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Paul Maidowski Profile picture
@_ppmv
Apr 13, 2023 • 23 tweets • 11 min read • Read on X
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1. Is SARS starting to unravel the west?

As IR scholar I analyze such questions. Where are we, where are we heading?

After vaccines or reinfections decreased acute phase death ratios (aCFR), most experts now think the “pandemic’s over”. They are wrong.

USA vs. Taiwan, 0 : 1 ☺️ ImageImage
2. I am no Russia expert. (1) Can someone tell us how former SU states, above all Moscow, managed to drop life expectancy to 69 yrs in 2021, before Putin’s war? Now it’s lower yet again, with many young men being lost. (2) Read this thread as background. Image
W Europe/Taiwan > China > US > Russia 👀 Image
3. Russia is back in Soviet LE territory.

This is no new insight. We just talk about it too little. Russians/experts, feel free to comment.

Less obvious the epidemiological link.

“Living with covid” means degrading healthcare also in the west. Russian humor can help with that! Image
4. US friends - yes we don’t even know what to say. You might have a contracting empire problem 🤨
5. I cannot guarantee that this wouldn’t happen in China, but highly doubt it.
6. If people care, they can easily find out what’s happening. Here my new favorite theory: we upgraded to « Vaccinated, Infected and Relaxed », putting the vir back into virology.

This is funny if you recall your high school Latin. ImageImage
7. You need no advanced Latin skills to continue our cheerful little investigation of SARS-CoV-2 dynamics in different states and the international system.

Some basic math in this truth sandwich - teachable lessons aplenty. Image
8. To science up, follow @lajohnstondr for the getting old before/after rich journey.

China is getting old before getting rich.

By contrast, Japan, South Korea, Singapore, Taiwan and Hong Kong accumulated wealth to become rich first. <>More room to err. eastasiaforum.org/2012/12/22/get…
9. Southern Africa was missing from the graph: NOW we’re talking getting old before getting rich!

What do we make if the world average life expectancy dropping 1.8 years in two years (2019-2021)?

Link:ourworldindata.org/9c8f9cc8-78e3-… Image
Correct link: ourworldindata.org/grapher/life-e…
10. SARS should never have gone past summer 2020, had public health principles been heeded. The US, EU, UK made it a question of demographic transition. Fast forward to today: now everyone involved in policy or analysis needs to read up on comparative economics. Learn from China. ImageImage
11. Here general, and #ZeroCovid specific, arguments I didn't see elsewhere. Worth elaborating.

Anyway, back to making hay while the sun shines. 🤣👌
link.springer.com/chapter/10.100…
sydney.edu.au/content/dam/co…
asia.nikkei.com/Opinion/The-un…
12. This graph was missing Southern Africa too. Comparative scholarship allows you to time travel. Image
13. Why look at the past 150 years to see the future? This is the fossil fueled explosion in human creativity and activity we usually look at in climate.
14. Sometimes we also look at the past 250 years; it makes little practical difference on climate. ImageImage
15. This graph shows how the world grew from poor health in 1800 to great inequality in 1950 and again more equality at a higher level in 2012. Someone could update it with 2022 data: I expect we exceeded 2012, but now start moving down.

Both inequity and longevity are at stake. Image
16. Here we go. Ending #ZeroCovid policy dropped life expectancy in Shanghai by one year in 2022. Autumn/winter, if you recall. Depending on how close back to near-#ZeroCovid China gets, effect will be more pronounced going forward.
16. China is aiming to reach 79 years LE in 2030. This research note is interesting because China CDC estimates SARS-CoV-2 had no significant impact on LE 2020-2021 thanks to dynamic ZeroCovid policy. Its relaxation at the end of 2022 needs further M&E. weekly.chinacdc.cn/en/article/doi… Image
17. Biden & US embassy kids at Dublin airport

Boy: “What’s your top step to success?”

Biden: “well, making sure that we don’t all have Covid. Why are you talking about this?”

Look, he knows 😂
18. Long story short, we are collectively failing at the political science problem of our lifetimes. Good luck guys and girls, call us when you're tired of failing, and want to start working on solutions.
19. Kid: What’s the top step to success?

Biden: making sure that we don’t all have COVID.

Biden knows. What do the “living with COVID” say to this? Image
Rest of the answer seems typical enough, but the slip of tongue is curious.

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More from @_ppmv

Paul Maidowski Profile picture
Nov 19
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…Image
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…Image
Read 8 tweets
Paul Maidowski Profile picture
Sep 20
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

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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
Read 29 tweets
Paul Maidowski Profile picture
Aug 30
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 40 year old moso bamboo in southwestern France grown from seed. Photo Lihua Jiang, www.yunnan-bamboo.com
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
Two bamboo stands in Zhongshan Expo Park, Taipei
Bamboo species in Tapei botanical garden
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/…
Read 47 tweets
Paul Maidowski Profile picture
Aug 21
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
Background. Thanks for outstanding science communications @vipintukur
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
Read 5 tweets
Paul Maidowski Profile picture
Jun 13
“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 🧵
Moso bamboo (phyllostachys edulis) seedling grown from seed with tap root
Moso bamboo forest in China, stock photo
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:

Image
Image
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.
Image
Read 39 tweets
Paul Maidowski Profile picture
Jun 4
SARS-CoV-2 reminder: The more immune compromised the population, the less symptoms, the ‘milder’ it appears, the more severe it really is (=Long Covid, long term damage). That’s what even most scientists seem not to get
Thanks for vivid discussion everyone. It really is a fundamentally important point. Since I deleted most references for lack of structure (and frankly, just being fed up repeating the same points for 3 to 4 years), I'll look for new references that must have been published by now
Background
Read 8 tweets

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