This one is about what I learned this year, a most challenging one for all of us 1/
For 10 years, I posted biomedical and science stuff mainly about genomics, digital medicine, #AI. As the pandemic became a reality in February, I shifted attention to it, almost exclusively 2/
I'd already been tweeting too much (aka twitterrhea, and sorry for that), but this led to more than doubling or even tripling the posts on any given day due to the outpouring of new information (ideal substrate for an info junkie) 3/
It became apparent that really bad, unthinkable things were happening. Like back in March when the medical community was left vulnerable (the war without ammo) in the care of sick #COVID patients medscape.com/viewarticle/92… 4/
Which now has accounts for well over 1400 lost souls in the US, @CTZebra And countless still sick w/ #LongCovid
Soon thereafter, the US pandemic took a horrific turn when Trump went blatantly anti-science and dismantled the CDC, sidelining the efforts of Tony Fauci, and bullying the FDA for emergency authorizations 6/
This culminated in the August "very historic breakthrough" press conference for convalescent plasma, for which there were no data to support.
It was time to go full activist and take on the FDA Commissioner for being complicit with this propaganda and stagecraft, and knowing we're headed to a pivotal vaccine approval decision medscape.com/viewarticle/93… 8/
The FDA work wasn't enough. It was important to get the Phase 3 vaccine trial protocols released to see the interim analyses, stopping rules, endpoints. And push to avoid shortcuts. A group of 60 of us signed onto the letter @ZekeEmanuel put together aboutblaw.com/TnB /11
So that's the main thing I've learned about twitter this year, a channel for activism at a time when it's desperately needed, when we can't (unfortunately) just stick to the science. Again, thanks for reading along. 14/
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A ladder. Off the chart again with 83,000 new confirmed infections the past 2 days. Years from now people will look back and think how is this possible in the USA. Bleak? 2/
It doesn't have to be. We know we could achieve marked suppression by a universal mask mandate and aggressive non-pharmacologic mitigation measures. That doesn't have to equate to the "L" word. But timing is critical now 3/
😷😷😷
In the next 4 months, 130,000 American lives could be saved by universal mask use, according to the new @IHME_UW forecast which gets us to >510,000 deaths by end February @NatureMedicinenature.com/articles/s4159…
As compared with the status now:
"Mask use has emerged as a contentious issue in the United States with only 49% of US residents reporting that they ‘always’ wear a mask in public as of 21 September 2020"
Almost the whole country is in the "Uncontrolled Spread" category covidexitstrategy.org 1/
The Upper Midwest and Sturgis, likely America's largest superspreader event
870 infections per million people in ND is an unprecedented peak in the US pandemic and around the world (2nd is SD/Czech Republic, currently 740) 2/