Nicholas A. Christakis
@NAChristakis
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Sterling Professor of Social and Natural Science at Yale. Physician. Author of Apollo's Arrow; Blueprint; and Connected. Luckily wed @ErikaChristakis
Vermont, USA
Joined August 2012
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You spend nine years writing a book in the evenings, and you just hope that it says something new and that, when you release it into the wild, people will like it. My thanks to
@BillGates
for his very kind words about
#BLUEPRINTbook
via
@littlebrown
@lbsparkbooks
What if we really are all in this together? In this fascinating book,
@NAChristakis
explains why and how humans evolved to work together:
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Let’s talk about what happens if you get COVID19 and recover. Are you immune to the disease? How long does the immunity last? And what does that mean for your life and for the public health and economy of our society? 1/
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On the importance of good typesetting and layout.
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Such idiocy. If Bill Gates walks into a bar with 89 people, the average bar customer becomes a billionaire.
The average American family would get a $4,000 raise under the President’s tax cut plan. So how could any member of Congress be against it?
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If we want to understand how powerful an opponent SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) is, let’s take a look what has been required to stop it in China. The Chinese government has essentially used a social nuclear weapon in its efforts. Let’s talk about this, to understand what US is facing. 1/
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A nurse carrying a terrific sign at the protest against police brutality in Seattle today. "Nurses deal with drugged and combative patients on a daily basis, but I never had to kill a single one to get them under control." via
@DAChristakis
who is on the scene.
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These are not the remarks, let alone the arguments, of a serious person. This is the way someone who has never been challenged to defend her views with facts and reason speaks. This is someone who thinks she is winning the battle of ideas simply by articulating her desires.…
Reporter grills Columbia student after she demands the university help feed protestors occupying Hamilton Hall:
"It seems like you're saying, 'we want to be revolutionaries, we want to take over this building, now would you please bring us some food'."
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Converting gyms to wards: preparing for a pandemic.
1918 Influenza pandemic at
@IowaStateU
2020 Coronavirus pandemic at
@Yale
-- today.
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Yes, this was my experience when I spoke to
@joerogan
too (twice). And I have the same photo from the same place.
Yes, I will die on this hill. You cannot buy authenticity and love. The reason people *love* Joe Rogan is because the conversations he has on his podcast reflect the conversations that people have in real life.
For starters, the format. It's long and searching and not set up
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Teachers who don't want others to know what they are teaching students..... shouldn't be teaching students. There is no good reason for secrecy in education that I can think of.
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Flu pandemics recur reliably but unpredictably every decade or so, and their extent and intensity varies. With COVID19, we may be in midst of a once-every-50-years event, perhaps similar to 1957 pandemic, but not as bad as the 1918 pandemic. Let’s talk about the 1957 pandemic. 1/
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I want to go on record with obvious point: large gatherings of people facilitate spread of contagious disease. The *reason* for the gathering (whether street protests for a cause I support, or GOP convention, or a sporting event) is not material to the spread of the virus. 1/
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I stand with
@JonHaidt
against this sort of mandate. He is resigning from Society for Personality & Social Psychology given new requirement that everybody presenting research explain how their work advances "equity, inclusion, and anti-racism."
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Let’s talk about the fact that both the attack rate and the death rate among the young is indeed very low with COVID19, unlike most prior pandemics. And let’s speculate about some of the biological reasons. 1/
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I’ve been teaching, talking, and tweeting about this for years, but it’s worth repeating: the ongoing existence of real slavery in the world, today, doesn’t get the attention it deserves. Slavery (in various forms) is not just in the past. It should concern us all.
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If you target a Jewish-owned business because you are upset with Israeli actions, you are an anti-Semite.
WATCH: terrorists in Philadelphia shriek outside a Jewish restaurant, “Goldie, Goldie you can’t hide, we charge you with genocide”
Every Democrat in Pennsylvania except
#PASEN
@SenFettermanPA
has been siding with these freaks
(62/xx)
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"Harvard online course catalog has a search box. Type in “decolonize.” That word is in the titles of 7 courses and the descriptions of 18 more. “Oppression” and “liberation” are in the descriptions of more than 80 courses. “Social justice” is in >100."
