/us/covid-cases.html
Wastewater monitoring is more of a LEADING indicator.
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Dr. Jeremy Faust discussed COVID-19 testing rates, the challenges ending the public health emergency will bring, and the value of PCR testing.
https://insidemedicine.substack.com/p/data-snapshot-covid-testing-now-at
There is more evidence that the Novavax (recombinant protein) COVID vaccine offers greater protection from severe infection than the mRNA (Pfizer) vaccine, especially in older and at-risk adults. A recent pre-release (non-peer-reviewed) article from South Korea detailed outcomes from a matched cohort study of 6000 vaccinated adults.
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.02.18.23286136v1.full-text
Some (mostly reasonable) discussion on this article from Twitter:
https://twitter.com/doctorvasan/status/1646337166379823104
I continue to be interested in this vaccine as a booster, which I have not seen data on.
There continues to be a trickle of anti-mask journal articles. (Recall the poorly constructed Cochrane Database article from 2 months ago.) Epidemiologist Gideon Meyerowitz-Katz analyzes a recent anti-mask meta-analysis, highlighting intellectual and methodological gaps. His thread is an excellent example of a thoughtful critique of scientific data and dispels the many ridiculous claims of mask-induced medical harm.
https://twitter.com/GidMK/status/1646772161640824832?s=20
And finally, be on the lookout for new symptoms from COVID variant XBB.1.16 - conjunctivitis (red, sticky, or overly-itchy eyes).
https://twitter.com/tmprowell/status/1647238101373255681
Medical Trends and Technology
The Wall Street Journal reviewed how novel therapeutic agents require physicians to re-educate themselves on gene-altering therapies and novel agents that alter cellular protein production. Since these drugs are most commonly used to treat rare disorders, pharma companies often spearhead the training. It is a good look at how novel medical technology gets operationalized and hints at potential problems (for instance, a regional lack of trained practitioners or practitioners unfamiliar with the latest or best evidence-based therapy).
Last week, as a comment on long-COVID, I wrote about my suspicion that other viruses (beyond coronaviruses) persist in the body. I found a recent article from Finnish researchers who identified several latent intracellular viruses in organ samples from 31 deceased individuals (they did not die of viral illness). Don't jump to conclusions; these are just one data set describing a much larger topic, which is interesting nonetheless.
https://twitter.com/awesome_viruses/status/1646860267681087490
Paper
https://academic.oup.com/nar/advance-article/doi/10.1093/nar/gkad199/7084602?login=false
Infographics
The soil life cycle
https://rewildingeurope.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/Soil-life-text-2-scaled-1024x724.jpg
By Dutch ecological illustrator Jeroen Helmer:
https://rewildingeurope.com/blog/the-art-of-rewilding-an-interview-with-jeroen-helmer/
Things I learned this week
Use the free Medscape account (which I encouraged all readers to get a few years ago) and read about the clinicopathology case study looking at Beethoven's DNA, diagnosing him with Hepatitis B, which correlates with symptoms he reportedly had.
(BTW, this pairs nicely with the article on persistent viruses from above.)
A.I.-generated images are winning photo contests, engendering a disquieting existential crisis for artistic photographers. Of note, we are also that much closer to manufacturing family vacation photos without having to take the family vacation.
https://petapixel.com/2023/04/14/artist-refuses-prize-after-his-ai-image-wins-at-top-photo-contest/
Living with A.I.
For those that want a rapid catch-up on ChatGPT, here is a well-done Tweetorial. It is all about probabilities.
https://twitter.com/danhollick/status/1646509271843225600
Commercialized, subscription-based services utilizing A.I. were announced by Amazon, Google, and Meta this week.
https://twitter.com/nonmayorpete/status/1646619372709113856
The New York Times offered "35 Ways People are Using A.I. Today." I gravitated to #29, "Teach people to curl like a pro."
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/04/14/upshot/up-ai-uses.html
A.I. art of the week
https://labs.openai.com/s/QDvxrjGVBwUIiJzWCLAwdyZe
"Photo of Beethoven playing a black grand piano with virus particles and music notes coming from the strings."
Clean hands and sharp minds,
Adam
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