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JUST ONE PERSON—UK 🇬🇧 scientists think one immunocompromised person who cleared virus slowly & only partially wiped out an infection, leaving behind genetically-hardier viruses that rebound & learn how to survive better. That’s likely how #B117 started. 🧵 https://t.co/bMMjM8Hiuz

 2) The leading hypothesis is that the new variant evolved within just one person, chronically infected with the virus for so long it was able to evolve into a new, more infectious form.

same thing happened in Boston in another immunocompromised person that was sick for 155 days.
3) What happened in Boston with one 45 year old man who was highly infectious for 155 days straight before he died... is exactly what scientists think happened in Kent, England that gave rise to #B117. https://t.co/LBc8eCk3f9
4) Doctors were shocked to find virus has evolved many different forms inside of this one immunocompromised man. 20 new mutations in one virus, akin to the #B117. This is possibly how #B1351 in South Africa 🇿🇦 and #P1 in Brazil 🇧🇷 also evolved. https://t.co/74dr2pFiRg
5) “On its own, the appearance of a new variant in genomic databases doesn’t tell us much. “That’s just one genome amongst thousands every week. It wouldn’t necessarily stick out,” says Oliver Pybus, a professor of evolution and infectious disease at Oxford.
6) “New variants of Sars-CoV-2 are being created all the time but the vast majority of them go absolutely nowhere.
It was only when it became obvious that measures in Kent were failing that Public Health England realised the outbreak was being driven by a new variant.”
7) “#SARSCoV2 isn’t the only virus that can linger for an unusually long time within the human body. Ebola virus RNA has been detected in the semen of men a year after recovery. Some people stay infected with norovirus – a common stomach bug – for more than six months.
8) “One man in the UK has excreted infectious poliovirus for at least 28 years. The man had been shedding mutated virus for so long that researchers writing about his infection said that he, and other chronic excretors, pose an “obvious risk to the [polio] eradication programme”!
9) “But the real problem isn’t chronic infection – it’s a situation where pandemic is so out of control that the virus has endless opportunities to mutate into new variants. That situation is a reality in the UK and in dozens of other countries with dangerously high case rates.
10) ““These are all edge cases, but if you have enough people infected over a long time, you run the risk of hitting those edge cases,” says Hodcroft. It is not surprising that some of the most worrying new variants – from Brazil, South Africa and the UK –
11) ...”emerged from parts of the world with relatively high levels of transmission. “When you have millions of people infected, with millions of viruses replicating in each one, there are lots of chances for the virus to explore new mutations and combinations,” says Lauring.
12) ““If we had control of the virus, we wouldn’t be seeing as many variants pop up, because there wouldn't be as many opportunities for evolution to happen.”
13) Since Sars-CoV-2 infects cells relatively quickly, in most cases it enters a host, replicates and then swiftly infects someone else, leaving little time for the virus to acquire many genetic changes.
14) When the virus enters the body of someone who is already immunocompromised, their body is constantly applying evolutionary pressure on the virus – pushing it to evolve into new and, in some cases, more infectious forms.
15) My take: the moral lesson is that, when given time and opportunity, the virus finds a way. The virus is a cunning mutating beast that will try every way to defeat us if we let it keep proliferating. We must stop it FAST, or else it will evade: https://t.co/Zk46pouYLM
16) And the virus will even evade people who has had prior immunity and prior antibodies to the older common #SARSCoV2. Such as this example — here not even people were protected from severe disease even if with prior immunity. https://t.co/yqgeNJsgzj?
17) Now just look where we are... #B117 is threatening to dominate the US soon next month as well. Florida especially. https://t.co/I7zIjne6nD
18) It’s now growing so fast in Florida, #B117 is already at 10% of all cases. And doubling time in 9 days or maybe even less. https://t.co/DlHtxqaXAr
19) If we go for full suppression, then we can have this too https://t.co/6HkE2IoDTY

More from Eric Feigl-Ding

Eric Feigl-Ding
Eric Feigl-Ding
@DrEricDing
📍DOUBLE REINFECTIONS—wow, both PM Justin Trudeau and Biden’s HHS Secretary Becerra got *reinfected* with #COVID19–from same conference—➡️when did Becerra last get infected? May 18th 2022—not even a full month ago! Trudeau in Jan 2022. I worry it’s reinfections due to #BA5/#BA4.


