anyways, -virus mutations are common mistakes, & are usually neutral-to-harmful; mutations actually improving virus infectiousness are extremely rare -get your flu shot -China probably isn’t deliberately keeping secrets; most respiratory infections just never get fully diagnosed
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-this isn’t a bioweapon or a conspiracy -vaccines for coronaviruses are absurdly hard to develop, so this wasn’t introduced by industry forces looking to make a buck. sit tf down, ye eager Mulders -wash your hands and stop touching your face constantly
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I made a nicer thread when I was less tired, which several very smart people have endorsed, so it must be decent: https://twitter.com/isabelott/status/1220027340606124033?s=21 …https://twitter.com/IsabelOtt/status/1220027340606124033 …
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also, young virus enthusiasts: please continuously interrogate your feelings. people are dying. this is going to be economically catastrophic for Wuhan in ways that will devastate already-vulnerable people. it’s bad. it’s not the end of the world, though. keep perspective.
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i say this as a reformed “virus enthusiast,” to be clear. don’t let your curiosity get in the way of your compassion or your realism, because people are listening and learning from the example you set.
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Okay, so let’s talk about this simulation. This was working off a virus “spilling over” from pig farms. Viruses that spill over from pigs are much more adapted to humans, due to molecular similarities between pigs + people, than 2019-nCoV seems to be. https://twitter.com/inteloperator/status/1220428469739446272?s=21 …https://twitter.com/IntelOperator/status/1220428469739446272 …
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Oh, also, this isn’t a snake virus. Here’s a pertinent joke, to be followed by a useful article: https://twitter.com/isabelott/status/1220089995647692803?s=21 …https://twitter.com/isabelott/status/1220089995647692803 …
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Here’s an informative article about why this isn’t a snake virus. Addressing this *now* is important, bc people tend to kill even tenuously suspected disease reservoirs en masse.https://www.wired.com/story/wuhan-coronavirus-snake-flu-theory/ …
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Since this is my 2019-nCoV catch-all thread: please don't share articles that quote Ian Lipkin, or quote him if you're a journalist. He + Columbia are *still* embroiled in a costly lawsuit that was filed against him bc he's a sexist creep.https://twitter.com/IsabelOtt/status/1219768461934628866 …
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Sustaining his claim to being an internationally respected virologist only increases the odds that Columbia will keep him on once this is over, and it'd be better for virology as a field if he was thoroughly shunned.
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Outside of just being a harasser, Lipkin's commentaries are overtly & irresponsibly fearmongering, like this quote in
@nytimes. It's not uncommon for people like him to inflate the size of the problem at hand, so that they can claim more public credit for "resolving" it.pic.twitter.com/HVHw44y62M
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Public health is a deeply collaborative effort. If any one person is going around discrediting the efforts of their colleagues and making the story big and shiny for the clicks, it should reflect poorly on them.
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Anyways, back to virus info. Here's a succinct summary of the current status of 2019-nCoV in the U.S., and updated travel advisories for Hubei Province. (
@HelenBranswell is a great follow for timely, responsible reporting on this outbreak.)https://twitter.com/HelenBranswell/status/1220821664965038080 …Prikaži ovu nit -
Additionally, a blog post from
@profvrr about why mutations in these viruses don’t inherently make them more dangerous. http://www.virology.ws/2020/01/23/a-lesson-from-sars-cov-for-2019-ncov/ …Prikaži ovu nit -
So I'm seeing a lot of concern about tweets like these, which make it sound like there were 465 brand new cases in the last 24 hours. Good news: that's not what's happening here. Here's why:pic.twitter.com/gSWpthm9S7
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1a) Specific diagnostics for nCoV-2019 were only developed last week, and are still being distributed. A lot of older samples, spanning the past month, are only now getting tested conclusively for nCoV-2019. This virus has been circulating since early December, at least.
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1b) Assuming that this virus has rapidly skyrocketed in spread is part of why some R0 estimates are so high.
@maiamajumder has a great thread/preprint on what exactly that means, and what we might reasonably expect:https://twitter.com/maiamajumder/status/1220501403057229824 …
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2a) People with moderate respiratory illness are going to the hospital more now, bc they're scared. Public health ppl generally assume that a large proportion of viral infections are minimally symptomatic, or not so severe that ppl will go to the hospital.https://twitter.com/xcyale/status/1220606798840975361 …
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2b) But people are on high alert for this new virus, so of course they're actively seeking medical care and detailed diagnosis; hospitals are on similarly high alert and running nCoV tests on a lot more respiratory infection patients than they were before.
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2c) So this means that a lot of cases of mild severity, which probably slipped through the cracks before, are being detected. This might be useful for comprehensive control measures with an ultimate goal of eradication.
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Anyways. That's my PSA on why the jump in numbers doesn't necessarily mean that things got drastically worse overnight.
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Unfortunate aside: there are increasingly credible rumors (ex below) that Chinese federal officials have been delaying/staggering data releases. That'd be really shitty of them, & I'd hoped it wasn't the case, but it's possible. This surge in cases might be the front end of that.pic.twitter.com/LHljvCRmpq
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There's a common U.S. tendency to assume that ~China is keeping secrets~, which is rooted in a sometimes difficult-to-parse combination of racism/sinophobia and reality. (The presumed malice is mostly racism, though, imo.) Hopefully we'll know more soon.
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okay, so there was a modeling paper with weird assumptions that is making the public panic rounds. I get into that a bit here: https://twitter.com/isabelott/status/1220954767956094976?s=21 …https://twitter.com/IsabelOtt/status/1220954767956094976 …
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and a smarter, nicer person unpacked + contextualized it a bit more effectively here: https://twitter.com/ferrisjabr/status/1220963553911271424?s=21 …https://twitter.com/ferrisjabr/status/1220963553911271424 …
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good morning! let’s hop right back in.
@JaneLytv has a quick run-through of some widespread viral myths here:https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/janelytvynenko/coronavirus-disinformation-spread …Prikaži ovu nit -
I made an intro thread, in case you don't know me, unpacking who exactly I am, what my background is, and why I'm doing this:https://twitter.com/IsabelOtt/status/1221090413001560065 …
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New update + summary thread by
@MRC_Outbreak, a team that’s been doing some of the most accurate and responsible modeling in this outbreak, imo. https://twitter.com/mrc_outbreak/status/1221032729971773440?s=21 …https://twitter.com/MRC_Outbreak/status/1221032729971773440 …
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Also, to paraphrase
@MarionKoopmans: the “x patients being tested!” headlines just mean that our public health systems are functioning as they should. Not really newsworthy.Prikaži ovu nit -
Samples from all U.S. suspect cases are still being tested at CDC, since widely deployable diagnostic tools are still in the development/approval process. So that’s delaying the rate at which suspected cases are confirmed, but not unacceptably for this stage, imo.
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