Week of April 24, 2023
I may have a nostalgia bias, but memories from my 1980s childhood yield surprisingly broad conversations with my kids. Sometimes the topics are weighty - like explaining Raegan-era HIV policies and the politics of AIDS activism (after our family saw a production of Tony Kushner's Angels In America last weekend). And sometimes, you find yourself explaining why "Wang Chung" is both a noun and a verb.
and
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Everybody_Have_Fun_Tonight
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Fourteen-day hospitalizations and wastewater concentrations are lower as compared to last week.
The N.Y. Times updated COVID Tracker is based on CDC-gathered hospital data as a surrogate and lagging indicator.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/us/covid-cases.html
Wastewater monitoring is more of a LEADING indicator.
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The CDC updated COVID vaccinee recommendations last week:
- Individuals at least 65 (who received a bivalent booster at least four months ago) are eligible for a second dose.
- Immunocompromised individuals (organ or stem cell transplant recipients, people with advanced or untreated HIV infection, people undergoing cancer treatment, and people taking certain medications that weaken the immune system) who received a bivalent booster at least two months ago are now eligible to get a second dose. These individuals may receive additional doses at intervals decided by their doctors.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2023/04/19/fda-second-bivalent-booster/
The pandemic has spurned a large volume of research across numerous disciplines thanks to large populations of patients in big data sets. A recent social psychology publication explored how self-concern and trust in political leadership impact vaccine hesitancy. As you might imagine, individuals with low concern for COVID AND low trust in the government (a state the authors label distrustful complacency) have the most vaccine hesitancy across numerous ethnic and religious groups. The idea is that attempting to raise concern and improve trust in political leadership can improve vaccine hesitancy irrespective of ethnicity or other demographics.
https://compass.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/spc3.12752
COVID is still more lethal than the flu. "In a large veteran population (from fall-winter 2022-2023), hospitalization for COVID-19 vs. seasonal influenza was associated with an increased risk of death. Though the difference in mortality rates between COVID-19 and influenza appears to have decreased since early in the pandemic, death rates from COVID were 6% in this study, compared to 3.7% for the flu. The increased risk of death was greater among unvaccinated individuals than those vaccinated or boosted— highlighting the importance of vaccination in reducing the risk of COVID-19 death."
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2803749
and
https://twitter.com/zalaly/status/1649756558547623936
Medical Trends and Technology
March 16th marked the 156 anniversary of the Lancet publishing Joseph Lister's original article on the theory of antisepsis (bacteria cause infection, and killing bacteria proactively (by washing hands and surgical equipment) saves lives).
https://twitter.com/FriendsofGRI/status/1636246671809036289
I strongly recommend Lindsey Fitzharris's book on this topic, one of the best medical history books I have encountered.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/33931044-the-butchering-art
Geneticist Max Stemmnitz compiled a detailed thread highlighting his research on transmissible facial cancers in Tasmanian Devils. When the animals bite each other, they spread cancer cells. The cancer cells evade the immune system resulting in facial tumors that are, eventually, lethal. Interestingly, these cancers are evolving, making it hard to protect this endangered species.
https://twitter.com/DevilsAdvoMax/status/1649130300570492929
background
https://www.tcg.vet.cam.ac.uk/about/DFTD
Science article
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abq6453
Infographics
A blog post from my favorite infographics team covered A.I.'s failure to generate chemical structures and the chemistry of hay fever.
https://compoundchem.substack.com/i/115918128/ai-chemical-structure-horrors
Things I learned this week
Painting cows with white Zebra stripes cut the number of biting flies irritating the cow, thus improving the cows' feeding and health. My takeaway fact - it took less than 5 minutes to paint a cow.
Giovanni Boccaccio was an Italian writer (1313-1375) and contemporary of Dante (of Inferno fame) and Petrarch (of Adam went to his house in France last summer fame). In Boccaccio's most famous book, the Decameron (1353), he described a utopian land of abundance - including "a giant mountain made of parmesan cheese inhabited by people who spent all day making macaroni and ravioli and rolling them down the mountain for the other inhabitants to eat." If nothing else, it is interesting how his writing reflects a society under pressure from the plague and the changes of the early Renaissance in 14th-century Europe. Of course, 700 years later, a mountain of parm with rolling pasta still sounds terrific.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giovanni_Boccaccio
and
https://twitter.com/WeirdMedieval/status/1649050047068401666
and
https://www.peoplesworld.org/article/writing-at-a-time-of-plague-boccaccio-dante-petrarca-chaucer/
Living with A.I.
A vision of a post-app world thanks to A.I. plugins and LLMs
https://twitter.com/BrianRoemmele/status/1649107585591832576
Hello Jarvis. See what happens when you mix ChatGPT4 with A.R. glasses.
https://twitter.com/bryanhpchiang/status/1648374543696941056?s=20
Here is a well-written blog on the rapidly changing field of A.I.
https://news.theaiexchange.com/
A.I. art of the week
I have been playing with the Bing Image generator (powered by Dall-E) this weekend. I am pleased to present my A.I. art series, "Ancient Art with Modern Things."
"woman driving tesla and drinking coffee in the art style of Black-figure pottery painting."
"two people playing pickleball Egyptian hieroglyphic style."
"ancient cave art style of a man juggling penguins"
Clean hands and sharp minds,
Adam
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