2) #BA5 and #BA4 are worrisome. They are surging and they have high reinfection potential. Your past BA1/BA2 doesn’t substantially protect you from #Ba5/4


3) Excess deaths—the new #BA4 & #BA5 variants of the coronavirus are currently the **fastest growing** strains in the US & UK. ➡️They are exponentially replacing all other past strains. Learn from South Africa’s early warning signs and their excess deaths. #CovidIsNotOver #COVID


4) Is it a Paxlovid rebound for Becerra, as some are asking? Unclear—Paxlovid rebound usually only happens at day 10-14 that we know of and have data. The FDA says it’s 1-2% rebound but I counted 12% from this Pfizer graph submitted to FDA.


5) and yes, #ba5 / #BA4 are very problematic. they are 2x more resistant than even BA2 for neutralizing the virus compared to those who had breakthrough reinfections from older Omicron.
CATEGORY PDFMAKERAPP GRAB THIS READWISEIO SAVE READWISEIO SAVE THREAD THREADER COMPILE SUMMARIZE
Eric Feigl-Ding
Eric Feigl-Ding
@DrEricDing
⚠️TWO DIFFERENT #COVID19 PANDEMICS—Many think with cases dropping that pandemic is nearly over. But truth is, there are now 2 different #SARSCoV2 pandemics diverging—old strain is waning, while the more contagious #B117 strain is dominating. We will be soon slammed very hard. 🧵


2) Here is what is really going to happen... most countries are having a gentle case decline with R(e) currently around 0.9. But this is deceiving. The #B117 is still relatively rare so far, so the R is being influenced mostly by the old common variant. But not for long...


3) Here is what is going to happen... currently R is ~0.9 in many places, but with the more infectious #B117, the R will jump 50% approximately. And it is inevitable (all CDC and Danish models say this) that B117 will take over as the reigning dominant variant soon...


4) and when that happens, what worked before to keep the pandemic contained at R of 0.9 will no longer work. Here is the model for Alberta, 🇨🇦 by @GosiaGasperoPhD. The B117 dotted red line will soon dominate and drive a new surge in latter half of March and April.


5) And Denmark 🇩🇰 CDC has found the same thing. I GQR works now for keeping R around 0.9 or even 0.8, will absolutely not work anymore once #B117 variant takes over. Forget about it. We will be hit hard. But there is a way—if we suppress R to 0.7 or less.
https://t.co/gOq0put4H5
COVID19
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Eric Feigl-Ding
Eric Feigl-Ding
@DrEricDing
Wow. 1 in 3 hospitalized with #COVID19 gets readmitted to the hospital within a few months after discharge. ~48,000 UK patients.

Great animated lecture on #LongCovid by @Dr2NisreenAlwan, animated by @VickiGSP using info from UK @IndependentSage experts.


2) Furthermore, 1 in 8 of those who were discharged subsequently die. And many suffer long term ailments like heart disease, liver, kidney, diabetes, and more. This doesn’t even include less clinical critical cognitive effects. #LongCovid is real.


3) How common is #LongCovid overall? UK estimates 1 in 5 at 5 weeks and 1 in 10 have symptoms have even 12 weeks after initial #COVID19 diagnosis.

Lecture again by @Dr2NisreenAlwan


4) Let these numbers sink in... 1 in 10 at 12 weeks still have symptoms!


