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Paul Maidowski Profile picture
@_ppmv
Jun 17, 2023 • 15 tweets • 11 min read • Read on X
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Fortunately I’m a rocket scientist, so here the public health decision every state worldwide now faces, broken down to its essence. Do you want to live with a SARS virus in your much shortened, disease-ridden lives or would you rather not?

That’s the only real question here. Image
2. Previous iterations of this deep insight. I’m not satisfied with “explode” here because while true on an intergenerational scale, explosive typically denotes a process faster than multiple years - as it will take - to most people. Should say “increase.”
3. You’d think whether we want to live with a SARS and smallpox-like virus (monkeypox ~ variola virus) is at the heart of the German national security policy debate #Sicherheitsstrategie? Cute.

In reality, as @RikeFranke argued, German millennials are incredibly bad at strategy.
@RikeFranke Dr. Franke assessment of the pandemic is wrong (sorry—I may have pointed it out previously; just need to add it if I share); otherwise a perceptive, timely 2021 essay. warontherocks.com/2021/05/a-mill… ImageImage
@RikeFranke 4. Crash course for political scientists unfamiliar with SARS/MERS-CoV/OPV/hMPXV pathogenesis. - Read for example China CDC's analysis of expected future genetic recombination in SARS-CoV-2 and I'd add, Mpox.


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5. Slightly sharper version of #2 above, explaining mechanisms (=relevant to scientists or all who want to understand why a pathogen behaves as it does).
6. Now is a good time to ruin a fun polemic tweet by overexplaining it. - No, we're here to learn and Germany offers splendid lessons on what NOT to do in a SARS pandemic. To start, to do any worse than Germany over the past 12 months is hard if one tried. Image
7. These are all countries available in the database. Many stopped reporting or are wildly unreliable; can't work with data we don't have. For example Russia must have done worse than Germany over the past 12 months but it's reporting is likely incomplete. Image
8. Please correct if wrong, but I read Germany had 96,077 excess deaths in 343 days = 280 excess deaths *per day* in the past 12 months (19 June 2022 to 28 May 2023). Imagine two Airbus A320s à 140 passengers crashing every day.

Zero journalists noticed. Wild. @berndulrich etc.? Image
I may be terribly mistaken, but so far I'd propose we have a problem here and I don't think it's my middle school math.
9. For another, better graphic, compare the change in excess mortality over the past 12 months (left) with the change between 5 Jan 2020 and 9 April 2023, just before @WHO was forced to end the COVID-19 PHEIC.

WILD. We truly stare into the abyss here and it's looking back at us. ImageImageImage
@WHO 10. Concise by @mayer_iras. I also think this is how too many think. All that has big guns, platforms, and budgets attached to it is serious, hard power. Ideally EM or kinetic. Climate/health stuff are annoying distraction from the job.

I caricature, but.
@WHO @mayer_iras 11. We had 8,096 SARS-CoV-1 infections. Survivors had epigenetic changes 20 years later. Billions of SARS-CoV-2 survivors face the same.

We cannot explain how states came to face disaster unprepared without the hubris of their staff and political leaders.
@WHO @mayer_iras 12. Many criticize WHO, I think as projection. As educational turn, ask your students to advise DG @DrTedros, skilled public health diplomat. What advice should he give G7 world leaders?

We face a dilemma that deserves sustained, global attention. thx all
13. Some elements of solutions we already described in detail (IHR 2005, climate, precautionary principle for both). Others are missing.

Language pros, among others we need a catchier name for the alternative to the PP 👇

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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
Sep 12
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 👇☕️ Moso bamboo shoot (phyllostachys edulis)
“Self made” 80 liter air pot design and 12 liter air pot propagation set. Coffee for scale
40 year old moso bamboo in southwestern France grown from seed. Photo Lihua Jiang, www.yunnan-bamboo.com
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.” Taiwan mountains 台灣新竹
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 👇 Image
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Read 32 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
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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

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