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Joshua Weitz Profile picture
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28 Aug, 13 tweets, 8 min read
Striking that titans of industry, civic leaders & educators at the top of their game serve as Regents of the @BORUSG but it appears not one has had the courage to publicly call for vaccine mandates and indoor mask mandates (as risk demands).

usg.edu/regents/members

a 🧵
W. Allen Gudenrath - @MorganStanley
Erin Hames - @heritageprep_
Samuel D. Holmes - @CBRE
Bárbara Rivera Holmes - @ChamberAlbany
C. Thomas Hopkins, Jr., MD - @orthogeorgia
James M. Hull - hullpg.com
Cade Joiner - shredxcorporation.com
...
C. Everett Kennedy, III - bhhskennedyrealty.com
Rachel B. Little - @Boehringer
Lowery Houston May
Jose R. Perez
Neil L. Pruitt, Jr. - @PruittHealth
Sarah-Elizabeth Langford Reed - @fivepointsdev
Harold Reynolds - @banksouth
Sachin Shailendra - sgcontractinginc.com
T. Dallas Smith - @TDSandCo
Kessel D. Stelling, Jr - @synovus
Don L. Waters - savannahchamber.com/membership/mem…
Philip A. Wilheit, Sr. - wilheit.com & @supply_one
The reality is that the vast majority of these Regents may indeed view their position through the lens of a calling, stewardship, and service. Yet such service is not fealty, it is meant to support the people and mission associated with 26 member institutions.
The @BORUSG has already been warned of the dangers of politicization for system-wide accreditation.

ajc.com/education/agen…
So how else should the 300,000+ students and tens of thousands of staff and faculty interpret the continued failure of @BORUSG and Acting Chancellor Teresa MacCartney to enforce their own policies:

usg.edu/policymanual/s…
If this is not political, then it appears that these leaders willfully misunderstand the rationale for vaccine mandates in dense live-learn environments.

(but no, their failure to act is almost certainly political)
At present, 800+ institutions of higher education have imposed vaccination requirements on campus

chronicle.com/blogs/live-cor…
The @BORUSG should do the same. Failure to do so represents a choice that will almost certainly increase the risk of transmission, infection, and disease (including severe disease). Evidence is already available that cases are increasing.
One example: @universityofga's Dawgcheck is now >4% positive via surveillance (and doubled in past 2 weeks). By contrast, @GeorgiaTech averaged <1% last year via surveillance testing - and has also seen early case increases this year.

healthcenter.uga.edu/covid-19-healt…
The use of false dichotomies as wedges to block action represents a failure to imagine our shared goal:

To build campuses with thriving education and research communities that thrive precisely because we have taken steps to protect the health and safety of our communities.
In the absence of action-taking in the midst of a public health emergency, it raises the question of why current @BORUSG Regents think that their leadership merits the confidence and trust of the students, staff, faculty, and taxpayers they are supposed to serve.

/🧵

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More from @joshuasweitz

Joshua Weitz Profile picture
30 Aug
Unfortunately @GovKemp thinks we are not sharp enough to understand how America actually works. Instead, he would like us to believe that there is some imaginary version of America in which a singular level of personal choice rules all. That's malarkey.

🧵
In fact, in America (you know, the real America, with actual laws and rules, and people from many different walks of life who care about their neighbors and communities), children and young adults have to get vaccinated to go to school.
And in Georgia (you know, the real Georgia, even despite efforts to undermine science-driven efforts to minimize impacts of a public health emergency), then no, it's not your personal choice whether to get certain vaccines to go to college.
Read 10 tweets
Joshua Weitz Profile picture
7 Mar
I welcome a more nuanced assessment, but @GaDPH Jan. suspension of an Elbert County provider for vaccinating teachers sent a clear message: local authorities must follow the will of @GovKemp, even as top-down control slows local decision making.

Short 🧵

dph.georgia.gov/press-releases…
The suspension was recently relaxed, see @AJC:

ajc.com/education/ga-s…
But, what is the incentive to move faster to help a local community from an informed, public health perspective when @GADPH will penalize/suspend a center:

dph.georgia.gov/document/docum…
Read 5 tweets
Joshua Weitz Profile picture
17 Feb
Am concerned that implicit use of uninformed priors has severely limited pandemic responses:

(i) Inaction is favored over action.

(ii) Information void is soon filled by misinformation.

From masks to immunity to vaccines; let's not keep making the same class of mistake. 🧵
Ex 1: No evidence of being airborne, despite this being a respiratory illness.

Just because airborne spread wasn't fully vetted does not mean it wasn't likely. Mask use delays are a consequence of remaining 'uninformed' about routes despite many examples (choir/etc.).
Ex 2: No evidence of protection from reinfection, despite the nearly universal absence of reinfections.

Without looking to SARS-1/MERS, then proactive steps to leverage and expand sero testing and interventions were missed (including surveys for missed infections).
Read 8 tweets
Joshua Weitz Profile picture
15 Feb
Hard to reconcile aspired branding with institutional values expressed through budgets, see Governor proposal that "the Department of Public Health would receive $7 million less in total state funds" when comparing FY22 to FY21 (see @GaBudget analysis)

gbpi.org/overview-of-ge…
For thoughtful analysis of this issue (and many others), see @AmberSchmidtke Daily Digest, in particular, the concern on @GaDPH funding from Jan 20:

amberschmidtkephd.substack.com/p/the-daily-di… Image
Via @AmberSchmidtke

"Instead, the Commissioner’s presentation indicated that the state’s pandemic response in its entirety would be funded solely by federal dollars. It signals that this pandemic is not Georgia’s problem and public health more broadly is not Georgia’s problem."
Read 4 tweets
Joshua Weitz Profile picture
1 Feb
Announcing: brief report for Fall 2020 intervention surveillance @GeorgiaTech represents the work of many, released to help inform, guide, and improve efforts to use viral testing as part of integrative mitigation.

A thread follows...

medrxiv.org/content/10.110…
Key messages:

Viral testing can mitigate outbreaks, when used at scale.

Expect outbreaks to be heterogeneous (both 'good' and 'bad' news with respect to control).

Passive testing is not enough, we recommend using infectious data to reinforce testing/control.

...
Key metapoint: models helped inform the scale and frequency of testing, but the point of intervention was not to score theoretical points (e.g., post-hoc matching of models and data don't help stop cases here and now).

...
Read 22 tweets
Joshua Weitz Profile picture
16 Jul 20
This thread is on #Covid19, heterogeneity, herd immunity, and the roots of SIR models; why mathematical choices we often take for granted have profound effects on interpreting unfolding epidemics.

@arxiv manuscript: arxiv.org/abs/2005.04704
Code: github.com/aapeterson/pow…

1/n
Key take-away: our mathematical analysis of the *joint* dynamics of heterogeneity and infection reveals that the force of infection can reduce to a simple form: I x S x S (or variants thereof) rather than I x S.
This nonlinear change in epidemic models may have significant consequences to long-term predictions and lead to super-slowing down of epidemics (including reduced herd immunity thresholds).
Read 23 tweets

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