5) Here is the original study of the above lecture from few weeks ago. We need to prepare our healthcare system long term for the impact of millions with #LongCovid. This is gonna be larger than Gulf War Syndrome or long term health of 9/11 first responders.
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Eric Feigl-Ding
Eric Feigl-Ding
@DrEricDing
NEW—CDC was truly suffocated by Trump WH at every turn. Kyle McGowan, a former chief of staff at CDC, and his deputy, Amanda Campbell, witnessed WH dismissal of science, WH’s slow suffocation of CDC’s voice, meddling in messages & siphoning of CDC budget.
https://t.co/HeuNbUggiw


2) ““Everyone wants to describe the day that the light switch flipped—It didn’t happen that way—more of like a hand grasping something, and it slowly closes, closes, closes, closes until you realize that, middle of the summer, it has a complete grasp on everything at the CDC”

3) “Mr. McGowan and Ms. Campbell, both 34, say they tried to protect their colleagues against political meddling from WH and HHS but was largely stifled by the Trump administration.

4) “The White House insisted on reviewing — and often softening — the C.D.C.’s closely guarded coronavirus guidance documents, the most prominent public expression of its latest research and scientific consensus on the spread of the virus.”

5) “The documents were vetted not only by the White House’s coronavirus task force but by what felt to the agency’s employees like an endless loop of political appointees across Washington.
Mr. McGowan recalled a White House fixated on the economic implications of public health.
HEALTH
Eric Feigl-Ding
Eric Feigl-Ding
@DrEricDing
Breaking—UK scientists just reported a case-control study that the mutated UK 🇬🇧B.1.1.7 variant is not associated w/ more severe #COVID19— “found no significant differences in hospital admissions and case fatality at 28 days, & occurrence of reinfections”, says @mvankerkhove

2) That said, the new UK mutated strain is a more transmissible (contagious) variant. Keep transmissibility and illness severity separate. They are two different things. Don’t get them confused.

3) The new UK variant severity study is included in today’s WHO report, to be released soon this afternoon according to WHO sources. Waiting for it to drop. I’ll keep folks posted on the details.

4) Update: here is UK Technical report on #SARSCoV2 variant of concern (B.1.1.7) in 🇬🇧 with prelim findings from their case-control study of no increased severity for the new variant that I reported yesterday.

5) Also keep in a mind that a virus that spreads faster (more contagious) yields much worse total outcomes than a virus that is just merely more severe.

All things equal, a new mutated variant that is more contagious & no more severe is worse. And that is what we now have.
COVID

More from Science

GuruAnaerobic
GuruAnaerobic
@GuruAnaerobic
HOW TO STAY YOUNG:

Starve-destroy-recycle-eat-build-eat-build-starve...

The human ecosystem (our internal environment) has the same processes as the environmental ecosystem. Destruction & Reconstruction is a universal process. This is how we stay young.


We should take our cue from the senolytic processes of nature. A coppiced Hazel tree is near immortal.


Too much destruction (chronic calorie restriction) and too much growth (hyperfunction/ constant eating) are both bad and lead to derangement.

'A single bout of resistance training induced rapid clearance of senescent cells in muscle' h/t @Mangan150

"Conc: Rapid senescent cell clearance of human skeletal muscle during resistance exercise seems to associate with enhanced in situ phagocytosis. High protein availability accelerates resolution of muscle inflammation and promotes muscle increment after training" h/t @SPKP1124
SCIENCE
Max Fagin
Max Fagin
@MaxFagin
November is here, and that means a massive shift is coming. And by "massive" I am of course referring to the redefinition of the kilogram unit of mass that the world has been building up to for more than 100 years. Let me explain:


1/ I've had an unhealthy fascination with metrology (the study of measurement) ever since my 2nd year as a physics major when I took a class devoted to duplicating historic physics experiments, so please indulge me for going into heavy detail (get it?) about the kilogram.

2/ So what actually *defines* a unit of measurement? If you're American, you probably know a mile is 5280 feet and a foot is 12 inches and an inch is 2.54 centimeters etc. But where does this chain of definitions end? Is it turtles all the way down?

3/ It's actually not! For all units (even the imperial units used in America) the answers all end with the Système International (SI) unit definitions established and maintained for over 100 years by the Bureau International des Poids et Mesures (BIMP) in France.

