Week of April 8, 2024
I missed the last two Monday emails due to a work trip to India. Amongst my many cultural learnings, I verified (a long-held hypothesis) that there is no dignified way to eat a mango. Over a long dinner, an impromptu panel of new Indian friends rendered a consensus opinion on mango eating that is best summed up as "To eat mango is to wear mango." And, I discovered, asking South Asians about mangos yields strong, enthusiastic opinions and sentimental childhood stories.
Two follow-ups:
1) Hello to all my readers in India. I did not appreciate how many of you there are (and thanks for all the food and hospitality)!
2) There are 1200 varieties of Indian mangos and many varieties of Pakistani mangos. I did not appreciate the political dimensions of mango rivalry and mango diplomacy:
https://scroll.in/article/663953/Why-Indian-mangoes-are-better-than-Pakistani-ones
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COVID Data
After several months of trending downward, The Pandemic Mitigation Collaborative (PMC) website (using wastewater levels) forecasts a rising 4-week COVID case rate for April. However, at this time, the absolute number of infected individuals is relatively low.
based upon https://biobot.io/data/
The N.Y. Times COVID Tracker reflects only CDC-gathered hospital data. Hospitalization data are a (lagging) indicator.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/us/covid-cases.html
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COVID articles
Humans are living an average of 6.2 years longer than in 1990. COVID-19, however, displaced stroke as the second most common cause of death in 2021. While none of these data are surprising, it is heartening to see that we are slowly marching health in the right direction despite lots of news depicting chaos and uncertainty.
The latest article I found about using iodine nasal spray for respiratory infections is not for prevention but rather treatment. In this case, a phase II randomized controlled trial demonstrated reduced viral shedding from COVID-positive individuals who used iodine-based nasal spray during the early symptomatic phase. The goal is to reduce the likelihood of spread. "[S]ubjects [who received iodine nasal spray] exhibited significantly improved reduction in viral load on Days 2–4 compared to placebo recipients (p = 0.028), rate of nasal clearance of viable virus, and complete (100%) nasal and throat clearance of the virus by Day 5. No difference was seen in antigen shedding as measured by time transition from Rapid Antigen Test (RAT) positivity to RAT negativity."
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/lary.31430?af=R
While bird flu (H5N1) infections in livestock and poultry are concerning, there are several differences between human-adapted viruses and viruses that can infect humans with enough time and exposure. This thread from an NIH scientist is reassuring.
https://twitter.com/sailorrooscout/status/1776628031865409708
The author does link to some CDC reminders about protecting pets:
https://www.cdc.gov/flu/avianflu/avian-in-other-animals.htm
Medical Trends and Technology
The GLP-1 family of medications (which includes Ozempic) continues to demonstrate impressive and broad clinical impact. This family of molecules can help treat diabetes, weight loss, some types of addiction, liver disease (NASH), heart failure, and now more evidence of improvement in Parkinson's disease. Dr. Eric Topol reviews the latest studies in his blog post.
https://erictopol.substack.com/p/a-big-week-for-glp-1-drugs
Dr. Topol also interviewed one of the GLP-1 discoverers, Dr. Daniel Drucker, discussing the 30+ year journey since the discovery, surprising mechanisms of action, side effects, and the future of the drug class. Unlike other medications, there is a wide variety of action amongst the various GLP-1 drugs.
https://erictopol.substack.com/p/daniel-drucker-illuminating-the-glp
The power of suggestion in behavior-shaping: "People in [emergency room] waiting areas who consented to view a 3-minute video with a scripted message, read a one-page flyer, and have a short discussion with an Emergency Department clinician about the flu vaccine had a 30-day follow-up vaccination rate of 41% versus 15% among patients who received no messaging about the vaccine."
https://evidence.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/EVIDoa2300197
and
https://www.medpagetoday.com/infectiousdisease/uritheflu/109462
Wired's article on the first living recipient of a gene-edited pig kidney transplant is an excellent read - accessible to non-medical readers and comprehensive enough to cover the many unknowns.
https://www.wired.com/story/pig-kidney-transplant-discharge-ongoing-care/
Infographics
There has been a large volume of eclipse infographics this week.
https://www.greatamericaneclipse.com/
and Time magazine offers the paths of eclipses through 2066.
https://time.com/4897581/total-solar-eclipse-years-next/
Things I learned this week
I love finding overlooked things of consequence. This week, I found a series of Tweets discussing the ecology of hedges—the man-made natural barriers between cultivated farm fields. Hedges are critical habitat for birds, mammals, and pollinators, among other environmental benefits. I should not be surprised there are numerous books on hedges (the thread author is a publisher of a new book on this topic).
https://twitter.com/johnmitchinson/status/1775465348856176780
and
https://twitter.com/johnmitchinson/status/1775928295344792033
My wife and I are not the only people who have thought, "Why doesn't Tesla offer a "new driver" feedback setting?" suggesting tips and tricks for inexperienced drivers.
https://x.com/fsddreams/status/1765109986315645196
I learned about Vietnamese Dragon Chickens! They are simultaneously scary and tasty.
Living with A.I.
Google's Vlogger A.I. uses a single photo to generate an avatar that can speak any language, offer realistic expressions and movement, and read any text. This paper covers the many, many use cases.
https://opencv.org/blog/google-vlogger-generative-ai/
and
https://enriccorona.github.io/vlogger/
The 3/10/24 N.Y. Times article about A.I. trained to offer genetics and cell biology insight is fantastic. The article captures the possibility of complex data analysis combined with an LLM to provide new or unthought-of relationships and ideas. "[C]omputers crunched the data on their own, creating a model of all the cells based on their similarity to each other in a vast, multidimensional space. When the machines were done, they had learned an astonishing amount. They could classify a cell they had never seen before as one of over 1,000 different types."
A.I. art of the week
"Schematic of an external robotic suit designed to allow a Vietnamese dragon chicken to sort mangos with laser beams and various arms to probe the mangos for ripeness"
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1i8Z_JWSNmfEUMEZopEepihqvUiV4SyAS/view?usp=sharing
Clean hands and sharp minds,
Adam
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