Who influenced you most on the #coronavirus pandemic? My list.
1. @balajis pierced my bubble when he started posting about the virus back in January, when most Silicon Valley ppl knew little & few imagined what it could become. He was prescient
2. @trvrb quickly started appearing in my @Twitter feed. After over a year with no posts, he started posting on Jan 11th 2020 and never stopped. His work with strains opened my eyes to uncontrolled community spread.
These early voices woke me up. After them, I started discovering others that would help me understand the pandemic.
4. One of the most interesting ones is Donald McNeill, a NYT reporter who just won an award for his reporting. He has a tendency to tell the truth even when he's not supposed to, which is something I appreciate in a journalist.
7. @michaelmina_lab from Harvard broke the status quo when he explained to the world how rapid testing could change everything. It still can, but governments haven't caught up. If they had, we wouldn't be here.
8. @Bob_Wachter has written a staggering 220 chronicles. They have brought light and reason in a comforting daily ritual, especially meaningful to me since he works at my go-to hospital, UCSF, and he's an amazing human I've had the chance to zoom-host.
9. @ASlavitt did something similar, but on the political health arena, given his experience in the Obama admin and healthcare.gov. Crucial, because policies determine deaths.
10. @yaneerbaryam has kept screaming from the rooftops the importance and feasibility of suppressing the virus. That passion comes from his ethics, his personal loss due to the pandemic, and from the fact that he wants to do what's right, publicly and privately.
11. @jeremyphoward doesn't just sit and talk. When the pandemic exploded, he searched where he could have an impact, found that masks could be a game-changer, and spearheaded an evidence review that proved they could, changing the global conversation preprints.org/manuscript/202…
One of the few awe-inspiring things I witnessed during the pandemic is how, when the need emerges, ppl can raise to challenge & collaborate w/ strangers to make the world a better place. I met @jeremyphoward in a group that sprung up to fight the pandemic, & met many others there
12. Some of the most active actors behind the scene include @ericries , @roybahat , @mishachellam , @peterschwartz2 and many many others. They weren't as much in the public eye, but people like them moved behind the scenes to make actual things happen.
13. But the group that means the most to me is those like me who came from nowhere and everywhere and decided to help me create the best articles we ever could. People like @Dr_Carl_Juneau , who started translating the Hammer and the Dance and with whom I ended up writing papers
Or like @thismattbell and @the1andonlyggee, who supported all our articles massively, among a group of dozens of volunteers.
Do you have stories like this one of the pandemic, where you got together with a group of strangers that suddenly felt like family?
14. In the polar opposite, there's all the people who I never met but had a huge impact in the global conversation. People like @DrAnthonyF for guiding the US, @c_drosten & Merkel for Germany, Tegnell, @LondonBreed for closing SF when everybody thought it was ridiculous,
or @GiuseppeConteIT for closing Italy down, the 1st democracy to do so; Taiwan, South Korea and Taiwan for showing us how it's done...
15. Then there are the inspiring characters like @GeoRebekah
She was in charge of reporting #coronavirus data in Florida.
She was told to tweak the data.
She said no.
She was fired.
She built what I call the "FU dashboard", publishing the true data from outside the admin
I'll continue tomorrow. I'm missing dozens.
Who influenced you the most during the pandemic?
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Moscow is one of the weirdest capitals:
• Biggest European city
• Extremely cold
• Little farmland
• To Russia's extreme west
• Not on a coast or main river
How did it create the biggest country on Earth?
It involves horse archers, human harvesting & tiny animals 🧵
The first shocking fact is that Russia is so far north it's at the edge of arable land. How can you create a capital with so little food? Why not in the middle of the most fertile area on Earth?
This far north is extremely cold
Moscow is the 3rd coldest capital in the world and by far the biggest: with 20M ppl, its metro population is 8x bigger than the 2nd biggest cold capital, Stockholm!
This map tells you how a seemingly innocent difference, like wheat vs rice eating, can have dramatic political, economic, and cultural ramifications:
🧵
The areas that harvest wheat vs rice are different. Why?
Because of climate
Rice needs heat and lots of water. Ideally, flooding the fields to also kill weeds. Rice dies with frost.
Wheat resists it well, prefers cooler temperatures, but dies when it's flooded
Did you know the West's trade deficits to China are not recent, but started 2000 years ago? This is the story of how silk, porcelain, tea, opium, and silver have determined the history of the world 🧵
The Romans already complained about deficits to China! Mainly because of silk
Back then the Chinese already preferred manufacturing and selling products than consuming foreign products. Chronicler Solinus ~200 AD: The Chinese "prefer only to sell their products, but do not like to buy our goods."
Why did 🇮🇱Israel strike 🇮🇷Iran now, and not months or years ago or in the future?
A unique combination of a dozen factors converged to make the moment unique for 🇮🇱Israel: 🧵 1. No Hamas to its southwest 2. No Hezbollah to its north 3. No Assad threat to the northeast
4...
4. No more Syrian army to attack 🇮🇱Israel's planes: As the new forces of HTS took over Syria, Israel bombed all the existing Syrian military. No more fighter jets or surface-to-air missiles to threaten 🇮🇱Israel
5. Ability to fly over Syria to refuel
This is critical, because 🇮🇷Iran is ~600-1000 miles away from 🇮🇱Israel, so 1200-2000 miles round trip
The range of Israel’s stealth F35 is only about 1,350 mi
To operate inside 🇮🇷Iran, 🇮🇱Israel needed refueling over Syria
1. From Feb 2025 to Jun 2025, it increased its amount of enriched uranium by 50% 2. It now had 400kg of highly enriched uranium, enough for 9-10 bombs 3. This is 60% enriched uranium. Fuel only requires 5% enrichment.
4... 🧵
4. It's easy to go from 60% to 90% (weapons grade), it only takes weeks 5. The only country on Earth with such enriched uranium and without a bomb is 🇮🇷Iran 6. The IAEA (nuclear watchdog) found 3 secret nuclear sites
7. When 🇮🇷Iran didn't respond to this accusation, the IAEA censured it 8. 🇮🇷Iran responded to the censoring by saying it would open a 3rd enrichment site in a secret spot
Now that the 🇺🇸US has bombed 3 of 🇮🇷Iran's nuclear sites, where will the war go from here?
It depends on 🇮🇱Israel: 🧵
🇮🇷Iran never wanted the war, and its forces are being decimated. Its ability to send missiles to 🇮🇱Israel is being degraded every day. If it could sign a ceasefire while saving face, it would
Meanwhile, 🇮🇱Israel has kept striking Iran non stop. Its daily airstrikes didn't go down substantially in the first few days. Its ability to keep striking 🇮🇷Iran remains unabated