Skip to main content

Home/ Groups/ PHE - Resources
Dennis OConnor

IT'S TIME TO BUILD | a16z Podcast by Marc Andreessen - 0 views

  •  
    Recommended by Dr. Michael Kurisu D.O.
Dennis OConnor

The Great Realisation - YouTube - 0 views

  •  
    Suggested by Ozzie Gontang, "A bed time story of how it started, and why hindsight's 2020."
Dennis OConnor

The Risks - Know Them - Avoid Them by Erin Bromage - 0 views

  •  
    Recommended by Tyler Orion, "It seems many people are breathing some relief, and I'm not sure why. An epidemic curve has a relatively predictable upslope and once the peak is reached, the back slope can also be predicted. We have robust data from the outbreaks in China and Italy, that shows the backside of the mortality curve declines slowly, with deaths persisting for months. Assuming we have just crested in deaths at 70k, it is possible that we lose another 70,000 people over the next 6 weeks as we come off that peak. That's what's going to happen with a lockdown. "
  •  
    Erin Bromage: I am a Comparative Immunologist and Professor of Biology (specializing in Immunology) at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth. I balance Teaching, Research, and Public Service (that is, when we are allowed in our labs)."
Dennis OConnor

Which Covid-19 Data Can You Trust? - 0 views

  • incomplete or incorrect data can also muddy the waters, obscuring important nuances within communities, ignoring important factors such as socioeconomic realities, and creating false senses of panic or safety, not to mention other harms such as needlessly exposing private information.
  • Right now, bad data could produce serious missteps with consequences for millions.
  • Whether you’re a CEO, a consultant, a policymaker, or just someone who is trying to make sense of what’s going on, it’s essential to be able to sort the good data from the misleading — or even misguided.
  • ...24 more annotations...
  • common red flags
  • Data products that are too broad, too specific, or lack context.
  • Public health practitioners and data privacy experts rely on proportionality
  • only use the data that you absolutely need for the intended purpose and no more.
  • Even data at an appropriate spatial resolution must be interpreted with caution — context is key.
  • Simply presenting them, or interpreting them without a proper contextual understanding, could inadvertently lead to imposing or relaxing restrictions on lives and livelihoods, based on incomplete information.
  • The technologies behind the data are unvetted or have limited utility.
  • Both producers and consumers of outputs from these apps must understand where these can fall short.
  • In the absence of a tightly coupled testing and treatment plan, however, these apps risk either providing false reassurance to communities where infectious but asymptomatic individuals can continue to spread disease, or requiring an unreasonably large number of people to quarantine.
  • Some contact-tracing apps follow black-box algorithms, which preclude the global community of scientists from refining them or adopting them elsewhere.
  • These non-transparent, un-validated interventions — which are now being rolled out (or rolled back) in countries such as China, India, Israel and Vietnam — are in direct contravention to the open cross-border collaboration that scientists have adopted to address the Covid-19 pandemic.
  • Models are produced and presented without appropriate expertise.
  • Epidemiological models that can help predict the burden and pattern of spread of Covid-19 rely on a number of parameters that are, as yet, wildly uncertain.
  • n the absence of reliable virological testing data, we cannot fit models accurately, or know confidently what the future of this epidemic will look like
  • and yet numbers are being presented to governments and the public with the appearance of certainty
  • Read Carefully and Trust Cautiously
  • Transparency: Look for how the data, technology, or recommendations are presented.
  • Thoughtfulness: Look for signs of hubris.
  • Example: Telenor
  • Expertise: Look for the professionals. Examine the credentials of those providing and processing the data.
  • Open Platforms: Look for the collaborators.
  • technology companies like Camber Systems, Cubeiq and Facebook have allowed scientists to examine their data,
  • The Covid-19 Mobility Data Network, of which we are part, comprises a voluntary collaboration of epidemiologists from around the world analyzes aggregated data from technology companies to provide daily insights to city and state officials from California to Dhaka, Bangladesh
  • This pandemic has been studied more intensely in a shorter amount of time than any other human event.
  •  
    "This pandemic has been studied more intensely in a shorter amount of time than any other human event. Our globalized world has rapidly generated and shared a vast amount of information about it. It is inevitable that there will be bad as well as good data in that mix. These massive, decentralized, and crowd-sourced data can reliably be converted to life-saving knowledge if tempered by expertise, transparency, rigor, and collaboration. When making your own decisions, read closely, trust carefully, and when in doubt, look to the experts."
Dennis OConnor

