What Adam is Reading

Week of January 3, 2023

Happy New Year!?! I ended our family trip to New York with a sore throat on New Year's day. The "don't spread it to the kids" protocol (windows open, mask on, serial testing, and air filters on) now seems normal, but effectively isolating at home is an endless series of micro decisions and vigilance. Finding a still-operating rapid PCR testing location is a challenge - though a PCR result could more definitively rule out coronavirus. I am (surprised/sad/frustrated) that balancing the right amount of precaution and action is still tricky, despite three years of COVID.

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Reported case rates are not in sync with rising hospitalization and ICU data in the New York Times. I suspect we will see a more apparent post-holiday surge in cases, with further hospitalizations in the next 1-2 weeks.

Here is an animation depicting the possible spread of the XBB.1.5 variant across the U.S. in the coming weeks:

https://twitter.com/JPWeiland/status/1608962675920502785

N.Y. Times Tracker

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/us/covid-cases.html

Financial Times Data

https://ig.ft.com/coronavirus-chart/?areas=eur&areas=usa&areas=e92000001&areasRegional=usny&areasRegional=usnm&areasRegional=uspr&areasRegional=usaz&areasRegional=usfl&areasRegional=usnd&cumulative=0&logScale=0&per100K=1&startDate=2021-09-01&values=deaths

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The Omicron XBB.1.5 variant is nicknamed "The Kraken" (I am not making this up). It appears very contagious and is more likely to escape immunity conferred by non-bivalent vaccines and prior variant infection.

This variant emerged in N.Y. in October and has been rapidly spreading. XBB.1.5 is the cause of the rising COVID hospitalizations, especially amongst the under-vaccinated, immune-suppressed, and elderly. The bivalent vaccine, masking, and good ventilation offer the best protection. Paxlovid, with all its imperfections, reduces the risk of hospitalization, death, and long-COVID symptoms.

Here are calm, data-driven discussions I like:

Dr. Eric Topol

https://erictopol.substack.com/p/a-new-variant-alert

Dr. Peter Hoetz https://twitter.com/PeterHotez/status/1609183938055905281

Monoclonal antibodies are no longer effective, but antiviral medications are. Here is a 12/7/22 New England Journal of Medicine letter to the editor (meaning more recent, less peer-reviewed data) demonstrating that "remdesivir, molnupiravir, and nirmatrelvir are efficacious against both BQ.1.1 and XBB in vitro."

https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMc2214302

This Nature editorial on COVID in 2023 reflects some of my frustrations.

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-04476-9

Lastly, evolutionary biologist T Ryan Gregory offers a very well-written COVID 2022 Year in Review

https://twitter.com/TRyanGregory/status/1609221424048128002

Medical Trends and Technology

Smart fabrics and e-tattoos offer the potential for non-invasive biometric measurement, feedback, and device interaction. Here is a round-up of recent articles looking at wearable technologies that monitor glucose and electrolytes, measure muscle movement, and offer rudimentary human-machine interfaces. (I assume this tech will be the foundation of tools that allow us to commune with our A.I. overlords – see below.)

https://medicalfuturist.com/digital-tattoos-make-healthcare-more-invisible/

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2022/12/221202124835.htm

https://cen.acs.org/materials/electronic-materials/Graphene-device-monitors-blood-pressure/100/web/2022/06

Infographics

The Year in Chemistry!

https://www.compoundchem.com/2022/12/29/tyic2022/

It is about time we humans finally made up the prefix for 10^27 and 10^30 (ronna- and quetta-).

Things I learned this week - Passage of Time edition

Built into the side of a mountain in Norway, the Svalbard Global Seed Vault is an underground repository of "backup" plant seeds stored in preparation for ecological disasters. Next to the seed vault, Nabisco built an Oreo cookie vault containing the Oreo recipes and samples wrapped in mylar. I strongly recommend the video about building the vault.

https://www.foodandwine.com/news/oreo-doomsday-vault-norway

https://youtu.be/ufbzSZk1xhw

As part of this article, I discovered the Oreo YouTube channel, which rivals Steakumms for social media management. Nabisco offers an excellent example of how to co-opt end-of-world paranoia and conspiracy theories to sell cookies.

https://www.youtube.com/@Oreo

The Long Now Foundation is attempting to build projects that span "civilization-scale" (10,000-20,000) time frames. They are building a giant clock in a mountain in Texas. While it keeps time using a pendulum system, if a human comes and powers the chiming mechanism, the clock will play a unique combination of 10 bells, the tones designed by Brian Eno. While this all sounds a bit much, the pages detailing how to build large mechanical devices for 10,000 years of use are fascinating.

https://longnow.org/clock/

Topics from the newsletter through the "eyes" of our A.I. Overlords!

(What is this section? - https://openai.com/dall-e-2/)

"an oil painting of a man in a biohazard showing a robot the oreo cookie vault"

https://labs.openai.com/s/NwxP1GVG6UoolEG9mkX2mQbr

And, unsettling AI-generated text of the week:

https://twitter.com/TheProjectUnity/status/1609032861319065602

Clean hands and sharp minds,

Adam