BC HEALTH
Saved by @jacobhtml

Folks, we need to talk about this Vitamin D trial. I have no stake in this game - take Vitamin D if you want but this pre-print is super sus.

The paper is presented as a randomized trial of vitamin D supplementation in hospitalized patients with COVID. Interesting and important question! And the results appear dramatic:
If true, this would be one of (if not THE most) effective treatments for COVID. But there are problems...
The first clue something is up is that the randomized groups aren't the same size:
It took me a while to figure out why this was, then I saw in the text that INDIVIDUALS were not randomized, WARDS in the hospital were.
OK - 8 wards, 5 randomized to Vitamin D, 3 to usual care. (Why not 4 and 4?? - but whatever). So this is actually a CLUSTER-randomized trial. That means you need to use CLUSTERED statistics to analyze it. They do not.
This is a big problem. But there is more. It seems that, even if the wards were randomized, the PATIENTS weren't randomized to the wards.
In other words, some hospital wards take different patients than others (different risk factors, etc). This is why we see this really weird finding in Table 1:
Baseline vitamin D levels dramatically lower in the "non-treated" group. Why? Preseumaby because different types of people got admitted to the wards than were randomized to usual care.
You'd expect people with low levels of Vitamin D to do worse - that has been shown multiple times - perhaps because higher Vitamin D levels are associated with less comorbidities.
Here's their Kaplan-Meier curve. It doesn't make sense. What do they mean by 'cumulative hazard' of mortality? What units are these? The overall mortality was 10% by their report.
I get frustrated with peer-review too, but this is why it's so important. This is super basic stuff - you don't call your study a randomized trial when it's a cluster randomized trial. And peer-reviewers would 100% have asked them to go back and redo the stats.
The authors could solve this, btw, by releasing a de-identified dataset (including the ward number) for this study. We could analyze it in about an hour at least for topline results using appropriate stats.
And again, is there harm from Vitamin D? Minimal honestly. The harm from promotion of studies like this is tweets like this that try to dissuade people from getting vaccinated and doing other protective measures.
https://t.co/XVmsiajpBr
So please, read skeptically. Pre-prints have been a boon in COVID times but this study is just... not well done. Be aware. (/END)

More from Health

(Cyriac) Abby Philips
(Cyriac) Abby Philips
@drabbyphilips
1/
Remember woman who tuk multiple @SriSriTattva products 4 range of problems frm diabetes 2 gas 2 liver disease & developed liver failure, listed for liver transplant?
Here is original thread:
https://t.co/PXxI1Slyv2
23 samples, Analysis results
#MedTwitter #livertwitter


2/
Before I go into results, I must say this was overwhelming. There was SO MUCH the lab identified, impossible to put everything here. So I made a summary. At the end of this thread, I have linked a full analysis described in Excel format. Some results were VERY concerning

3/
How did we analyse?
Here R links 2 methods
They R high end, done under strict protocols
Frm Ministry of Forest, Environment, Climate / NABL approvd Lab
ICP-OES https://t.co/O1CLhqVQAu
GC MSMS https://t.co/zRJoXyWQIr
FTIR https://t.co/goAembQ08p
Here is list V analysed 👇


4/
Sample names written on top (each column).
First 5 samples: C what we identified in #Ayurveda #medicines
Antibiotics
Steroids (anabolic/synthetic)
#NARCOTICS - LSD, Morphine
Blood thinners (possible reason Y bleeding tests were off the roof in the patient)
Heavy metals!


5/
Next 5 samples (total 10 now)
Mercury is clear winner. Almost all samples
See controlled substances - Butyrolactones https://t.co/CPz0FwPEOm, methylamine https://t.co/OZnXY7U9UQ
Alcohols, industrial solvents
Rare metals - cobalt, lithium
Again lots of blood thinners
#Ayush
HEALTH
Chris Hopson
Chris Hopson
@ChrisCEOHopson
1/23 We haven't had a lot to celebrate during this pandemic. But achieving the milestone of offering vaccine to the over 70s, health and care workers and the most clinically vulnerable just before target date is a huge cause for celebration, given the scale of the achievement.

2/23 When Margaret Keenan got her first jab in Coventry on December 8th last year, who’d have thought that, by Valentine’s Day, we’d have vaccinated over fourteen million people across the UK in just ten short weeks? Amazing, extraordinary and truly, really, world class!

3/23 I’ve been struck by how much joy and relief has been brought to those doing the vaccinations and those receiving them. A GP told me yesterday that nothing had given him greater pleasure in his long career. And that the patient's relief was sometimes overwhelming.

