Week of December 18, 2023
I'm unsure how much credit my wife and I deserve for our kids' success. Nevertheless, our younger son's acceptance to his first-choice college last week evokes enormous pride and a bit of anxiety for what comes next (for my wife and I). I am surprisingly unsettled to see the impending end of the "get your kids through high school" phase of life. Irrespective of what we choose, I have been told the "live in an R.V. and rove between our sons' colleges" plan is a non-starter.
---
Hospitalization rates and wastewater RNA concentrations continue to rise. Anecdotally, I've prescribed three patients Paxlovid (the oral antiviral) in the last week, which is more than I have in the previous six months.
The N.Y. Times COVID Tracker reflects only CDC-gathered hospital data. Hospitalization data are a (lagging) indicator.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/us/covid-cases.html
Wastewater monitoring is more of a LEADING indicator.
The Inside Medicine COVID dashboard
------
COVID articles
I can offer no better summary of the latest COVID information than sharing Dr. Eric Topol's blog. He covers the JN.1 variant, the comforting data on the protection offered by the XBB.1.5 (Fall 2023) boosters, promising data on treating long COVID, updates on inhaled COVID-19 vaccines, and how he recently became infected with COVID-19 at work (and what he did about it).
https://erictopol.substack.com/p/a-covid-update
COVID-19 (and MAYBE other viruses) induces significant shifts in the human gut microbiome. This study from a European consortium of academic scientists found that in patients with severe COVID-19, typical gut bacteria had "a striking increase in the expression of both virulence factors and antimicrobial resistance genes." These data imply that during COVID infections, normal gut bacteria change - possibly becoming pathogenic. It is unclear if these kinds of changes are unique to coronaviruses. If nothing else, we are learning a lot from our 3+ year, widescale study of unfettered and repeated coronavirus infections.
https://x.com/ejustin46/status/1734775826778935752
and
https://microbiomejournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s40168-023-01472-7#Abs1
Medical Trends and Technology
WIRED published a thorough and easily understood article about Immusoft, a company manipulating the genetic code of B-cells to make a specific enzyme in patients with mucopolysaccharidosis type I, or MPS I - a rare and fatal congenital disease. B-cells are harvested from patients, altered with CRISPR, and then re-infused into the patients. The article nicely details how Immusoft manipulates cellular genomes, what they are watching out for, and the potential to change the lives of MPS I patients.
https://www.wired.com/story/b-cells-genetically-engineered-immusoft/
I don't usually share investing analyses, but this Seeking Alpha rundown on how Apple thinks about healthcare is fascinating. All healthcare tech has a tricky balance - the most significant impact (cost savings, disease trajectory changes, etc.) only applies to a small number of potential users ( who are often economically disadvantaged or unengaged patients). This article explores how Apple seeks to find the right features and functions to address highly prevalent medical issues while making a meaningful, measurable impact. (For full disclosure, I own Apple stock.)
https://seekingalpha.com/article/4658143-apple-potential-healthcare-giant-in-the-making
Infographics
I found a random 2014 Washington Post infographic - "Where you would end up if you swam in a straight line from various places in the Western Hemisphere." For example, if I swam east from my house, I would (eventually) be in Portugal. Take that, Diana Nyad.
https://cdn-blog.adafruit.com/uploads/2014/06/Across-the-ocean11.png
Things I learned this week
If your family is looking for new ways to celebrate Christmas, look to the Takanakuy tradition from Chumbivilcas, Peru. Tankanakuy is an annual "festival" held on December 25th, during which community members engage in fight-club-style boxing to settle disputes. In the Christmas spirit, hair-pulling and biting are not permitted. The winner must knock out their opponent (either for real or a technical K.O., as determined by the crowd). While I am all for celebrating different cultural traditions, I will stick to the more traditional Jewish Christmas activities of Chinese food and the movies.
https://x.com/historyinmemes/status/1735043393879683276
and
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_m1lt3VLxSI
and
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Takanakuy
I've recently searched for ways to describe social media influencers' speech cadence and patterns (called "TikTok voice"). It is a somewhat pressured false enthusiasm coupled with hyperbolic adjectives like "obsessed." During my "research" on this topic, I found a related but more prevalent voice - "Pilot Voice." Numerous people have written about how many pilots use similar cadence, tone, and vocabulary when making announcements over the plane P.A. system. (Given how much I travel, I was surprised I didn't notice this, too). Based on these findings, I am now listening for a "doctor voice," a "lawyer voice," and a "business consultant PowerPoint voice."
TikTok Voice
Pilot Voice
and Malcolm Gladwell had a Revisionist History episode on this topic!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IzHJL9eMKvM
Living with A.I.
When an article starts with the sentence, "Balls of human brain cells linked to a computer have been used to perform a very basic form of speech recognition," you know you are in for a good time. And, the efforts at training biological tissue as a neural network capable of calculations and unsupervised learning feels one step closer to turning science fiction into science fact. Interestingly, biological computing involving brain organelles is called "Brainoware."
and
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41928-023-01069-w.epdf
Animated A.I. art of the week from the topics above
(I generated a DALL-E image and used Runway A.I. to animate it.)
Prompt:
Petri dish with lumps of brain cells at the top of a robot body wearing airline captain clothes, flying a plane with a speech bubble stating, "This is your Captain, and I'm obsessed with landing you at Sephora."
https://app.runwayml.com/creation/229abfe0-9e75-4db6-8e86-e3733c6c024e
Clean hands and sharp minds,
Adam
Comments
Post a Comment