My PhD thesis was on fuel production, I did some of that PhD at a Shell-funded lab, I've sat in Shell boardrooms with their upper SA execs, some of my best friends are engineers at Shell. I know a good bit about their business and I have never read so much bunk in a single day.🧵 1) Shell exiting SA was a looming possibility a DECADE ago already. For people in the sector, it's been a huge surprise how long it's taken. Attributing it to the upcoming election is opportunistic electioneering of a gratingly stupid kind.

I am a scientist born in Africa and working here, on COVID treatments and mitigation strategies. I am also a lecturer who would dearly love to be see my students able to return to campus. Vaccine inequity is tangibly present in every aspect of my personal and professional life./1 Nonetheless, American scientists keep telling me that I am not allowed to talk about vaccine inequity. Privileged first-world researchers insist that they are entitled to ownership of narrative around the reality that third-world scientists are actually living in. /2

We will not be able to discern the severity of Omicron from Gauteng hospitalizations: a thread. /1 Hospitalizations are a lagging measure; they follow cases by roughly a week. That term 'roughly' is tricky here because of how fast things are going. If you impose a lag of 7 days then the ratio of hospitalizations to cases is vastly lower than if you impose a lag of 8 days. /2

A thread on genomic sequencing in SA: a very VERY widely circulated narrative is going around, which is that SA is being punished for having cutting-edge genomic surveillance. That notion hits just the right notes of self-righteousness to spike dopamine, but it's highly flimsy. In the 30 days prior to Omicron's emergence, SA submitted just 44 sequences to GISAID. In the same time-frame Germany put in ~12 000 and the UK put in ~120 000. We do indeed have the technology and expertise for world-class genomic surveillance, we just weren't actually using it.

morningshot.co.za/2021/10/21/wha…
This piece is a Rubicon moment for me, for the simple fact of it being published in a conservative outlet. My career has been devoted to renewable energy, sustainable food supply and eliminating waste plastic and my personal ideology is highly liberal. /1 My adult life has been committed to finding genuine solutions to humankind's problems. I have received some acclaim for my success in doing so, but without having sought it. I just like solving puzzles and it's most rewarding to tackle the most important ones. /2

My following here is almost entirely liberal; for the simple reason that I am hyper liberal - my adult life has been devoted to solving the crises of climate change, waste plastic accumulation and food scarcity. Tomorrow I will be publishing an article in a conservative outlet /1 This will alienate the majority of my following here. I've agonized over that . It's a lousy feeling to be disliked. I decided to do it because all mainstream outlets declined to publish a purely factual and scientific rebuttal of a popular narrative that is objectively false./2