You know what really pisses me off about this whole Twitter disintegrating thing? For all it had become obnoxious, this place has had such an incredible impact on my life. I met my husband on Twitter, FFS! My life would be incalculably different without Twitter. I doubt I would have ever had the chance to get to know @nberlat without Twitter—and he radically reshaped how I think about immigration arguments (not to mention just constantly pushes me to write better, because damn his media analysis is just so good).

Grateful that I can lay in bed with a migraine and still listen/attend this #covid19 talk in honor of Dr Paul Farmer by ⁦@PeterHotez⁩. Thank you, ⁦⁦@APHAStudents⁩, for this awesome level of accessibility. Paraphrasing, “I develop vaccines for diseases the pharma companies can’t because there would be no profit.” -@PeterHotez

In other words, they work on orphan disease vaccines. About a decade ago, they added coronaviruses to their benchwork.

Here's a neatly threaded "oh fuck no" of my response to the @nymag's cover story of irresponsibility, asking "but what if" nCov2019 really was a lab escape.

Protip, @nymag: leave What If to Marvel. #bioethics #gof #durc #biosecurity #biosafety #COVID19 nymag.com/intelligencer/… Seems @nymag wanted to get “most irresponsible article of 2021” locked up early. Tho is beyond irresponsible; it’s an admitted flight of fancy ignoring the work of multiple scientists carefully explaining, repeatedly, as to why #covid19 is not a lab escape. #durc #gof #biorisk

After we got all the OMG OMG OMG LUKE!!! 😭😭😭out, which took a good 45 minutes from the X-Wing, pretty much the first thing I said to @neva9257 was how much I loved the connection to bitter, angry Luke…see, my theory is, they gave us Grogu to love, for Kylo Ren to kill. Admittedly, I made this leap before @neva9257 did. But once he got over the horror… 😂 See, my theory is that maybe it wasn’t as clear to folks as it needed to be, that Kylo Ren killed Luke’s students. Massacred them a la Grandpa Anakin’s Tiny Tots murder.

It’s almost like @neva9257, Levine, and I wrote about this at the start of 2020. 🤔🤔🤔

“Subjects (& communities) of scientific & therapeutic research have some claim to benefits that arise from knowledge generated through their involvement”

journalofethics.ama-assn.org/article/how-sh…

https://twitter.com/theintercept/status/1344670213846032385

It’s really obnoxious that, once again, a topic that has been endlessly discussed in ethics, biosecurity, international relations, and other “oddball” fields is suddenly in the public eye as OH NO MAJOR PROBLEM. To just wholesale copy what Jason said,

https://twitter.com/jasonlschwartz/status/1340731300030910465

So piggybacking on @SaskiaPopescu's excellent thread here, which EERILY mirrors an email I sent Thursday - and she and I did NOT talk about the topic recently - I wanna show you all a GREAT paper trying to revise the definition of aerosol transmission.

https://twitter.com/SaskiaPopescu/status/1294786639651201025?s=20

I have no idea why Thursday was the first time I've come across this paper, since the airborne vs aerosol transmission debate has been a headache-and-silver-hair generating issue in my life since 2014, as neatly summed up by this blog post:
virologydownunder.com/flight-of-the-…

"Unlike most other social disparities, immunity advantages are unlikely to create a permanent underclass. "

*looks at history*
Am I the only person in bioethics who reads history? JFC, this is a bad take.
jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/… HISTORY. IT EXISTS FOR REASONS.

And not a single article I've read in this JAMA viewpoint series has bothered to reference HOW WE KNOW PEOPLE ACT with immunity certificates because HISTORY.

I'm disappointed in so many people right now. #COVID19
academic.oup.com/ahr/article-ab…

I'm really unimpressed with this paper. It relies on non-peer reviewed data, it appears to misinterpret what it means for a virus to be airborne, and appears to ignore a literal statement of not being able to replicate the virus from air samples. #COVID19
nap.edu/read/25769/cha… Look, I accept that it does not matter HOW many times @SaskiaPopescu or me or anyone else who knows the literature tells you that masks aren't effective in the way people want them to be. I know people are going to insist they Google better, or that a nutrition expert knows more

For YOU, I am listening to this Trump presser.

This is the first time I've actually listened to him in years. You guys owe me for this, and I DO have a kofi 😝 BTW, no, experts do NOT think that the travel bans or quarantines were a good idea, necessary, aggressive, or anything like that re #COVID19. NOR have the US actions been "the most aggressive in the world." Please see, cordon sanitaire, 110 million people. FFS.