4/23 It's vital to recognise the extraordinary contribution of the staff and volunteers who have made this happen. One of my close family had their jab yesterday and was in awe of the volunteer standing outside in the freezing cold for a four hour shift meeting and greeting.

5/23 What I wanted to share in this thread was the slightly untold story of some of the extraordinary challenges the NHS has had to overcome to deliver this target. Requiring superhuman effort from NHS leaders and staff, way beyond the call of duty. Five challenges set out below.
HEALTH
Advertisement
Southern Anti-Racist | Abolition Now
Southern Anti-Racist |...
@antiracistsouth
While #Tulane school of medicine is rightfully being exposed for its contemporary racism towards faculty, staff, students (and patients) due to the racist firing of Dr. Princess Dennar, it’s important to call out the deeply anti-Black history of this school, specifically... 1/

The way #Tulane became a private institution (originally was a public university) at the end of Reconstruction to avoid having to desegregate. The school charter says it was founded for “white men” only... but there’s more (much more) to this story... 2/

cw: medical racism

Tulane’s school of medicine rose to national prominence for its collection of human “specimens” in their anatomy museum “rivaled only by Harvard”. How did it acquire these “specimens” you might ask?

The collection was “curated” by a Dr. Edward Souchon... 3/

Dr. Souchon was mentored by the late James Marion Sims, the “father of modern gynecology”, who himself had started collecting body parts, organs, and skeletal remains from enslaved Black people during slavery. Souchon continued “curating” his own collection in horrific ways. 4/

The Souchon Collection grew over several decades, eventually touring the state as a traveling “public health” exhibit- nearly all of the body parts stolen, harvested and illicitly acquired from formerly enslaved and poor Black people via Charity Hospital. 5/
HEALTH
AutisticSciencePerson
AutisticSciencePerson
@AutSciPerson
Me: Made a thread about how people don't understand hyperacusis and give advice that obviously I've already tried.

This person only a few tweets into the thread:


I only tweeted this because, like it or not, this is the general population's reaction to me talking about hyperacusis.

Similar replies happened when there was the whole "not clapping" article regarding Cambridge.

They're so quick to label disabilities as not real disabilities.

It's important to remember this when people may ask why we've never talked about this before, or why it's not talked about a lot.

Most people don't talk about their hyperacusis because if they do, people respond like this. So most of the time, honestly it's easier to say nothing

Yes I am petty enough to add screenshots of this toxicity to this thread:


Asking for accessibility is "pathetic." /s : )
HEALTH
Ottawa Public Health
Ottawa Public Health
@OttawaHealth
THIS IS A CATCHY & ATTENTION-GRABBING TITLE

Today, the Province will likely announce what zone of the reopening framework we'll shift into as of Tuesday. Whatever is announced, though, doesn't change what we need to do. Why?

Kindly read these 14 tweets & we'll tell you. (1/14)

Fun fact: COVID-19 does not follow us on Twitter. COVID doesn't know, or particularly care, if we're in the Red or Orange zone.

The behaviours of the virus do not depend on the current ‘zone’ of public health restrictions. And, to be perfectly candid, neither should ours. (2/14)

Once upon a time we used to say #WeAreInThisTogether in our messaging. Here's the thing: we are, but we aren't. Not everyone is experiencing this pandemic the same.

Nurses, doctors, paramedics & healthcare workers have experienced things much differently than most of us. (3/14)

Some people have been home & isolated for months, while others haven't been able to stop working.

Business owners & hospitality workers have been on a rollercoaster of openings & closures.

Students, parents, teachers & school staff have had to adapt to going from online (4/14)

to in-person learning (and back again) numerous times.
And this virus has disproportionately affected some groups more than others.

But there's the thing: while our experiences of this pandemic haven't been shared, we do have a shared goal.

And we can reach it together. (5/14)
HEALTH

You May Also Like

John Myles White
John Myles White
@johnmyleswhite
This post is pretty bizarre, but it manages to hit on so many false beliefs that I've seen hurt junior data scientists that it deserves some explicit

(1) The notion that R is well-suited to "building web applications" seems totally out of left field. I don't feel like most R loyalists think this is a good idea, but it's worth calling out that no normal company will be glad you wrote your entire web app in R.

(2) It is true that Python had some issues historically with the 2-to-3 transition, but it's not such a big deal these days. On the flip side, I have found interesting R code that doesn't run in modern R interpreters because of changes in core operations (e.g. assignment syntax).

(3) "Most of the time we only need a latest, working interpreter with the latest packages to run the code" -- this is where things get real and reveal some things that hurt data scientists. If this sentence is true, it's likely because you don't share code with coworkers.

