zeynep tufekci
@zeynep
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Complex systems, wicked problems. Society, technology, science and more. @Princeton professor. @NYTimes columnist. My newsletter @insight https://t.co/6Ky01N9JwA
Joined August 2009
Wow. A nursing home in Baltimore, oldest African-American one, did not lose *a single person* to COVID because as soon as they heard Trump say cases would soon go to zero, they realized it was going to be a catastrophe, stopped visits and masked up.
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I wrote a piece for a mainstream outlet (not the NYT), mentioning the sexual assault allegations against Roy Moore. Some nervous lawyer edited it to "sexual misconduct." I said, okay, pull my piece. They reverted back to "sexual assault." Writers, don't let them lawyer you down.
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Stop me if you heard this one. Dr. Wu realized that the pneumonic plague was airborne and could spread person-to-person and said people should wear masks. French doctor mocked this, insinuated Asian doctors couldn't be right, refused to wear a mask—and got infected and died.
Today’s Google doodle celebrates Wu Lien-teh, an epidemiologist who pioneered the use of face masks to control an epidemic over a century before the advent of COVID-19.
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More good news. Pfizer has the six month update. *Zero* hospitalizations among the vaccinated vs. 32 among the placebo group (n=46,307). Also real life data from South Africa, where B.1.351 is dominant: zero cases of COVID among the vaccinated vs. nine in the placebo (n=800).
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A study from Korea showing why indoor dining is unsafe and why airborne transmission matters. Case B infected case A from 6.5m (~21 feet!) away in *just five minutes*, and case C from 4.8m (15 feet!). Footage shows no interaction—and only those in line of air flow got infected.
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They found six new cases in Wuhan so they’re planning to test eleven million people over the next ten days. Neither number is a typo.
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Can't put my finger on what makes this "Tennessee man" a non-terrorist despite planning mass killings of people based on their religion.🤔
Tennessee man who plotted New York mosque attack won’t face terrorism charges, statutes focus on foreign extremists
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I post this regularly, and many express surprise. This is the current childhood immunization schedule. Many childhood vaccines are three+ doses, sometimes a booster. This is one reason why, unlike earlier centuries, we don't have cemeteries full of children. We've forgotten.
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Good morning in sad, jealous tweets. All schools in Taiwan have been open since February. They did not listen to China or WHO in January and immediately masked up and shut down travel. They also traced the hell out of their outbreaks. They were practically done by February.
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Don't share gory pics. People have loved ones watching. Don't put panicked people on endless loop on TV. That's literally goal of terrorism.
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CNN article on how to safely fly claims that 90% vaccine efficacy means that🙄 for every million who fly, we could have 100,000 infections. NO NO NO. That’s not what that number means. Also, this didn’t even happen when millions flew unvaccinated. So how could it make sense now?
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Facebook's own researchers found that “64% of all extremist group joins are due to our recommendation tools" and that “our recommendation systems grow the problem.” Facebook VP for policy Joel Kaplan (known for throwing a party for Kavanaugh after confirmation) nixed any action.
New from @JeffHorwitz & me: Facebook spent years studying the its role in polarization, according to sources and internal documents. One internal slide laid out the issue like so. ”Our algorithms exploit the human brain's attraction to divisiveness.”
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I don’t understand the “this will not matter” talk among the chattering classes. Nobody has a crystal ball. Who knows? But one way of ensuring nothing matters is giving up having values to defend. Cynicism isn’t a sign of depth or savvy, it’s resignation masquerading as politics.
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Trump was incompetent at his brand of authoritarianism, and he lost. But this isn't a triumph: the Democrats lost almost everything else. Make no mistake, about what's coming: The next Trumpist, in 2024, will be talented, competent and not easy to beat.
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❗️Did you know that *study after study* finds most people don't seem to transmit COVID at all? That a small percent is responsible for almost all infections? That R is not that informative? My new piece on why this may be key to controlling the pandemic.