4/ At the base of this tower are the SI base units. Just 7 SI base units define every other unit in existence. They are:

Kilogram, kg (mass)
Meter, m (distance)
Second, s (time)
Kelvin, K (temp)
Ampere, A (electric current)
Candela, cd (luminous intensity)
Mole, mol (quantity)
SCIENCE
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Dr Mark D. Scherz
Dr Mark D. Scherz
@MarkScherz
It's another stunning Malagasy #dartfrog/#poisonfrog for today's #FrogOfTheDay, #42 Mantella cowani Boulenger, 1882! A highly threatened, actively conserved and managed frog from the highlands of central #Madagascar
#MadagascarFrogs
📸D.Edmonds/CalPhotos


This thread will cover only a tiny fraction of the work on Mantella cowanii because, being so charismatic and threatened, it has received quite a bit of attention.
#MadagascarFrogs

We start at the very beginning: the first specimens, two females, were collected by Reverend Deans Cowan in East Betsileo, Madagascar, and sent to London, where George Albert Boulenger described the species in 1882.
#MadagascarFrogs


Boulenger placed the species in his new genus, Mantella, along with ebenaui, betsileo, and madagascariensis. He recognised that the other Malagasy poison frogs were distinct from the Dendrobates of the Americas, although he did keep them in the Dendrobatidae.
#MadagascarFrogs

As more specimens were collected, it became clear that the species was highly variable. In 1978, Jean Guibé wrote with interest about this variability, describing a new subspecies, M. cowani nigricans—today a full species. #MadagascarFrogs
https://t.co/dwaHMbrYbj
SCIENCE
DR22 \u03a9 \U0001f3ad\U0001f525
DR22 Ω 🎭🔥...
@DejaRu22
Best visual demonstration of God’s source code in action
SCIENCE
Prof Francois Balloux
Prof Francois Balloux
@BallouxFrancois
@mugecevik is an excellent scientist and a responsible professional. She likely read the paper more carefully than most. She grasped some of its strengths and weaknesses that are not apparent from a cursory glance. Below, I will mention a few points some may have missed.
1/


The paper does NOT evaluate the effect of school closures. Instead it conflates all ‘educational settings' into a single category, which includes universities.
2/

The paper primarily evaluates data from March and April 2020. The article is not particularly clear about this limitation, but the information can be found in the hefty supplementary material.
3/


The authors applied four different regression methods (some fancier than others) to the same data. The outcomes of the different regression models are correlated (enough to reach statistical significance), but they vary a lot. (heat map on the right below).
4/


The effect of individual interventions is extremely difficult to disentangle as the authors stress themselves. There is a very large number of interventions considered and the model was run on 49 countries and 26 US States (and not >200 countries).
5/
SCIENCE

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Justin Jackson
Justin Jackson
@mijustin
A lot of bootstrappers think they have a marketing problem:

"I need to get better at marketing."

But, it's more likely that you have a product problem:

"Do customers really want this? Do they care enough about this to switch to a new solution?"

☝️ this is why most of my book, @marketingdevs, is about:

1. Choosing the right market
2. Building something they want

"If your product is remarkable, getting noticed is a lot easier." – @peldi


I was reminded of this concept again this morning while reading @pjrvs' book (Company of One):

"Sales increase when you honestly evaluate what someone needs and then teach them the value of what you're selling."


To succeed, your product has to offer an outcome that is highly desirable to a large group of customers.

The number of sales your product receives is a multiple of these two variables:

1. How big is the target market?
2. How desirable is the outcome you're offering them?
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Tweeting Historians
Tweeting Historians
@Tweetistorian
@ChenHuailun here. I'm adding a supplementary thread before today's scheduled one to expand on the origins and early history of the Church of the East (aka the Nestorian Church) ~ahc #jingjiao 1/


The Church of the East traces its origins to the christological position of the School of Antioch, which held that the human and divine and human essences (ουσία) of Christ were united in a single prosopon (πρόσωπον). ~ahc #jingjiao 2/


This ran against the position of the School of Alexandria, which held that the two essences of Christ were united in a single hypostasis (ὑπόστασις). In general terms, hypostasis is more inherent than prosopon. ~ahc #jingjiao 3/


One implication of the Antiochene rejection of the hypostatic union is that Mary could not accurately be called the Theotokos, or God-bearer. Instead, she is the Christotokos, the Christ-bearer. ~ahc #jingjiao 4/


These Christological debates were further complicated by Syriac terms such as 'kyana' (ܟܝܢܐ), associated with 'ousia' but later translated to 'hypostasis' by Syrian Orthodox; and 'qnoma ' (ܩܢܘܡܐ), sometimes contentiously translated as 'hypostasis' or 'person.' ~ahc #jingjiao 5/
RELIGION
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Maker Weekly
Maker Weekly
@makerweekly
#24hrstartup recap and analysis

What a weekend celebrating makers looks like.