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Let’s talk about the “Swiss cheese model” of combatting the COVID-19 pandemic. This is a classic conceptualization of how to cope with hazards, and it powerfully illustrates several features of what we are facing in the pandemic.
#SwissCheeseModel
(Image h/t
@MackayIM
) 1/
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The University of Chicago, as usual, striking the right balance. Worth reading in full. It is exactly right.
President Alivisatos’ Note on the Encampment (April 29, 2024)
Dear Members of the University Community, Just a few hours ago, a group of students established an…
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So dystopian and authoritarian as to defy belief: China will judge each of its 1.3 billion people based on their social behavior & adopt a lifelong points program that assigns personalized ratings by 2021. Via
@business
@clayroutledge
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There is so much violence, absurdity, and inhumanity in this thread, up and down.
As noted in the thread, people are now blocking the entrance to the *hospital* where the victims of this shooting are being treated.
We rightly decry police violence. We must also decry this.
Update: The gunman walked up on the deputies and opened fire without warning or provocation.
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I think many people inside academia do not quite realize some of the ways the debacle involving Harvard and its president (and also the broader culture within many elite schools) is perceived by many people outside academia.
Here (verbatim) is what one successful and smart donor…
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This is making the rounds and, well, see if it makes you laugh. Social media in a nutshell.
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I can remember the specific times and places in my life that I have seen incredible buskers like these — so amazing and wonderful is the experience. We are fortunate for the musicians among us.
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Teaching kids to be suspicious of kids of other races is illiberal, is against MLK’s vision, borders on child abuse
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People who are dying of COVID19 will need first-rate palliative (hospice) care. This is going to be especially the case for people who are denied ventilators or who are taken off of them (i.e., who are “extubated”). Let’s talk about this painful and poignant fact. 1/
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Honestly, how can this be seen as anything but an abject failure of government? Other rich, democratic nations have been able to mass produce and widely distribute tests. Here we are 10 month into a pandemic, and this is where we are?
#ApollosArrow
This is the line for Covid testing at Dodger Stadium. Today. November 11.
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If universities had not previously released statements on everything from BLM to climate change to SCOTUS rulings, and if they had instead been abiding the Kalven Report, then they would not be in position of having to explain why they didn't denounce Hamas, which is a…
BREAKING
@eJPhil
: "Wexner Foundation cuts ties with Harvard over ‘dismal failure’ to condemn Hamas’ terrorist attacks"
"Wexner, which has sent more than 250 Israeli civil servants to study, say Harvard's ‘core values’ no longer align w the institution"
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If you have had COVID19 and no longer have symptoms, the existing test for viral RNA will tell you nothing. We need a different kind of test, called a “serological" test, that measures the *antibodies* that your own body makes against the virus. 6/
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Exactly. Textbook approach. You reach herd immunity through vaccination, not mortality.
South Korea followed the textbook principles of epidemiology. Kept deaths 40 times lower all the way till 75% of population fully vaccinated. This is success.
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But here’s the thing: once you’re immune to COVID19, you can go about your business. Immune people can move about & help restore our economy. As number of such people rises, it will also confer "herd immunity" to our population, by blocking viral transmission, helping us all! 31/
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How is this happening?!
I have seen “trainings” of freshmen at colleges where students are sorted into identify groups according to race, sexuality, etc for >12 years, in an (absurd and illiberal) effort to “educate” them. Who could have imagined it might eventually lead to this
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Can we have a moment where someone says the emperor has no clothes? How will such students actually practice law? I just don’t understand.
NEW: The student editors of the Columbia Law Review have issued a statement urging the law school to cancel exams in the wake of the police operation that cleared the university's encampment, saying the "violence" has left them "irrevocably shaken" and "unable to focus."🧵
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Exactly the sort of public policy needed to help counteract the epidemic.
Ireland is giving every citizen paid sick leave to help stop the spread of the coronavirus
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Hi, Hospice Doc here.
Do NOT inject or consume ANY disinfectants in an attempt to kill COVID19.
Hi, ER Doc here.
Do NOT inject or consume ANY disinfectants in an attempt to kill COVID19.
