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Nicholas A. Christakis Profile picture
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30 Oct, 4 tweets, 2 min read
Lies (and superstitions and conspiracy theories) are such an inexorable feature of plagues (for thousands of years, as I show in APOLLO'S ARROW) that one might even say that they are a part of what it means to be a plague. #ApollosArrowChat 1/
Just as pathogens spread from person to person during deadly epidemics like COVID19, lies follow right behind.

Lies are a squire to plague, one of the four horseman of the apocalypse. 2/
In Chapter 4 of APOLLO'S ARROW, "Grief, Fear, and Lies," I explain why this is so. One reason is that it is more consoling to us poor victims of a deadly contagion to imagine certain (false) explanations for our predicament than other (true) ones. 3/
And why @BillGates, who I admire, gets dragged into all these conspiracies, I have no idea! ;-) 4/

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More from @NAChristakis

Nicholas A. Christakis Profile picture
30 Oct
I am ashamed of how bad our great nation has done in combatting COVID19. When China locked down its country, on January 24, 2020, we should have used that time to better prepare. #ApollosArrowChat 1/
On January 24, 2020, China essentially put 930 million people under home confinement. Along with Chinese colleagues, we showed this in this @nature paper: nature.com/articles/s4158… Movement in the country stopped. 2/
In essence, China felt that SARS-CoV-2 was so powerful that it had to detonate a "social nuclear weapon," as I argue in #APOLLOSARROW (for some details, see this thread from March 9: ) 3/
Read 5 tweets
Nicholas A. Christakis Profile picture
30 Oct
Yes, I do think that COVID19 *might* be remembered differently, in part because of the superior (electronic, real-time) documentation of our predicament. #ApollosArrowChat 1/
And yet, the Black Death had quite an impact on collective memory, as I also discuss in APOLLO'S ARROW, deploying what was, for its day, cutting edge (artistic) communications. 2/
I also think we're now more aware of the periodicity of global pandemics. We understand that they recur every 10-20 years, and have *serious* recurrences every 50-100 years (though there is no reason a serious one could not recur sooner). This is in Chapter 8 of #APOLLOSARROW 3/
Read 4 tweets
Nicholas A. Christakis Profile picture
30 Oct
Yes, I think that major cities, including NYC, will *eventually* return to normal, albeit some time in 2024. #ApollosArrowChat 1/
While it is the case that people have *always* fled cities for the country during times of plague (e.g., famously including Isaac Newton washingtonpost.com/history/2020/0… via @washingtonpost), the appeal of cities is so great that people always returned. 2/
As I argue in #apollosarrow, I think that the COVID19 pandemic will temporarily reverse worldwide trends of globalization and urbanization, but the rationales for these trends are so compelling that we will return to the status ex ante in a few years. 3/
Read 4 tweets
Nicholas A. Christakis Profile picture
30 Oct
Various experiments of ours (e.g., pnas.org/content/108/48… via @PNASNews & nature.com/articles/ncomm… via @NatureComms ) and in a prior book (#BLUEPRINTbook), I discuss how the ability to cut and form ties affects our ability to cooperate. @ApollosArrowChat 1/
The ability to form groups is crucial to the human capacity to cooperate. But the SARS-CoV-2 virus exploits this very tendency to spread among us. Hence, we spread out to reduce contagion. Your question is a good one. 2/
As I argue in #ApollosArrow, 'the spread of germs is the price we pay for the spread of ideas,' which means that we evolved to live together to derive the benefits from living socially, but we thus also place ourselves at risk of contagious pathogens. 3/
Read 5 tweets
Nicholas A. Christakis Profile picture
25 Oct
Recently, I’ve come to think we are quite LUCKY, in fact, with COVID-19 – because, although it’s quite transmissible, it could indeed have been much deadlier. There's no reason it couldn’t have been more... Medieval.

Imagine if COVID-19 had been deadlier. Let's talk about it. 1/
Ten months into the pandemic, we know that COVID-19 has an R0 of about 2.5-3.0. That is quite infectious. That’s about twice as transmissible as the seasonal flu, but much less than smallpox or measles. jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/… 2/
We also know quite a bit about how deadly COVID-19 is. The infection fatality rate (IFR – fraction of infected people who die) is 0.5-0.8%; and the case fatality rate (CFR – fraction of people who come to medical attention who die) is about twice that. reader.elsevier.com/reader/sd/pii/… 3/
Read 20 tweets
Nicholas A. Christakis Profile picture
23 Oct
Some of the ideas and themes of my forthcoming book on the COVID-19 pandemic, APOLLO'S ARROW: THE PROFOUND AND ENDURING IMPACT OF CORONAVIRUS ON THE WAY WE LIVE, bit.ly/apollosarrow which is out on October 27 via @lbsparkbooks, have been sketched by a few essays I've done. 1/
On March 11, an argument in @washingtonpost about how the epidemic virus, while exploiting our social nature, would require the same social nature (including our capacity for cooperation and teaching) to combat it washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/… (see Chapter 6 of #APOLLOSARROW) 2/
On August 10, an essay in @TheEconomist on innate qualities of SARS-CoV-2 that make it a tricky virus to combat, including its ‘dispersion parameter’ that yields super-spreader events and its asymptomatic transmission economist.com/by-invitation/… (see Chapter 2 of #APOLLOSARROW) 3/
Read 6 tweets

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