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Tens of millions of AstraZeneca vaccines that won't be approved here soon enough are languishing in US depots. Our supply already exceeds the number of Americans. Less than 1% of Africa has been vaccinated. President Biden: Let our surplus vaccines go—now.
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YouTube may well be operating as a giant radicalizing engine through its recommendation algorithm—leading people down a rabbit hole of misinformation, hoaxes and incendiary content. My latest for the New York Times on one of the most overlooked issues.
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Enough with the beach-scolding! It's not scientifically-sound and it's counterproductive. It's a virus—not a moral agent geared to smite people who dare enjoy themselves. Six months in, we *know* most risk is indoors. More knowledge, less baseless outrage.
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The WHO just updated its page on how COVID-19 transmits. Those few sentences on aerosols represent one of the most crucial scientific advances of the pandemic. My NYT piece on the century-long history of the error, the year of delay—and what it means now.
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Can we please have a talk with the photo editors? ENOUGH WITH THE BEACH PICTURES ruining articles.😡 Beaches are one of the least risky environments. Indoor bars and restaurants. House parties. Indoor gatherings where unmasked people talk. Not beaches.
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Every piece of data from real-life shows the vaccines work very, very well— yes, even against Delta. Just checked US vaccine breakthrough hospitalizations. It's 6,587 people among the ~163,000,000 vaccinated: or 0.004%. Three fourths are elderly— as happens with other diseases.
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Hong Kong protests are in their fifth month despite an escalating crackdown. How? One surprising answer: the fate of China's Uyghurs. Many talked to me about it. They watched and learned. They've decided that they "may as well go down fighting." My latest.
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Google Assistant making calls pretending to be human not only without disclosing that it's a bot, but adding "ummm" and "aaah" to deceive the human on the other end with the room cheering it. horrifying. Silicon Valley is ethically lost, rudderless and has not learned a thing.
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Really, really need a large-scale analysis of use (and non-use) of mug-shots for victims and perpetrators.
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Facebook's defense that Cambridge Analytica harvesting of FB user data from millions is not technically a "breach" is a more profound & damning statement of what's wrong with Facebook's business model than a "breach".
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So the news is out. I'm going to be a regular columnist with the New York Times. I started blogging about a decade ago simply because I had things to say, and thought it would be good to have more academic voices in the public sphere. It's been a journey, for sure.
BIG: Zeynep Tufekci (@zeynep) Joins The New York Times as an Opinion Columnist."Many lives may have been saved because Zeynep Tufekci performed her specialty — analyzing the connection between evidence and policy.".
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My office was right by the encampment, and I cannot understand how it interferes with exams. It’s that little red circle. Not a single notable the protest in the history of modern protest would meet the requirements of “acceptable” protest from many past free speech advocates.
One cannot disrupt the ability of one's fellow students to take exams or graduate with impunity. It's common courtesy and common sense. Such imposition of costs on one's fellows is not free expression.
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Besides the obvious: Thinking how friends in Sri Lanka had told me how they begged Twitter & Facebook to act on accounts instigating ethnic cleansing but often couldn't even get any response and what a coincidence everyone acts one day after Democrats get a legislative trifecta.
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Not an article I wanted to write. The deadly H5N1 bird flu is spreading widely, including to mammals. For the first time, it's now likely spreading mammal-to-mammal, among minks which are exceptionally well-suited conduits to humans. We must act now.
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*taps mic*. Some personal news, as they say. I've been granted tenure and appointed a professor at Columbia University, and will stay in NYC to become the inaugral director of the @Craignewmark Center for Ethics and Security in Journalism, dedicated to a healthier public sphere.
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NEWS: Cochrane says lead author of a mask review misrepresented its findings, apologizes for summary statement that was imprecise and says they will update it. They say their review did NOT find masks don't work. Plus, I examine the actual evidence.
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Interrupting your doomscrolling with more good news. As most had expected, the vaccines continue to work well against the new variants. Our problem remains producing enough of these amazing vaccines and getting them out there in arm. They are so good that we have a lot of buffer.
