"We have purposely avoided directly confronting the issue of masks because it is such an emotional and political issue. Like waving a red flag in front of a bull, the topic elicits strong emotions which overwhelms

In a number of Sunday papers:
Scientific advisers said it was “hard to see” when the restrictions would end as new variants continued to emerge, delivering a potentially devastating blow to the travel industry. The prime minister said that after progress with vaccinations...

...”what we don’t want to see is all that work undone by the arrival of a new variant that is vaccine-busting”.
The idea is planted in people’s mind that this virus is mutating in such a way as to evade prior immunity. This is completely unfounded, certainly as regards immunity..

...gained naturally, after repelling the virus (which well around 99.9% of the population do, fewer, obviously in the very elderly & already ill, more in those younger & well). It’s important to appreciate that upon infection, the human immune system cuts up an infectious...

...agent into short pieces. Each of these short pieces of protein are presented to other cells in the immune system, like an identity parade. Our cells have a truly astonishing range of abilities to recognise different protein structures, and there will be some which recognise...

...each of the pieces of the invader. The cells which recognise a piece are instructed to multiply selectively so that, after a few days to a couple of weeks, our bodies contain large numbers of virus piece specific cells. These have a range of functions. Some make antibodies...

Let's talk about Avi Loeb and his theory about alien

First, I should disclose that I work at the fame research facility as Dr. Loeb, though I work in a different department and to my recollection we've never met.

He's a scientist; I'm in computer support.

With that out of the way...
The interview above is worth a read, and a lot of serious thought, because there's an idea there that's really critical to science, and it isn't whether or not aliens have visited (exactly).

It's about how fashion and culture and taboo have an unfortunately strong effect on science.

In particular he compares his theory on alien visitation with the multiverse theory.

Which of these is more deserving of ridicule?

Science is fundamentally a structure for forming hypotheses and then (critically) testing these hypotheses to see if they should be kept, rejected, or modified.

Ct values can be used to estimate epidemic dynamics UPDATE! Ct values are expected to change depending on whether the epidemic is growing or declining, and we harness this to estimate the epidemic trajectory. Lots of cool new analyses and methods!

Highlights:
- Cts from symptom-based surveillance change over time, but the effect is weaker
- Methods to infer incidence using single cross-sections of Cts
- Unbiased by changing testing coverage
- Gaussian process (wiggly line) model for incidence tracking using Ct values
2/12

This work is *JOINTLY led* with @LeekShaffer and PI’d by @michaelmina_lab. Thank you also to the ever insightful @mlipsitch and to coauthors @SanjatKanjilal @gabriel_stacey and @nialljlennon. 3/12

Premise: times since infection depend on the epidemic trajectory. Distributions of randomly sampled viral loads proxy times since infection. With calibration, Ct values can estimate growth rate. We focus on qPCR in SARS-CoV-2, but the principle applies to any outbreak. 4/12

Result 1: viral loads are shifted higher (Cts lower) during epidemic growth and lower (Cts higher) during decline when individuals are sampled *based on the onset of symptoms*. We simulated linelist data under symptom-based surveillance and looked at TSI and Cts over time. 5/12