(3) Really is a broader issue in data science: people only think of what they need to do their work if no one else existed and code was never maintained. Junior data scientists almost always operate on projects they start from scratch and don't have to maintain for long.
DATA SCIENCE
Jaya_Upadhyaya
Jaya_Upadhyaya
@Jayalko1
WEAPONS OF MAHADEV

Sarvaripati Shiva is one of the most fearsome manifestations of Mahadev. Assigned with destroying all of the universes at the end of time, Shiva is one of the most fearsome warriors. He is the Mrityunjaya.
Here are some weapons associated with him:


TRISHULA: the 3 pointed blades denote creation, maintenance, and destruction or the 3 Kalas – Past, Present and Future. They also represent 3 Gunas – Sattva, Rajas and Tamas).
Shiva’s trishul can only be stopped by Shiva himself.
@onlyonenetra @DetheEsha


Trishul is also said to represent Ida, Pingala, and Sushumna. These are the three basic nadis – the left, the right and the central – in the pranamaya kosha, or the energy body of the human system.
@iamkamyabuch @unever_followme


PARASHU: axe with 4 cutting edges which Shiva gave to Parashurama. In his anger, Parashurama used the parashu to get rid of the all the Earth’s tyrannical kshatriya caste twenty-one times over.
@harshasherni


CHANDRAHASA SWORD: The divine sword Chandrahasa literally means ‘the laughter of the moon’. Ravana gave this sword to Indrajit on different occasions especially to fight against Devas.
GIRISH: A special sword of Shiva with unique characteristics.
ALL
Advertisement
Jaya_Upadhyaya
Jaya_Upadhyaya
@Jayalko1
JWALAMUKHI TRIPURASUNDARI, UTHANAHALLI, MYSURU (KAR)
#bharatmandir

Jwalamukhi Tripursundari is believed to be the sister of Devi Chamundeshwari, the presiding deity of Mysuru
It is also that she represents the flaming mouth of Jalandhara, the demon whom Shiva crushed to death.


When Devi Chamundeswari was fighting Mahishasura, she observed that from every drop of blood that spilled out of Mahishasura, another demon was born. So she created Tripurasundari to ensure that no blood dripped from Mahishasura.


Tripura Sundari means beauty of the three worlds.
The murti was installed during Wodeyar rule. An utsava murti made of pancha loha is kept in the sanctum sanctorum.
Another shrine here is dedicated to Siddeshwara / Shiva surrounded by a beautiful wooden Mantapa.
@GunduHuDuGa
ALL
Brian Cates
Brian Cates
@drawandstrike
Great article from @AsheSchow. I lived thru the 'Satanic Panic' of the 1980's/early 1990's asking myself "Has eveyrbody lost their GODDAMN MINDS?!"


The 3 big things that made the 1980's/early 1990's surreal for me.

1) Satanic Panic - satanism in the day cares ahhhh!

2) "Repressed memory" syndrome

3) Facilitated Communication [FC]

All 3 led to massive abuse.

"Therapists" -and I use the term to describe these quacks loosely - would hypnotize people & convince they they were 'reliving' past memories of Mom & Dad killing babies in Satanic rituals in the basement while they were growing up.

Other 'therapists' would badger kids until they invented stories about watching alligators eat babies dropped into a lake from a hot air balloon. Kids would deny anything happened for hours until the therapist 'broke through' and 'found' the 'truth'.

FC was a movement that started with the claim severely handicapped individuals were able to 'type' legible sentences & communicate if a 'helper' guided their hands over a keyboard.
CULTURE
Michael King \U0001f1fa\U0001f1f8
Michael King 🇺🇸...
@8MichaelKing
Ever notice how the top niches are centered around health, wealth, and relationships?

There's a deep-rooted psychological (and biological) reason why.

And today, I'm gonna to explain all of it so you can start profiting off of this knowledge 💰💰

*Now, this thread is going to be long and in depth. Make sure to favorite the top tweet now so you can come back to it later.

So. Down to the very core of every living being (humans, dolphins, bacteria, aliens), there are only two drivers:
1. To survive
2. To reproduce

Right off the bat, we know that sex is a primary driver to human behavior.

This would also mean that each gender has its own insecurities regarding sex.

Men have a subconscious fear that their woman will leave them for someone more successful

Women have a fear that their man will leave them for someone younger & better-looking

We can conclude that men are attracted to looks, and women are attracted to status.

This is human nature down to its very core.

Crazy, blue-haired feminists will try to argue and say otherwise.

But, 50 years of feminism DOES NOT OVERRIDE millions of years of evolutionary biology.

Here's a quick visualization exercise so you can see how true all this is...
STARTUPS