The neutralization teams have a message: ."Moderna COVID-19 Vaccine Retains Neutralizing Activity Against Emerging Variants First Identified in the U.K. and the Republic of South Africa" . Sorry to those who I've been ignoring yin this regard for weeks lol
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Wait, what? Woodward had Trump on tape that the coronavirus was airborne BACK IN FEBRUARY (seems he learned this from Xi) and sat on it, presumably to release his book closer to the election? As we've been saying, the US crisis is elite failure *across* the political spectrum.
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Yes, Trump, has been impeached again—but it's neither him nor that mob that stormed the Capitol that poses the greatest danger now. It's the 148 GOP legislators who voted to reject the election results—just as the president and the mob demanded. New piece.
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We urgently need to focus on ventilation. Six months into a respiratory pandemic, we're still not given sensible and practical guidance against short-range aerosol—airborne—transmission of COVID. I wrote about the science & what it means we should do now.
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I am, sadly, going to retweet an earlier thread. Media: please don’t put the killer’s face on loop, on front pages, on your app notifications. Don’t sensationally publicize manifestos. Focus on victims and structural causes. Don’t help inspire the next killer.
Time for that sad reminder. After Robin Williams' suicide, sensational media coverage that violated the CDC guidelines resulted in a 10 PERCENT increase in suicides. Same effect applies to mass shootings. Newsrooms, please be considerate in your coverage.
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I do not want to read a single profile of the shooter. Enough. Nothing will allow us to predict which of the many, many troubled young man will turn to a mass shooter. Zero public interest in the individual details. It’s the access to the deadly gun that’s the key. That’s it.
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Phobia??? Bluetooth is a well-known security risk—including the possibility of escalating and executing code—well, malware—on the phone. Strongly suggest talking to cybersecurity experts—or even a Dr. Google consultation—before running such stories.
NEW: Kamala Harris has long felt that Bluetooth headphones are a security risk. So, she insists on using wired ones, 3 fmr campaign aides told @rubycramer and me. That Bluetooth phobia remains (if you look closely, you'll see the clump of wires in hand).
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!!! Fixed it for you @AP. Let me know if you need an introduction to the 21st century. http://t.co/tgI27xGWhg.
Amal Clooney, actor's wife, representing Al-Jazeera journalist accused in Egypt of ties to extremists http://t.co/i6nQg0xPg3.
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I wrote a short, practical guide on why you should prepare for COVID-19 and how. Forget the doomsday talk and the "prepper" subculture with all its snake oil. You should prepare *now because it's the best thing you can do to help everyone else. Here's how:.
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The CDC mask guidance switched too fast without enough explanation and overlooks key sociological factors for indoor mask mandates—especially to protect workers and the immunocompromised. Better to have announced benchmarks—and kept it up just a bit more.
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72% of the unvaccinated said they'd quit after a mandate. In real life, few do. Studies show older people are vulnerable to misinformation and Fox News, and yet almost all are vaccinated. What explains this? My piece of the sociology of the unvaccinated.
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Excellent point from @jljcolorado. “Droplets on surfaces is very convenient for people in power - all of the responsibility is on the individual. OTOH, if you admit it is airborne, institutions, governments and companies have to do something.”
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1.If you don't like viral misinfo, fake news & Russian ads—you're just uncomfortable with "ideas". 2.This is what getting played looks like.
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It should be unthinkable that more people might die of COVID *after* we have vaccines that could save them. Yet, now with even more transmissible variants and little vaccine equity, that's what may happen. The emergency is great and billions are at risk.
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Also note. The third one is positive. The line may be the faint but it’s there. It means he has high enough viral load, signaling becoming infectious. Next morning is even higher—darker line . Use rapid tests *right before* meeting. That’s their purpose.
A demo of how fast you can turn positive:. Yesterday morning, yesterday lunchtime, yesterday evening, this morning. Do LFTs *just* before meeting up.
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About the the risk of COVID from the protests. Please note that, to date, there are very few known cases of outdoor transmission at all, but crowding 100 people into an indoors space overnight? Yes, that's how you get a spike. Jails and detention, not protesting, is the big risk.
