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Nicholas A. Christakis Profile picture
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19 Oct, 4 tweets, 2 min read
Discoveries are (amazingly enough) still being made in human anatomy. Here, we have new salivary glands: nytimes.com/2020/10/19/hea… Fine reporting by @KatherineJWu
Here we have a discovery from 2013 in the human knee:
Here we have lymphatic vessels in the brain, from 2015:
When I was in medical school (1984-89), I was taught that the human parathyroid gland was the last discovery in human anatomy (in 1880, after having first been described in the rhinoceros in 1852; en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parathyro…), and that the field of gross anatomy was officially dead.

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More from @NAChristakis

Nicholas A. Christakis Profile picture
16 Oct
Here is the current, baroque, racial classification system used by the University of California.

universityofcalifornia.edu/sites/default/…
The arbitrariness of these categories -- including the assignment of people from Djibouti, Sudan, and Somalia to the 'white' category -- should make all involved feel shamed that we have come to this.
And the university imposes a racial hierarchy too! Students can (rightly) indicate that they belong to more than one category, but then: "A student’s primary race/ethnicity is determined by the left-most column in the table above of all the categories selected."
Read 5 tweets
Nicholas A. Christakis Profile picture
15 Oct
A key to controlling the spread of SARS-CoV-2 is decreasing social mixing, eg, by bans on gatherings. But what about elections? Let’s talk about whether the 2020 primaries changed the course of the COVID19 pandemic and what this might mean for general election on November 3. 1/
Many people are asking if in-person voting is sensible in the middle of a pandemic. COVID19, like any serious outbreak of a contagious disease, can place the virtues of public health and civic engagement into direct conflict. 2/
But we find that the voting that took place in the primaries in the Spring of 2020 had no discernible impact on the course of the COVID19 epidemic in the USA, *at the county level*, as we describe in this essay at @fivethirtyeight: fivethirtyeight.com/features/votin… 3/
Read 25 tweets
Nicholas A. Christakis Profile picture
12 Oct
Extremely sobering new analysis via my colleagues @lhsummers & @Cutler_econ in @JAMA_current concludes that SARS-CoV-2 is a "$16 Trillion Virus" ja.ma/3diC0U9 1/
The economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic is huge:
1) $200,000 per family; or
2) 90% of a year’s GDP; or
3) 4 times the output loss of the Great Recession; or
4) 2 times the cost of all wars since 9/11; or
5) roughly the cost of climate change in the next 50 years. 2/
About half the 16 trillion dollar [sic] economic impact of COVID is lost GDP, and the other half is the various health consequences. 3/
Read 4 tweets
Nicholas A. Christakis Profile picture
11 Oct
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/
What is required to stop the spread of a pathogen like SARS-CoV-2 is achieving some kind of (minimum) threshold level of response sufficient to achieve a deflection in the trajectory of the epidemic, to bring it under control. 2/
A combination of “contact reduction” interventions (eg, school closures, gathering bans) and “transmission reduction” interventions (eg, handwashing, masking) is required. These are “non-pharmaceutical interventions” (NPI), in contrast to things like medicines and vaccines. 3/
Read 14 tweets
Nicholas A. Christakis Profile picture
2 Oct
POTUS is now reported to have COVID symptoms, which, combined with his other baseline risk factors, is concerning. cnn.com/2020/10/02/pol… Most likely, he will recover, but the medical path is not assured and the political implications are substantial.
POTUS is confirmed to have fever and cough, consistent with *lower* respiratory infection. If hospitalized, this will indicate even greater severity. The coming week will be very indicative of likely path he will take through this serious viral illness.
If he is hospitalized in the coming days (and not simply and truly out of an abundance of caution), POTUS will be facing a roughly 1 in 6 chance of death from COVID19.

If he is intubated, the risk will be higher still.

People to whom he spread the disease may also get sick. 3/
Read 80 tweets
Nicholas A. Christakis Profile picture
2 Oct
This video, from old work of ours, shows how a respiratory virus spreads across social ties, inexorably, and it illustrates the sort of time course we can expect to occur in a social group like the (mask-less) staff around POTUS. We will hear soon of more cases. 1/
One of the reasons politicians and celebrities contract diseases early in an epidemic, as discussed in #APOLLOSARROW, is precisely that they are often central in social networks, and have many interactions. It's not just that we hear about such people because of their fame. 2/
During past pandemics, including the 1890 and 1918 pandemics, many world leaders contracted infections, as discussed in #APOLLOSARROW (amazon.com/Apollos-Arrow-…). We are seeing this again in 2020, with Johnson, Bolsonaro, and Trump. 3/
Read 6 tweets

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