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Old recycled telephone cords. Telephone Sheep by Jean Luc Cornec.
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Universities remain strikingly incurious about where all the anti-semitism (as distinct from opposition to Israeli policy) has come from? How and why have students come to think and act this way? Might the pedagogy of faculty and policies of administrators have anything to do…
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The inventiveness of Hong Kong protestors never ceases to amaze me.
First time ever
#HongKongProtesters
have used a leaf blower to tackle tear gas. Clearly a new tactic unlocked.
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World class trolling before it was a thing. By the ever-witty Brits. Of course.
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How is this not deeply discrediting to the ACLU, both in terms of mission creep and in terms of venal conflict of interest? It helped draft a newspaper article at the heart of Depp v Heard case in exchange for $3.5m donation.
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There has been a lot of discussion of the Swedish approach to coping with the
#COVID19
pandemic, and of whether their strategy of more voluntary restrictions and a more rapid approach to reaching ‘herd immunity’ would work. Let’s talk about the results so far. 1/
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“All of us together are confronting the shocking reality that a group of Yale students has declared the center of Yale off-limits to those who do not share their political views – particularly since their intent and effect is to rid parts of Yale of Zionist Jews, among others,”…
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Unattractiveness is probably the leading axis along which there is discrimination in our society, but it’s the least studied. Sexual advances are more likely to be treated as harassment by coworkers (below) and complaints of pain less likely to be taken seriously by doctors.
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I admire
@joerogan
. His conversational style & his reach are phenomenal. But I think his advice that young people not get vaccinated misses the mark. Young people are at low risk of death no matter what. COVID19 increases their risk by ~30%. Why not avoid this with a safe shot?
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The Chinese have had the most COVID19 cases so far (80,859), but the number of new cases has dropped from 100's per day a month ago to ~46 per day now — in a country of 1.4B people. This is an astonishing achievement from a public health point of view. 2/
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Yes this is so very true. Not just now but always. Someone mops up the blood in the trauma bay. And it’s not the doctors or nurses. And this work is hugely important especially now.
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What Hamas Did to the Intersectional Left.
“A politician with an essentialist view of womanhood is complicit in the deaths of innocents, but a terrorist indiscriminately murdering people at a music festival must be understood in context.”
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This crazy phenomenon where every place thinks that they will be different than the prior places brought low by the virus is itself a dangerous aspect of this pandemic.
I fear for our country epidemiologically, economically, and politically.
Texas Doctor: I got 10 calls yesterday for young people who will die if they don’t get ICU support, but I only have three beds left.
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How is the race or ethnicity of a patient a legitimate criterion for the allocation of scarce clinical resources (like drugs or hospital beds) by a government entity in 2021 in the USA? And how could this even be constitutional?
NY State Department of Health warns they don't have enough Paxlovid or Monoclonal Antibody Treatment and white people need not apply.
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I have some thoughts on this fine statement by
@Yale
President Peter Salovey regarding desire by some students to impose "ideological litmus test" for access to a shared Yale space.
Salovey said: “Those protestors asked individuals who wished to pass through or enter their…
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I’m from an inter-racial family, with many adoptions. Kendi’s arguments are wrong; his ideology is dangerous. I know history of forcible removal of kids throughout world; that was & is evil. But Kendi’s extremism & slogans have blinded him to distinctions. He should be ashamed.
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I just heard that, in Alabama, the ICUs are full and they’ve implemented “crisis standards of care,” namely triage, due to COVID-19. So sad and avoidable.
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I think about this often on this medium of ours.
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Probably as many as 40% of humans will be exposed to COVID19 over the next 2-3 years, judging from past pandemics. Not everyone will actually get it. Only some (probably <1.0%) of those who get it will die. The rest will recover. And, almost all of them will be immune. 2/
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There’s a new COVID19 variant that has people worried. Let’s talk about “omicron.” This assessment must necessarily be very preliminary, since we are in very early days (partly thanks to South Africa generously sounding the alarm!). 1/
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A powerful illustration of the dictum that the answer to speech we do not like is more speech.
An anonymous group has funded and constructed a giant screen with loudspeakers outside the
@UCLA
Pro-Hamas Encampments showing footage of the October 7 Massacre on loop.