All of us were basically on our way home. They took us to a large garage with at least 100 other people they arrested that night. I say arrested, but I’m not actually sure. Talking to others, no one was given a reason why they were stopped, no one was read Miranda rights etc 6/.
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Okay then. That’s the big story. Taibbi says, seemingly with access to all internal docs, the earlier big claim that the government had directly intervened (“stepping in”) to suppress a story before the election has no evidence. Also seems some nonconsensual nudity was removed.
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A man yelled anti-Muslim slurs and murdered two people. Reverse the killer/slur scenario and there would be *nothing else* on TV for days.
A man named Jeremy Joseph Christian accused of yelling anti-Muslim slurs, stabbing 3 and killing 2 on Portland train
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This is amazing. December 2020. As late as this April, people—including Dr. Fauci—thought 18 months was probably too optimistic a timeline for vaccines. And we’d have been thrilled with ones much less efficacious than these. And multiple ones are in the pipeline. It is a triumph.
Breaking News: The FDA authorized Pfizer’s coronavirus vaccine for emergency use, clearing the way for millions of highly vulnerable Americans to get it within days.
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Preprint from Israel finds that people who have breakthrough COVID *after* two-doses of the vaccines, are no more likely to report Long Covid symptoms compared with people who have not been infected at all. So they found that vaccination brings Long Covid risk back to baseline.
We revised the paper and not only are #covid19 cases who got 2 #vaccine doses reporting much less #longcovid symptoms than unvaccinated-they're reporting no more than uninfected people- suggesting vaccination brings these symptoms back to baseline
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I want to remind people what this means. Julian Assange knowingly brought untold grief to a murder victim's family so as to hide his real sources for the stolen material. Assange wasn't unsure. He fully knew Rich wasn't his source. This is Alex Jones a la Sandy Hooks—but worse.
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People ask me "how many boosters are you willing to take?" like it's a gotcha. How about three in a pandemic, and once a year as booster?. Hello, we're the species whose existence has been defined by a struggle against infectious diseases—and now free boosters are the problem?🙄.
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@elonmusk So Vern is the diver who was among the first there, dug up the maps, brought in the other divers, figured out where the boys were and convinced authorities. Look beyond your irritation with his irritation and listen for a sec why he might be irritated, ok?
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There are the details. And there is this: Mark Zuckerberg, alone, gets to set key rules—with significant consequences—for one of the most important elections in recent history. That should not be lost in the dust of who these changes will hurt or benefit.
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There's time to be alarmed. It's such a time. The president's blatant, if incompetent, attempts to steal the election are happening in a period of entrenched of minority rule, and are met mostly with silence or approval by Republican leaders. New piece:.
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Are we going to have a year of this nonsense? (Sent apparently to 22+ million people, thanks @reuters). Nobody is claiming strong protection in just a few days post-vaccination, plus even 95% efficacy means occasional positives. Will they all become pointless, global headlines?
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How is this not a direct violation of the first amendment? An arrest for a t-shirt? Where is the camous snowflakes killed free speech crowd on this?.
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It's now a talking point but it is *absolutely false* that vaccines don't help lower infection and transmission rates—they do both, just not 100%. Of course, vaccinated people also have much better outcomes, if ever infected. Plus, vaccination clobbers MIS-C rates in kids.
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I wrote about why the downturn of storytelling in #GameofThrones also explains why it's hard for us to deal with Facebook, YouTube, AI, etc. The show was a rare beast: a sociological narrative in a world dominated by psychological/individualized ones.
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I’m thrilled to announce that I’ll be joining Columbia University to help launch the Craig Newmark Center for Journalism Ethics and Security. This was a pre-pandemic plan we had decided to postpone for a year.
Dr. Zeynep Tufekci to Join Columbia Journalism School’s Craig Newmark Center for Journalism Ethics and Security
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Incredible New Zealand study on a mystery transmission in a quarantine hotel. For a while, a garbage can was suspected—one of the very, very few known suspected cases of fomite transmission. Turns out. it's aerosols. What a Kuhnian year this has been.
