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A Marm Kilpatrick Profile picture
@DiseaseEcology
Sep 20, 2020 • 8 tweets • 4 min read • Read on X
While the overall argument in thread by @j_g_allen has merit (air travel is less dangerous than article suggests), he is incorrect about incubation periods (see Fig from meta-analysis: medrxiv.org/content/10.110…). 6.7% of inc periods are >14d & 2.5% are 18+d.
Thus, none of the cases can be ruled out due to long incubation periods. All are quite plausible.
Similarly, @j_g_allen argues that being on cruise ship or hotel could have led to infection. Possibly, but need data on infection in those settings to assess. None was given.
Finally, the absence of reported cases on flights is not evidence that transmission is not occurring. Many (most?) case investigators in US don't attempt to identify detailed source of travel-related cases.
Clear @j_g_allen is taking some heat for publishing op-ed suggesting air travel was low risk (washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/…) due to 3 recent papers show evidence of in-flight transmission:
wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/26…
wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/26…
wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/26…
Strongest actual argument for safety of air travel is last article above: when masks are worn and precautions are taken risk is low. There were 6 asymptomatically infected passengers on that flight & they infected only one person who took her mask off while in bathroom.
(Was low transmission due to lower infectiousness of asymptomatically infected people? That's a topic for another thread, but here's a paper by @nataliexdean et al w/ some suggestive evidence: medrxiv.org/content/10.110…)
What is needed to quantitatively assess real risk of air travel is large scale study w/ 100s of flights (not 1 or 2). Flights to country that has strict 14d quarantine would be ideal so post-flight exposure is low. Pre-flight risk still a possible counfounder, of course, and ...
transmission from people you travel with is also key counfounder, as was clear from study of train transmission of COVID:

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More from @DiseaseEcology

A Marm Kilpatrick Profile picture
Oct 29, 2022
How to mislead in science: hide raw data in supp material (SM).
Just had a dept-wide reading group of a recent Science paper on latitudinal/temperature trends in predation pressure (10.1126/science.abc4916). Paper claims simple clean patterns (fig) but where are the data???
Panel A (L) in main text. Raw data & regional analysis in SM. Paper makes simplistic & general claim: predation increases w/ Temp. But data tell v different story. Instead of clear increase in Bait Consumption w/ Temp, pattern is absent in 2/4 region, strong in 1/4, weak in 1/4.
Same for Fig 2B. Fig in main text (L) shows clean pattern. Actual data (R) show that pattern is mostly just in 1 type of animal (solitary tunicates) while other taxa show opposite pattern (Enc Bryozoans) or no pattern at all (most other taxa).
Read 14 tweets
A Marm Kilpatrick Profile picture
Jun 23, 2022
COVID-19 vs Shark attack
There was a shark attack yesterday where I free dive frequently (abc7news.com/lovers-point-b…). A friend asked what's more dangerous, COVID-19 or swimming/free diving with sharks in the ocean?
Just for fun, here's a rough calculation.
tl;dr COVID-19 by a mile.
Chance of COVID-19 infection? Depends on many things: occupation, household size, behavior, exposure of household members etc. But in US roughly 60% of US has been exposed in last 2 years (webmd.com/lung/news/2022…). So crude estimate of yearly chance of infection 37%.
Chance of COVID-19 death given infection? Depends on age; for me, about 0.72%, pre-vaccination for the original SARS-CoV-2 variant.
So chance of infection & death ~1 in 375 pre-vaccination and 10-50x lower now (variant, vaccine doses, time since booster)
medrxiv.org/content/10.110… Image
Read 5 tweets
A Marm Kilpatrick Profile picture
May 2, 2022
Why would Amazon workers vote against union & why aren't union dues progressive like taxes (i.e. lowest for lowest income)?
I've read several stories (nytimes.com/2022/05/02/tec…) about workers at 2nd Staten Island plant voting strongly against union but none of the articles say why.
Union dues would be $5/week for full time employees (amazonlaborunion.org), so if earning $15/hr, this is 0.33 hrs/week or 0.8% of salary which seems pretty cheap, & is even less than some large unions (e.g. Teamsters = 2.5 hr/mo or ~0.55hr/wk).
If union negotiated a 1% increase in pay that'd pay for union dues. That seems like a pretty low bar for a goal & doesn't include negotiating for better working conditions, etc. What are other reasons not to unionize or is it simply b/c of known cost & unknown benefits?
Read 5 tweets
A Marm Kilpatrick Profile picture
Apr 19, 2022
Florida Manatees: doomed to extinction or actually doing pretty well?
A simple data analysis story.
Some of you may have seen this article in NYTimes 10d ago:
nytimes.com/2022/04/09/us/…
The article suggests Florida manatees are on their way out with quotes like this:
The perilous status of manatees is supported by claims like:
"In all of last year, 1,100 Florida manatees died, a record."
The article does acknowledge in some places manatees are doing better. But the overall tone is one of despair for a species on its way to extinction.
Read 15 tweets
A Marm Kilpatrick Profile picture
Feb 8, 2022
#epitwitter
Need help w/ UK seroprevalence data
I recall previously seeing estimates of for SARS-CoV-2 infection for UK, but now I can only find estimates for exposure to spike protein which is infection OR vaccination (fig from
ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulati…)
but...
I want seroprevalence for infection so need data on antibodies to nucleocapsid protein or other non-spike protein. Does this exist?
I also can't find info on the response rate for survey. This page has response rates, but they are old (from July 2020) & they are very low (<15%). What is current response rate for serosurvey? ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulati…
Read 4 tweets
A Marm Kilpatrick Profile picture
Feb 3, 2022
US COVID-19 deaths US >2000/day & continue to rise.
I can't help but wonder if focus on Omicron's mildness contributed to size of surge & deaths occurring now.
Difference in severity was small relative to higher infectiousness. Latter should have been singular focus of messaging.
Obviously it would have been far worse if omicron had been as severe as Delta. But focus on mildness of Omicron by scientists, media, government, CDC, etc. contributed to people being less safe than they should have & now thousands are dying/day & many more w/ long covid
Biggest failure, in my opinion, was lackluster efforts to roll out 3rd dose boosters, which played huge role in much smaller impact of Omicron on deaths in UK & elsewhere.
In US, many scientists argued against need for boosters, possibly b/c of global vaccine equity issues.
Read 7 tweets

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