Week of May 15, 2023
A deflated avocado marks the beginning of summer at our house. We often host Mother's Day for our family. Sunday was warm - enough so that my elementary-age nephews 1) insisted on swimming in the 66° F pool and 2) required four floats and three noodles for the two of them. While the kids swam (and the feet-dipping adults squealed), I inflated the giant avocado float. My nephews' imperviousness to the water temperature was remarkable. Of course, there are numerous articles about why children are more cold-tolerant - it has to do with the relative amounts of brown fat found. Finnish lumberjacks also have a lot of brown fat. Obviously, I also need to invite Scandinavians to my house for spring swimming.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/03/parenting/kids-babies-cold.html
And I learned I could stagger my spring swimming events. The Finnish celebrate Mother's Day on the same day as Americans
https://www.foreignersinfinland.fi/post/celebrating-mother-s-day-in-finland
The Swedes, however, celebrate later in May.
https://www.thenewbieguide.se/mothers-day-in-sweden/
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Hospitalizations and death rates are falling. Each week, One thousand (1000) people per week are dying from COVID in the U.S.
The N.Y. Times COVID Tracker reflects the changing data quality - only CDC-gathered hospital data as a surrogate (lagging) indicator.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/us/covid-cases.html
Wastewater monitoring is a LEADING indicator, indicating falling concentrations of COVID mRNA (on average) across the U.S.
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COVID articles
This week, the end/not end of the pandemic articles were all over national media. They tried to offer some perspective on how the coronavirus can be a medical concern without being a societal disruptor. I continue to harbor concerns that we (collectively) cannot appreciate this nuanced difference.
https://www.statnews.com/2023/05/08/is-the-covid19-pandemic-over/
Foralumab is an intranasally-delivered monoclonal antibody that decreases neurologic inflammation associated with Long COVID symptoms. The drug is entering phase 2 trials.
In response to an online debate about vaccine safety, Dr. Jonathan Kraken summed up the numerous studies demonstrating COVID vaccine safety. It is a great rundown of the overwhelmingly positive data.
https://twitter.com/DrCanuckMD/status/1656771048191455233
The CDC updated guidelines on improving ventilation and overall indoor air quality.
https://www.cnn.com/2023/05/12/health/cdc-new-ventilation-target/index.html
Medical Trends and Technology
I believe synthetic biology (like our mRNA vaccines), and A.I. are the next paradigm-shifting technologies to shape society. Malcolm Gladwells' Revisionist History podcast interviewed science author and journalist Michael Spector who has written extensively about this future.
https://www.pushkin.fm/podcasts/revisionist-history/higher-animals-with-michael-specter
Online-only telehealth offering treatment for hair loss, weight loss, erectile dysfunction, and depression/mental health started in earnest during the pandemic (due to the loosening of restrictions during the public health emergency). The DEA took notice and recently shut down a large volume prescriber of ketamine, used to treat depression. I offer this article because it describes a newer problem in healthcare. Doctors starting with a solution (in this case, ketamine) and then finding patients who need that solution is substantially different than clinicians diagnosing problems and helping find a proper treatment. The article is sympathetic to the physician (and the patients). And I am sure the doctor helped some people. However, as healthcare evolves and remote care becomes more prevalent, it will be crucial to ensure diagnosis precedes treatment, especially when a direct payment from a patient to a provider is involved. I wonder how many people (who asked for ketamine rather than help with depression) were turned away or told ketamine wasn't the best choice for them?
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2023/05/10/ketamine-telehealth-doctor/
Infographics
Getting off the planet sounds good sometimes. But Mars presents some challenges - including a lack of good dining establishments. In 2015 TIME offered "All the Ways Mars Will Try to Kill Us If We Ever Get There."
https://time.com/4054927/martian-mars-water-movie-nasa-discovery/
Things I learned this week
The aforementioned Revisionist History podcast episode taught me about the near-miss 1947 smallpox outbreak in New York City. One hero of that story is Dr. Israel Weinstein, the New York City health commissioner at the time. He helped vaccinate 6.3 million New Yorkers in 3 weeks between March and April 1947. As a result of the campaign, only 12 individuals got smallpox, and only two died. The vaccine was associated with 46 reported complications, including eight deaths (out of 6.3 million doses delivered). Stopping the potential devastation from a smallpox outbreak in a dense urban population is impressive. Americans had a different perspective on science, technology, and public health back then.
https://www.historyassociates.com/the-epidemic-that-never-was/
and
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1947_New_York_City_smallpox_outbreak
and
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel_Weinstein
Living with A.I.
Google made further improvements to Bard, their generative A.I. tool, "including image capabilities, coding features and app integration." Bard offers this summary of Bard's improvements:
"Google A.I. has announced several updates to Bard, its experimental conversational AI, at I/O 2023. Bard is now available in more languages, supports more programming capabilities, and is getting smarter at reasoning and math prompts. It is also being integrated with Adobe Firefly to allow users to create high-quality images from their creative ideas. Bard is still under development, but Google is committed to making it a helpful and informative tool for everyone."
From https://blog.google/technology/ai/google-bard-updates-io-2023/
Here are two good lists of A.I. developments from last week:
https://twitter.com/aakashg0/status/1656515240350326785
and
https://twitter.com/rowancheung/status/1657982147964071936
I direct your attention to Meta's multi-sensory generative A.I. - ImageBind - a tool that can match text, images, audio, and video.
and
The A.I.-generated Wes Anderson-inspired Lord of the Rings trailer
https://twitter.com/CuriousRefuge/status/1656043111016185856
(the same group used A.I. to generate a Wes Anderson-style Star Wars trailer a few weeks back https://twitter.com/CuriousRefuge/status/1652412004626497536)
A.I. art of the week
Keith Haring-style picture of a child on an avocado pool float in a pool
Clean hands and sharp minds, team
Adam
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