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Reminder that brave Wuhan doctors knew of human-to-human transmission in December, and put everything on the line to try to warn us. They were censored and punished. Some died. Unconscionably, Chinese authorities suppressed the info and WHO parroted their line into January.
Preliminary investigations conducted by the Chinese authorities have found no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission of the novel #coronavirus (2019-nCoV) identified in #Wuhan, #China🇨🇳.
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I wrote about the Chinese scientist who kick-started it all by publishing the SARS-CoV-2 sequence in an open repository on January 10th—without waiting for authorization. Two days later, Moderna had the vaccine. Just ten months later, we have a vaccine.
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Folks, “Lord of the Flies” is fiction made up by a weird guy. All evidence on how people, including young boys, actually behave in desperate situations is the opposite. Shipwrecked people don’t turn on each other. Nor will most of the Burning Man folks, if history is any guide.
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"Ten scientific reasons in support of airborne transmission of SARS-CoV-2." New paper in @TheLancet.by @trishgreenhalgh, @kprather88, @Rschooley, @jljcolorado, @dfisman and me! We argue the case that it's not just that SARS-CoV-2 is airborne, but that it's predominantly airborne.
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Let me say: too many worry about what AI—as if some independent entity—will do to us. Too few people worry what *power* will do *with* AI.
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This may be hard to hear but let me say it while things are still early. Maybe we'll get lucky with seasonality, immunity and antivirals. But a year or more of hardship is not implausible. "Flatten the curve" is about the immediate crisis. A difficult year will still be ahead.
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Read this story and weep. This, after masks, is the biggest failure—both scientific and communication—of the pandemic in Western nations: the airborne nature of the pathogen. CDC changed this guidance last October. Japan and many other nations had it right on *February* of 2020.
Six feet and 15 minutes became coronavirus gospel. The NFL had data that showed otherwise: The virus could be spread in under 15 minutes and from over six feet.
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Yep. Wikipedia is a genuine huge barrier to women in public—most people’s first impression of someone is a Wikipedia page. Women are edited harshly, not contributed to, overlooked or deleted. You can help out by editing, adding and pushing back as much as possible.
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‼️ Very, very good news. Dexamethasone, a cheap corticosteroid, greatly reduced death rates for people on respiratory support—35% for ventilator, 20% for O2—in a RANDOMIZED TRIAL. The FIRST drug to improve survival. This is why we try to delay the curve.
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And the number of spirals is always a Fibonacci number. Please relieve humanity as the master species, fractal cauliflower.
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Time for that sad reminder. After Robin Williams' suicide, sensational media coverage that violated the CDC guidelines resulted in a 10 PERCENT increase in suicides. Same effect applies to mass shootings. Newsrooms, please be considerate in your coverage.
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We wasted February and the failure wasn't just from the administration. Many in media, too, fueled the complacency. Why? Because we don't know how to think about complex systems—something we must learn to get through this. I explain how. New piece from me.
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Hello Hong Kong! (Landed straight into the airport protest!🤷♀️)
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Hong Kong is dense with a crowded subway. It has a lot of travel from China. And yet, no local cases for weeks now. No Lombardy-style lock down either. And, no, it's not the competent government. I wrote about how the people of Hong Kong saved themselves.
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‼️“Fewer than 1% of patients taking the drug needed to be hospitalized and no one died. In the comparison group, 7% were hospitalized and there were seven deaths.” So promising that they halted the trial early. Pfizer, like Merck, *must* allow cheap generics for LMIC. No excuses.
BREAKING: Pfizer says its experimental COVID-19 pill cut hospitalization and death by 90% and will seek authorization from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and international regulators.
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Listen up, folks. There's much good news. The end of this pandemic may be near. But a very harsh winter is upon us. Like other viruses, this one seems sharply seasonal. People need to rethink everything and *hunker down*, now. It's so close. Don't risk it.