Bravo to these geniuses.
#StandWithIsrael
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But we don’t know how long this immunity lasts. For some diseases (like polio or chickenpox), you are basically immune for the rest of your life. But for many others, that’s not the case. This is a complicated area in immunology. 3/
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The racism expressed by Dr. Aruna Khilanani in a Grand Rounds at Yale, just released by
@bariweiss
&
@kittypurrzog
, is deeply worrisome & counter-productive. Of course, as an invitee, she is free to speak on campus. But her views must be soundly rejected.
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Chinese scientists created tests for SARS-CoV-2 itself by early January: . FWIW, this article notes the USA’s lag in testing even back then. (Incidentally, I envy protective equipment the Chinese scientists have in photo, but that’s for another thread.) 5/
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We are lucky that SARS-CoV-2 is very “immunogenic,” which means that our immune system finds the virus very irritating and can mount a vigorous immune response against it. Damn virus. 13/
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People are asking whether patients with COVID19 who don’t have symptoms, e.g. cough or even just fever, can transmit the disease to others. The answer seems to be yes. Alas, this is not good news, but we can still take rational steps. Let’s talk about this.
#QuarantineLoophole
1/
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Interesting anecdote about twitter outrage involving a case study of a controversial medical journal article. Twitter analysis reveals 30,000 tweets expressing outrage about the article. Journal website analysis reveals only 300 people even viewed it.
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A play in two acts in my twitter feed today. Universities are shifting resources from faculty to administrative staff of all kinds.
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Schools have moved online. Jokes circulate: Parents complain to upstairs neighbors: "Could you please have your kids stop jumping? It is too noisy and our kids are taking an online math class now.” The neighbors reply: "Oh sorry! But my kids are taking a sports class now.” 12/
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The most amazing thing I have seen on twitter all year.
I know, sat morning is screaming out for a video of a school bus arriving in Mongolia - so here you go - keep watching....
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“Become a hero. Stay at home.” 😀
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Here is a problem I have with so many of the statements by university presidents, including the recent one from Harvard: How and why did Harvard (and Penn, Cornell, etc.) become such an easy place for such anti-semitism to be expressed in the first place?
These university…
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Let's talk about school closures re COVID-19. It's a tough topic, scientifically and pragmatically. It's hard to estimate the benefits precisely. And closing schools can have costs, such as health care workers having to stay home, kids missing subsidized lunches, etc. 1/
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Developing serological tests should actually be a national and international priority. For many reasons. 14/
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Government official: Coronavirus vaccine trial starts Monday.
If you’re not amazed by the ingenuity and competence of our scientists, you’ve not been paying attention. And if you’ve been decrying expertise as “elitist,” you’ve had a death wish.
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People who lie like this should go to jail, no?
26 years later, two men were exonerated for a rape and kidnapping after the victim admits the incident "never happened."
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What kind of person, in the grip of what sort of mind-altering ideology, is capable of this?
NYC - a female at Baruch College gives the middle finger to a billboard truck featuring kidnapped Israeli children being held hostage in Gaza.
The other student films her and they walk off, giggling together.
Recognize them? DM us.
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Photos like these will be in history books about COVID19, just like we look back now on 1918. Fine shot.
What a photo.
In Manhattan last night. 📸 by Hiroko Masuike
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At this point, have more people in Trump’s entourage been convicted of crimes or infected with SARS-CoV-2?
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USA has opportunity to avoid mistakes with lack of RNA tests for acute phase of COVID19. We can make rapid progress and put into place distribution and insurance coverage. Test should be free (we need legislation), since we all benefit from immunity & knowing who is immune. 15/
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I am mystified by all these organizations making announcements about the (very real) humanitarian crisis in Gaza, with no mention of the over 200 hostages being held there, many of them children abducted in the most unspeakable way. How hard is it to add mention of them?
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We must regulate speech or we won’t be free? It’s astonishing to see such a misguided and dangerous argument being made by such an important figure.
“We must regulate our words and our thoughts—or else our society won’t be as free as it was!” *standing ovation with everyone looking out for who’s got the balls to sit down first*
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Deeply impressive knowledge of acoustics and powerful effect engineered by ancient civilizations.