A thread

👇Read on

Let's start with a crazy view of what @ProductHunt looked like on Sunday

Download image and upload

A top 7 with:
https://t.co/6gBjO6jXtB @Booligoosh
https://t.co/fwfKbQha57 @stephsmithio
https://t.co/LsSRNV9Jrf @anthilemoon
https://t.co/Fts7T8Un5M @J_Tabansi
Spotify Ctrl @shahroozme
https://t.co/37EoJAXEeG @kossnocorp
https://t.co/fMawYGlnro

If you want some top picks, see @deadcoder0904's thread,

We were going to have a go at doing this, but he nailed it.

It also comes with voting links 🖐so go do your


Over the following days the 24hr startup crew had more than their fair share of launches

Lots of variety: web, bots, extensions and even native apps

eg. @jordibruin with
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MaMaMia \U0001f1ec\U0001f1f7\U0001f1e8\U0001f1fe\U0001f1e6\U0001f1f2 SupportGreekProducts
MaMaMia 🇬🇷🇨🇾🇦🇲 Support...
@MaMaMia73189983
Following @BAUDEGS I have experienced hateful and propagandist tweets time after time. I have been shocked that an academic community would be so reckless with their publications. So I did some research.
The question is:
Is this an official account for Bahcesehir Uni (Bau)?


Bahcesehir Uni, BAU has an official website https://t.co/ztzX6uj34V which links to their social media, leading to their Twitter account @Bahcesehir

BAU’s official Twitter account


BAU has many departments, which all have separate accounts. Nowhere among them did I find @BAUDEGS
@BAUOrganization @ApplyBAU @adayBAU @BAUAlumniCenter @bahcesehirfbe @baufens @CyprusBau @bauiisbf @bauglobal @bahcesehirebe @BAUintBatumi @BAUiletisim @BAUSaglik @bauebf @TIPBAU

Nowhere among them was @BAUDEGS to find
BUSINESS
\u0936\u094d\u0930\u0940\u092e\u093e\u0932\u0940 \u0939\u093f\u0924\u0947\u0936 \u0905\u0935\u0938\u094d\u0925\u0940
श्रीमाली हितेश अवस्थी...
@HiteshAwasthi89
Sri Devi Karumariamman mandir, Chennai, Tamilnadu

Sri Devi Karumariamman mandir is in Thiruverkadu, a suburb of Chennai. It is said that God Muruga came here and obtained the 'Vel' (spear) from His mother, Goddess Karumari (an avatar of Parvathi) 1/n


to fight the demon Suran and hence this place was called as 'Vel kadu' and became as Verkadu. As per legend Devi Karumariamman once disguised as a soothsayer visited Bhagwan Surya, the Sun God, to predict His future. 2/n


Not realising that the soothsayer is none other than Sakthi Matha, Surya ignored Her. Angered by his indifference, Devi Karumariamman immediately retreated. Bhagwan Surya lost His glory and the earth plunged into darkness. 3/n


Bhagwan Surya then realised His folly and pleaded forgiveness from Devi Karumariamman. In order to pacify mother Karumariamman, Suryadev said that His rays would fall on Her directly twice in a year and touch her feet. (in the month of Panguni (March- April) & during (Sep - Oct)


Mother Karumari Amman is worshipped here in two forms.A swayambu (self manifested) with only head visible above the ground and another one in a graceful sitting posture with all Parasakthi features,with four arms holding skull, sword, trishul, udukkai (damru). 5/n
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