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I couldn't care less about royal news. But don't dismiss Harry/Meghan brouhaha as mere celebrity tittle-tattle. Want to discuss Brexit? This is related. And they make a good case. It's not fluff. I wrote it up, straight, without the celebrity stuff.
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This happened only after it became clear he lost. For the record.
After years of an essentially open-mic policy, every @realDonaldTrump post in the last 24 hours has been labeled by @Facebook in some way, and @Twitter has labeled his last five tweets.
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University of Berkeley has banned outdoor exercise, including solitary outdoor exercise, in response to a COVID outbreak. I had read the article to make sure this was not a parody.
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New: My talk on why I fear ad-financed digital economy could lead us to surveillance authoritarianism, and how.
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Where was all this "deep-dive" before the election—even as these outlets spent so much time on trivia in Wikileaks hacks & other innuendo?
NYT deep-dive on several of Trump's many business conflicts is well worth a read.
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Folks, absolutely too early to conclude that Omicron is milder or more severe on average, or that vaccine efficacy will be preserved as is, or not—or even why exactly it's spreading. Just too early, and I would not pay any attention to conclusive sounding statements. Needs time.
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Web 1.0: It' all about information!.Web 2.0: Let's go social!.Web 3:0: Weaponized/monetized fraud; bots & trolls polluting the public sphere; organized attention manipulation ops; censorship via information glut, distraction and undermining credibility: Internet of Fake Things!
Data scientist finds 1.3 million faked comments in FCC docket. Someone used a bot & massive email list to create false impression of popular support for @AjitPaiFCC's plan to kill #NetNeutrality. The culprit will soon be revealed.
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Terrible developments in Hong Kong. Almost all the pro-democracy folks have been swept up in raids. Fate unclear.
EVERY HONG KONG POLITICIAN YOU HAVE HEARD OF ARE NOW BEING ARRESTED.
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@McFaul We don’t apply such collective guilt to Americans, despite the freedom to choose and protest we have for our government and its wrongdoings, unlike Russians who are blocked from information, let alone protest. Yet many do, at much risk. Let’s not declare victims uniformly guilty.
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The cat is out of the bag, folks! I knew this day would come, when I'd be outed.😁 And in a piece where I talk about sociological aspects of mask mandates, too. Cruel irony after more than a year of pandemic writing. (FWIW, Dr. for PhDs is NYT convention, not about me).
Today the @nytimes published a piece on a medical issue by someone named Zeynep Tufekci. The NYT refers to her as “Dr. Tufekci” and describes her as a professor. A reader might reasonably infer she is a physician and a professor of medicine. She is a sociologist.
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So, CDC is worried updating vaccines might "create an impression that we don’t have a very effective vaccination program". Having vaccines available only for a long-extinct strain when we could easily update them would surely not be the answer here to fixing that "impression".
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If it still needs saying: the VP debate must be held remotely. VP Pence can test negative for now but he was exposed. A plexiglass is no panacea to this. (If it has to be held in person, the minimum is both speakers are masked and no audience. But it should be remote.).
NEW: Stephen Miller has tested positive for COVID, per senior administration official. Adds Miller has been working remotely for last 5 days, testing negative every day through yesterday, and is in quarantine after a positive test today.
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And now they're allowing for distanced porch visits, the sanest way to make sure the elderly have human contact, something essential, during the pandemic. We would all be better off if Revered Derrick Dewitt ran the US pandemic response from day one.
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Huge deal. Some very eminent virologists, including Dr. Baric who worked with the lab in Wuhan, have published a statement that both zoonotic origin and lab accident are "viable" as origin. (Social media claims aren't scientific consensus, part zillion).
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Here’s the childhood immunization schedule that helps ensure we are not like those families I read about in history, where losing multiple children to childhood illnesses wasn’t uncommon. Many vaccines are three dose series with occasional later boosters. This is a gift.
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New: immunologists on why the new boosters are great for now and the future—even against Long Covid. Do we really need a booster, many said last year. Only ~30% of the US got one. More boostered Canada had 80% fewer deaths from Omicron. Let's not repeat.
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