Week of May 1, 2023
I was at long, tedious (and yet comforting) American Medical Association meetings most of last week. I find reassurance in groups of engaged professionals coming together to solve complex problems with only better, not perfect, answers. While quirky and ironic events were in short supply, the hotel serving candy bars to a room full of doctors offered a moment of observation. Thoughtful healthcare professionals are not immune to herd behavior. The peanut butter cups disappeared exponentially (from a buffet table of Snickers, KitKat, and Reese's) as the early candy-takers gave tacit permission for the hesitant to indulge (should I eat this? Yes! Me too!).
https://belseralex.com/herding-behavior-how-following-the-crowd-leads-us-astray/
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The N.Y. Times updated its COVID Tracker, reflecting the changing data quality. It will now publish CDC-gathered hospital data as a surrogate (lagging) indicator.
Hospitalization rates, positive cases, and death rates continue to fall
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/us/covid-cases.html
Wastewater monitoring is a LEADING indicator. These data demonstrate a week-over-week decline in viral concentrations.
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There is a (low-key) effort to find a person based on wastewater detection of an irregular COVID (cryptic) variant.
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.10.28.22281553v1
The preprint (non-peer-reviewed) article's senior author describes the effort to find someone shedding the variant on his Twitter feed.
It is a fascinating exploration of using viral wastewater monitoring.
https://twitter.com/SolidEvidence/status/1650579849164247040
Coronavirus Omicron XBB.1.6 (Arcturus) is the most rapidly spreading variant. This variant is noted for increased transmissibility, the same severity as other Omicron variants, and a new symptom - conjunctivitis.
https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/covid-variant-arcturus-spreading-know-xbb116-rcna81572
Despite the low case rates reported, I still see numerous anecdotal and small clusters of rising cases and transmission events. It is why I am still masking on planes. Here are a few examples:
A CDC meeting about COVID turns into a transmission event
https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2023/04/28/covid-cases-cdc-conference/
Japan is reporting an uptick in cases in Tokyo.
https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2023/04/27/national/tokyo-covid-2/
I still want a COVID-sniffing dog!
https://www.cnn.com/2023/04/24/health/covid-dogs-california-schools-study/index.html
"After training in the laboratory, our dogs were field tested and, in more than 3500 screenings, correctly determined COVID-19 status in most instances. Unlike most other studiesnour dogs directly screened people in the field, rather than specimens. Our method was associated with improved testing efficiency but had a modest decrease in sensitivity and specificity compared with laboratory results."
and
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapediatrics/fullarticle/2804205
Medical Trends and Technology
Somewhat competing stories on A.I. in healthcare caught my attention this week.
Wired offered "ChatGPT Can Help Doctors—and Hurt Patients" - a look at the problems with using A.I. for exploring medical information and how A.I. might shape medical advice.
"Being a doctor is about much more than regurgitating encyclopedic medical knowledge. While many physicians are enthusiastic about using ChatGPT for low-risk tasks like text summarization, some bioethicists worry that doctors will turn to the bot for advice when they encounter a tough ethical decision like whether surgery is the right choice for a patient with a low likelihood of survival or recovery."
https://www.wired.com/story/chatgpt-can-help-doctors-and-hurt-patients/
Compare this to "Patient Questions Are Answered With Higher Quality and Empathy by ChatGPT than Physicians."
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/fullarticle/2804309
with a great overview by Eric Topol
https://erictopol.substack.com/p/when-patient-questions-are-answered
(Several loyal readers sent me this.)
Infographics
The Richest People in History, adjusted for 2017 dollars.
http://money.visualcapitalist.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/richest-people-in-history.html
from
http://money.visualcapitalist.com/richest-people-human-history/
Things I learned this week
April 25 was the 70th anniversary of Nature publishing three papers depicting the structure of DNA (1953). While Watson and Crick received the attention (and the Nobel Prize), X-ray crystallographer Rosalind Franklin was a key contributor. The degree of her contributions has been a long-standing source of discussion. A Nature article and blog post re-explores Franklin's contributions, and why attribution is challenging in collaborative scientific work.
and
https://twitter.com/matthewcobb/status/1650877644529975296
Living with A.I.
Artificial Intelligence (A.I.) cannot qualify as an "inventor" under the United States Patent Act – only (human) "individuals" can.
Grammarly (my favorite writing tutor) now has an A.I. text generation tool.
(or, as it suggested when I asked it to write the previous sentence as a rhyming couplet, "My writing tutor, Grammarly, now takes the helm, With an A.I. tool, it'll improve my writing realm."
or in pig Latin "Aymay avoritefay itingway utortay, ammarGlyray, owknay ashay anway A.I. exttay enerationgay oolway."
https://www.grammarly.com/grammarlygo
Another blog that offers several updates a week on A.I.
A.I. art of the week
"A group of Dancing DNA double helices wearing fedoras and tap shoes"
or
Clean hands and sharp minds,
Adam
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