Beautiful storytelling. (1) Do people know #TheLastOfUs isn't just about love and zombies? Some viral and many bacterial infections can lead to encephalitis. E patients are walking brain-dead. Happens often in hospitals.
Note masks on set: the SARS pandemic isn't over in Canada.
Rabies takes weeks to months to lead to encephalitis. Rapid onset would make outbreaks self-limiting. Long incubation times would allow a global zombie epidemic IF rabies acquired the immune evasion superpower of SARS-CoV-2 (Orf8).
@Neil_Druckmann Test & trace is easy for animal rabies due to bite/scratch marks. The vaccine works well during the acute phase.
But rabies is airborne; an immune evasive version with human-to-human tranmission would be unnoticed for months. This would be your real zombie world. #TheLastOfUsHBO
@Neil_Druckmann (2) Here the public policy problem gets interesting as we head for a high burden of neurodegenerative diseases (NDD). Like HAND in HIV-1, SARS-acquired neurocognitive disorder (SAND) comes in 3 flavors: asymptomatic, mild, dementia. frontiersin.org/articles/10.33…
@Neil_Druckmann Assume most who test SARS+ positive - or who don't test but likely were infected - now live with neurocognitive damage. Here 70% who met HAND criteria reported no symptoms. High-functioning individuals may compensate; low-functioning ones may never notice.
@Neil_Druckmann Unlike in this charming Canadian dreamscape, in the real world a virus, bacteria or fungus will self-eradicate unless the incubation is extended or acute phase mild or asymptomatic.
Reality is a lot scarier than any zombie movie, isn't it?
@Neil_Druckmann SARS pathogenesis in the peripheral and central nervous system follows the life cycle of viral replication in neurons and host response to NS damage. N symptoms and severe pathologies like encephalopathy, encephalitis and necrotizing hemorrhagic encephalopathy have been reported.
@Neil_Druckmann While media and policymakers gaslight the public into stopping masking, producers require masks on set, indoors as well as outdoors.
@Neil_Druckmann Kind people ask: there is no treatment for SARS-acquired neurocognitive decline (SAND). Nor even for HIV (HAND), a different virus, but same basic mechanism, after 40 years of research!
@Neil_Druckmann@RealCheckMarker made strong claims. Let me reality-check her via this Danish study of HIV/SARS coinfection: No higher mortality risk in PLH despite doubled risk of hospital acquired SARS infection and higher risk of severe outcome! ingentaconnect.com/content/wk/aid…
1. May do SARS-CoV-2 science threads when I find time. "While association between ABO blood group and infection is well known for many years, lower susceptibility of O blood group to coronaviruses had already been reported nearly 20 years ago for SARS-CoV" degruyter.com/document/doi/1…
2. Transplacental SARS-CoV-2 protein Orf8 binds to complement C1q to trigger fetal inflammation - Yes, as we've been saying for years. Orf8 makes SARS (CoV-1/-2) unique among coronaviruses. Let's infect all the kids so we are really, really sure that's bad embopress.org/doi/full/10.10…
3. SARS-CoV-2 can trigger a devastating, destructive placental pathology causing placental dysfunction and fetal hypoxia, yet stillbirth is rare. The fetal hypoxia is acute/subacute, apparent as reduced fetal movements. 20% of participants in this study(!) sciencedirect.com/science/articl…
1. The structural parallels of SARS-CoV-2 and HIV-1 were known already 20 years ago, from SARS-CoV-1. Yet COVID-19 policy and even most scientists ignore these parallels, failing to learn key lessons. Fundamentally, genetic recombination drives both pandemics—two typical articles
2. Don't worry about the specific article—there are hundreds more, and more relevant ones. The lesson here is we face syndemics, overlapping epidemics that cluster with inequity, not just distinct pandemics. All reinforce each other link.springer.com/article/10.118… frontiersin.org/journals/micro…
3. Background. There are literally thousands such articles; no one integrates them. That's why as political scientist, for years already, I've been arguing that only institutionalization can help with such complexity. We need a @UNAIDS for SARS-CoV, sorry
Is bamboo our best chance to sustain modern civilization and slow climate change? No one systematically studies its global potential in food, paper, energy, & construction yet. To build resilient economic and ecosystems, we need to grow bamboo where it is needed, incl Europe 👇☕️
1. It is no new idea to replace plastic, steel, concrete etc. with bamboo, just as these materials originally replaced timber, clay, and bamboo. When indigenous people in Taiwan move, they plant bamboo before all else, “because it does everything timber does and is much lighter.”
2. Every mountaintop here has its own name in the local - non written - language, to be found on no map. By force or virtue, indigenous people know how to sustain themselves and live within their ecological limit (“habitat”), unlike industrial civilization. Mixed bamboo forest 👇
1. Growing bamboo is our best chance to avert climate breakdown: the plants build soil, help biodiversity, avoid GHG emissions, provide food & construction material, sequester carbon 30 times (!) faster than mixed temperate forest. Yet stunningly, no one coordinates this work yet
2. After 40 years of climate science - first AGGG, now IPCC -, everyone feels they know climate. Yet experts only really know their own field. Generalists and practitioners can implement solutions but need experts to develop them. Bamboo as climate solution is entirely unexplored
3. Last time atmospheric carbon content was as high as today, 16 million years ago, Earth was >3°C warmer than today, the Arctic was ice free, and Iceland had a subtropical climate. People think they know what climate change means, but most really don't. mdpi.com/2673-4834/5/2/…
We’ve shared this for years, it was known or suspected even before the pandemic from SARS-CoV-1. Friends of we’re going to learn at this rate, ignoring prepandemic science, populations worldwide will get into serious trouble
I'd like to delete my account, but then a sizable fraction of the early Covid twitter scicomm documentation - to show what was known when - would be gone. As far as I know, no one else with even a moderately sized account (>10k followers) shares the same readily available science
“Bamboo is our best chance to slow climate breakdown. It can replace drivers of GHG emissions and biodiversity loss (food, construction, concrete, plastic), build soil & allow regrowing rainforest." - Let's test it. Grow bamboo as blueprint for a future ecological civilization 🧵
2. Giant bamboo dwarfs trees. As grass, it grows 30 times (!) faster and can be harvested every year. Timber takes decades; too slow. Stunningly, no one in the west described the unique climate mitigation potential of bamboo yet. - Note the rhizome system:
3. Climate relevant will be the use in millions of ha of plantations, just like other economically important crops. After two months on this, some significant progress: air pot kindly donated 1 m of their professional U system, so I can test it for bamboo.