As a recently repatriated Canadian, I understand the pride that Canadians take in the single-payer healthcare system (really, it's split by province).

But I believe that pride sometimes interferes with people's ability to see how it has been crumbling and the urgency for fixes. At this point, it should also be clear that Covid isn't a question of individual risk. It is a question of societal risk.

It's not about how mild Covid was for you and your friends. It's about how there's no hospital beds or staff left. We need more of both.

🚨 Rare clotting events are under investigation in connection to at least two brands of COVID-19 vaccines. Here’s my article for @TheAtlantic about the biological theories that might explain them: theatlantic.com/science/archiv… Theory 1: the blood clotting issues arise because some part of the vaccine spurs the formation of rogue antibodies against a protein secreted by platelet cells, causing the body to mistakenly deplete platelet levels in a condition called VITT 2/n theatlantic.com/science/archiv…

🚨 We've been talking about tiny mutations in the coronavirus.

Scientists say we should be talking more about how the virus is a master of mixing *large* chunks of its genome. This might contribute to new and dangerous variation.

My latest, for @nytimes: nytimes.com/2021/02/05/hea… Other RNA viruses make about 20-times to 100-times more tiny, single-letter mistakes in their genomes than coronaviruses do, according to Mark Denison of @DenisonLab. That's because coronaviruses have a fabulous 'proofreading' enzyme, called nsp14-ExoN. 2/n

🚨 I’ve been reporting on this awful pandemic since February.

But this is the article I should have written months ago:

There’s a woeful lack of transparency in how governments decide their #Covid19 policies. It’s making this pandemic worse.

wired.com/story/a-lack-o… If you’ve ever been dumbfounded by a Covid-19 rule that seems to go against everything you ever read in PubMed then this article is for you, Baby! 👆👆👆👆

📣 #THREAD: COVID-19 could be a double whammy for older people -- they're more likely to die from it and they might be less likely to respond to a vaccine. This might be due to "#immunosenescence" and "#inflammaging", as I describe in my latest story: nationalgeographic.com/science/2020/0… Surprise! If you are reading this tweet and past puberty, your thymus gland -- which harbors the T cells that help train the body to make protective antibodies against new viruses (and respond to vaccines) -- is already shrinking: nationalgeographic.com/science/2020/0…

THREAD🧵--> For weeks, I've been tracking the scientific debate about whether we need masks to prevent transmission of the virus causing #COVID19 and whether it is #airborne. If you're confused, you are not alone. Stick with me here. Let's clear the air. 1/15 On Saturday, the World Health Organization used CAPS to say, "FACT: #COVID19 is NOT airborne." Here is the tweet. But keep reading this thread, because the wording is tricky.

https://twitter.com/WHO/status/1243972193169616898

THREAD --> In this time of #COVID19, I figured it might be handy to share some basics with other reporters who might be new to the health beat. What's an 'antibody'? What is 'viral load'? Here's a list of some things reporters might want to know. I'm adding to it slowly. First off. A lot of the tests being discussed are looking for 'antibodies'. What the heck are those? In a nutshell, proteins made by certain immune cells that bind to particles in the body (usually foreign) that we call 'antigens'. Here's a 3:28min primer:

Got this question from a reporter friend, and honestly, I don't know what to suggest. PubMed? BioRxiv? MedRxiv?

Each publishing company seems to have it's own special page, but is there a hub where all this is being collected?? And, nota bene: only my friends get to call me Rox.