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Joshua Weitz Profile picture
Joshua Weitz
@joshuasweitz
Professor & Co-Director QBioS PhD, School of Biological Sciences & Physics, Georgia Tech; Chaire Blaise Pascal, IBENS, Paris.
Sep 18, 2021 • 21 tweets • 9 min read
As Georgia deaths/day approach pandemic peaks, a grim reminder of the consequences of inaction, misinformation and policy failures.

a 🧵
ajc.com/news/coronavir… Watching a series of failed responses (with rare exceptions) since early 2020, it is also important to place ongoing decision making in context.
Sep 16, 2021 • 20 tweets • 5 min read
It was Yom Kippur (France time) - a welcome respite.

Circling back since I was tagged here and want to make one thing clear at outset: the comms team @GTSciences have done an incredible job since Summer 2020 in supporting a large-scale *voluntary* asymptomatic testing program. Their dedication to general and specific targeting has been critical to the extent to which participation in AY 20-21 was sufficiently high to make genuine public health impacts in the face of significant challenges in getting a program off the ground.
Aug 30, 2021 • 10 tweets • 5 min read
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.
Aug 28, 2021 • 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
...
Mar 7, 2021 • 5 tweets • 3 min read
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…
Feb 17, 2021 • 8 tweets • 2 min read
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.).
Feb 15, 2021 • 4 tweets • 3 min read
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
Feb 1, 2021 • 22 tweets • 6 min read
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.

...
Jul 16, 2020 • 23 tweets • 7 min read
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.
Jun 14, 2020 • 15 tweets • 3 min read
A challenge for college/university re-opening plans.

Assume there are approximately the same # of circulating cases in August as there are now, a reasonable assumption given plateaus.

If so, how many expected positive #COVID19 cases will there be when classes begin?

A thread First, although answers differ by state, let's start with a national metric... ~270K cases in the past 14 days reported via @COVID19Tracking, which given 10:1 under-reporting could mean 2.7M new cases in the past 2 weeks (or more).
May 1, 2020 • 16 tweets • 7 min read
One more COVID-19 related modeling update for the week; this time more conceptual in scope, but something that has been on my mind for weeks: peaks - whether they are ahead of us, behind us, or whether they here at all. To start -- a perusal of any number of sites suggests that fatalities have gone up rapidly in many places, but then have lingered, via plateaus and long shoulders, here is a subset of country-curves from @FT

ft.com/coronavirus-la…
Apr 29, 2020 • 11 tweets • 4 min read
Today, we are releasing an update on GA-level forecasts: a Metapopulation AGe-structured Epidemiological (MAGE) model for COVID-19 in Georgia, USA.

The central projections can be seen in the figures with a full report available here:

weitzgroup.github.io/MAGEmodel_covi… MAGE is an age-structured COVID19 epidemic model extending a SEIR framework to include hospitalization, demography, and commuting information for all of GA’s 159 counties.

MAGE development was led by @BeckettStephen w/key contributions from @marian_dm12 and @friendly_cities.
Apr 17, 2020 • 14 tweets • 4 min read
How many people have been infected with #COVID19 in Georgia?

A: ~17,000, at least according to the GA DPH:
dph.georgia.gov/covid-19-daily…

But, it is likely far more.

I will use this thread to explain why I would not be surprised if actual GA numbers exceed 150,000+. First, we have been working on GA-level scenarios since mid March, building upon the work of @neil_ferguson and others. Our models seed a COVID19 epidemic in GA until simulations appear to be “close” to the reports of cases, hospitalizations, and deaths.
Apr 14, 2020 • 11 tweets • 7 min read
The @BORUSG apparently made another (quieter) budgetary choice: it will not roll back the special institutional fee in FY 2021.

This means that graduate students will continue to pay ~$3000/yr in fees out of modest stipends:

usg.edu/assets/regents… The @BORUSG budget tells us what the system values.

And what Chancellor Wrigley and @BORUSG Board Members have decided they can ignore.

And how out of step we remain compared to peer institutions.
Apr 5, 2020 • 16 tweets • 5 min read
Revisiting scenarios from last week, I am sharing a few thoughts on #COVID19 case reports via @GaDPH.

The image tells part of the story.

But wanted to explain why, irrespective of the next 8-day trends, @GovKemp should extend the shelter-in-place order due to expire on 4/13. Image First, there are many uncertainties with respect to the spread of #COVID19, particularly from a quantitative perspective.

That means, it is possible to fit a local trend with different underlying rates of transmission, age-stratified risk, and levels of ascertainment.

2/15
Mar 31, 2020 • 15 tweets • 6 min read
This thread will take a few steps, and begins with a premise:

Testing for viral shedding (via PCR) is critical and we need more of it (far more), but it's not enough.

Instead, we need to implement targeted and large-scale serological surveys to test for antibodies...

1/15 Serology can tell us who has been sick & recovered, which can help (i) Measure the 'denominator' by estimating the prevalence of COVID-19 (refining case fatality rates); (ii) Serve as a resource for convalescent plasma to treat patients (see more ccpp19.org)

2/15
Oct 30, 2018 • 10 tweets • 3 min read
1/I am writing to encourage any who are unfamiliar with @joshtpm to read this piece from October 2016 on Trump's role in facilitating the rise of anti-Semitism:

talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/storm-a… 2/This article is insightful and unfortunately prescient. It's also a must-read in light of Trump's planned visit to Pittsburgh this week.