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I suspect videos and postures like this will turn off many Americans to the very cause the activists are supporting, and may harm the civilians and hostages in Gaza by strengthening the grip of Hamas. It will surely embolden R-wing critics of academia who are often not acting in…
Reporter grills Columbia student after she demands the university help feed protestors occupying Hamilton Hall:
"It seems like you're saying, 'we want to be revolutionaries, we want to take over this building, now would you please bring us some food'."
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United States Senators are cowards. And their failure to condemn invocations to violence surrounding an election are un-American.
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$43,000,000 was spent in three years with very little research or anything else to show for it. 130 students could have had a totally free BU education (plus room/board) for four years instead . Or 10 faculty chairs could have been endowed in perpetuity. What a waste of money.
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This man
@jordanbpeterson
is preternaturally calm and composed in the face of a hostile interviewer who also had simply not thought adequately about her ideas and approach. Facts and reason are powerful allies.
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It's just incredible how far
@sciam
-- a periodical I admired -- has fallen from its mission to provide accurate, clear, and vivid coverage of science.
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People with large followings who deliberately ignore science (for it was known since early February that COVID19 was serious & that it would be pandemic) or are irresponsibly incurious deserve to be first mocked and then ignored. What an utter loss of credibility.
@TheDailyShow
Hannity. Rush. Dobbs. Ingraham. Pirro. Nunes. Tammy. Geraldo. Doocy. Hegseth. Schlapp. Siegel. Watters. Dr. Drew. Henry. Ainsley. Gaetz. Inhofe. Pence. Kudlow. Conway. Trump.
Today, we salute the Heroes of the Pandumbic.
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People who are known to be immune based on such serological tests for SARS-CoV-2 are no longer infectious (they basically cannot spread the virus), and they can return to work, school, etc. This is going to be especially valuable for health care workers. 30/
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To sort this out, we need different kind of test than what many are discussing. Most ppl are discussing rRT-PCR assays that detect whether patients actually have coronavirus RNA. But that only works for people who are *currently* infected since it’s detecting SARS-CoV-2 itself 4/
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Incidentally, the way we will make a vaccine is to artificially stimulate our immunity by giving just (noninfectious!) parts of the virus to people, so that they create antibodies and then fight off any real infection, if later exposed. A vaccine is a simulated infection. 12/
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Three Wuhan Institute of Virology researchers became sick enough in November 2019 that they sought hospital care, according to US intelligence. This is complicated and tenuous, but it’s consistent with claim COVID19 virus may have escaped from the lab.
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Efforts to ban the sale of this book by
@AbigailShrier
appear to be having the effect of.... making it
#45
on the list of Amazon bestselling books....
Do not ever ban or burn books. Ever. It's not a good look.
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An observation from Theodore Dalrymple so relevant to so many segments of our society these days — where people go along with things they don’t believe and which are anyway false.
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Many of the largest outbreaks of SARS-CoV-2 in the USA so far have been in certain kinds of workplaces, including nursing homes and prisons, both of which make sense. But there are also many outbreaks in *meatpacking* plants. Why this occupational venue? Let’s talk about this. 1/
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SARS-CoV-2 virions remained in intestinal tissue 6 months after nasopharyngeal clearance, which suggests capacity for latent infection and clinical impact.
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I know this may seem self interested, but I actually think that
@twitter
could help the effort to combat COVID19 by setting up a small group at the company to verify a few dozen (or hundred?) scientists who are sending out reliable information.
Hey,
@jack
: Is there a reason why esteemed epidemiologists and contagion experts and virologists like
@NAChristakis
,
@mlipsitch
,
@trvrb
, and
@florian_krammer
aren't verified, while verified kooks are still spreading misinformation? They're indispensable voices right now. Thanks.
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If you think that keeping students from reading the Odyssey or the Iliad is a good idea, you are a fool.
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Americans should begin social distancing (no handshaking, eliminate non-essential travel and meetings). The reason is not so much to get practice or to reduce personal risk, as to reduce the intensity of the COVID-19 epidemic and spare health care system. 1/
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