Gapminder Tools - 0 views

  •  
    Hans Rosling - Gap Minder - 2019 Iife Expectancy World Regions
Dennis OConnor

Brain Health In The Time of the Coronavirus - BrainHQ from Posit Science - 1 views

    • Dennis OConnor
       
      I've done 163 days of BrainHQ Training. I have experienced significant improvement in all categories of training: Attention, Brain Speed, Memory, People Skills, Intelligence, Navigation. Basic training schedule is every other day for 30 minutes.
  • If staying at home can contribute to a decline in our physical health—which we can address with an exercise program—what does staying at home and socially isolating do to our cognitive health?
  • our favorite topic at Posit Science: brain plasticity, the science of how the brain rewires itself through learning and experience.
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • brain plasticity is a two-way street. In the same way that the brain can build itself through positive brain plasticity, the brain can “unbuild” itself through negative brain plasticity.
  • while we are staying at home and avoiding social contact, we’re depriving our brains of the cognitive stimulation and new learning that naturally come through our everyday lives and interactions with friends, co-workers, and even random strangers.
  • get your quarantine cognitive exercise program started:
  • New learning
  • Cognitive engagement
  • BrainHQ
  •  
    I found Posit Science and BrainHQ thanks to a suggestion from Dr. Kurisu. He recommended Norman Doige's books, The Brain That Changes Itself; Personal Triumphs from the Frontiers of Brain Science and The Brain's Way of Healing: Remarkable Discoveries and Recoveries from the Frontiers of Neuroplasticity. One of the case studies is about Dr. Michael Merzenich, a research who was vilified by the medical establishment for investigating neuroplasticity. Great story. Merzenich is a founder of PositScience and BrainHQ.
Dennis OConnor

The Prime Cellular Targets for the Novel Coronavirus - NIH Director's Blog - 0 views

  • Posted on May 5th, 2020 by Dr. Francis Collins
  • it has been remarkable and gratifying to watch researchers from around the world pull together and share their time, expertise, and hard-earned data in the urgent quest to control this devastating virus.
  • a recent study that characterized the specific human cells that SARS-CoV-2 likely singles out for infection [1
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • This work was driven by the mostly shuttered labs of Alex K. Shalek, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Ragon Institute of MGH, MIT, and Harvard, and Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, Cambridge; and Jose Ordovas-Montanes at Boston Children’s Hospital. In the end, it brought together (if only remotely) dozens of their colleagues in the Human Cell Atlas Lung Biological Network and others across the U.S., Europe, and South Africa.
  • The discovery suggests that SARS-CoV-2 and potentially other coronaviruses that rely on ACE2 may take advantage of the immune system’s natural defenses.
  • t’s clear that these new findings, from data that weren’t originally generated with COVID-19 in mind, contained several potentially important new leads. This is another demonstration of the value of basic science.
  •  
    "Posted on May 5th, 2020 by Dr. Francis Collins"
Dennis OConnor

New WhatsApp chatbot unleashes power of worldwide fact-checking organizations to fight ... - 0 views

  •  
    Recommended by Carl Heine, Ph.D. "ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. (May 4, 2020) - The Poynter Institute's International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN) today launches a chatbot on WhatsApp to connect its millions of users with the translated work of more than 80 fact-checking organizations worldwide. By using the IFCN's chatbot on WhatsApp, citizens can easily check whether content about COVID-19 has already been rated as false by professional fact-checkers."
Dennis OConnor

Informaconnect: Bioprocessing & Manufacturing - Articles & Video - 1 views

  •  
    To see the Premium articles on Covid-19 research, you'll need to create an account. This is an archive of Informa connect publications. Covid-19 publications are marked premium and require creating an account to access. I created an account and have access to the contents. However, those marked "premium" still require setting up an account. The materials are professionally published and at first, glance seem extensive and credible. They are publishing in an easy to read and dynamic 'reader' format. It is very similar to what we are doing with Rise 360. There are lessons to be learned from this group. A question for PHE/Project Apollo: Do we want to require the public to 'join' our website to see 'premium content' like our upcoming e-learning courses? I feel the way Informaconnect is leveraging the Covid-19 research to build membership is a little crass. On the other hand, the contents are impressive and the sign-up process wasn't onerous.
Dennis OConnor

The race for coronavirus vaccines: a graphical guide - 0 views

  •  
    "Eight ways in which scientists hope to provide immunity to SARS-CoV-2 ."
Dennis OConnor

The Challenge of Tracking COVID-19's Stealthy Spread - NIH Director's Blog - 0 views

  • The first thing that testing may help us do is to identify those SARS-CoV-2-infected individuals who have no symptoms, but who are still capable of transmitting the virus.
  • The second way we can use testing is to identify individuals who’ve already been infected with SARS-CoV-2, but who didn’t get seriously ill and can no longer transmit the virus to others.
Dennis OConnor

Webinar May 13, 2020: Wearable Technology: What's The Role In Early Detection? JLABS - 0 views

  •  
    "If wearable devices have the ability to provide continuous sensing capabilities while accurately capturing signals, is there a role that wearable devices play in forecasting illness? What role can wearable technology play in an outbreak response at both the individual level and global level?   Join our panel with industry experts to discuss the potential for innovation in the use of wearable technologies for early detection."
Dennis OConnor

Coronavirus Antibody Tests: Can You Trust the Results? - The New York Times - 0 views

  • Of the 14 tests, only three delivered consistently reliable results. Even the best had some flaws.
  • Each test was evaluated with the same set of blood samples: from 80 people known to be infected with the coronavirus, at different points after infection; 108 samples donated before the pandemic; and 52 samples from people who were positive for other viral infections but had tested negative for SARS-CoV-2.
  • these tactics mean nothing if the test results can’t be trusted
  • ...14 more annotations...
  • The proportion of people in the United States who have been exposed to the coronavirus is likely to be 5 percent or less, Dr. Hensley said. “If your kit has a 3 percent false-positive, how do you interpret that? It’s basically impossible,” he said. “If your kit has 14 percent false positive, it’s useless.”
  • The duo recruited Dr. Jeffrey Whitman and Dr. Caryn Bern, who last year published an analysis of antibody tests for Chagas disease. Other graduate students and postdoctoral fellows volunteered to help perform the evaluations.
  • In all, the investigators analyzed 10 rapid tests that deliver a yes-no signal for antibodies, and two tests using a lab technique known as Elisa that indicate the amount of antibodies present and are generally considered to be more reliable.
  • The Bay Area team finished evaluating 12 tests in record time, less than a month. By comparison, the Chagas project required a team of three people working for more than a year just to compare four tests.
  • Having a study design already in hand helped speed the work, but there was one key difference. Decades of data have shown that Chagas disease elicits lifelong immunity.
  • Already Americans are scrambling to take antibody tests to see if they might escape lockdowns. Public health experts are wondering if those with positive results might be allowed to return to work.
  • Tests made by Sure Biotech and Wondfo Biotech, along with an in-house Elisa test, produced the fewest false positives.
  • A test made by Bioperfectus detected antibodies in 100 percent of the infected samples, but only after three weeks of infection.
  • None of the tests did better than 80 percent until that time period, which was longer than expected, Dr. Hsu said.
  • the tests are less likely to produce false negatives the longer ago the initial infection occurred,
  • There are multiple tests that have specificities greater than 95 percent.
  • Dr. Krammer has developed a two-step Elisa test that he said has 100 percent specificity and delivers a measure of the quantity of IgM and IgG antibodies a person has.
  • Scanwell Health, a Los Angeles-based start-up, has ordered millions of test kits from Innovita, a Chinese manufacturer, and has applied to the Food and Drug Administration to market the tests for at-home use.In the new study, the Innovita test detected antibodies in 83 percent of infected people and yielded a false-positive rate of 4 percent.
  • Scanwell Health, said the study looked at an earlier version of Innovita’s test and not the “newer, improved version” his company had ordered. “It will be interesting to see how it performs,”
  •  
    "A team of scientists worked around the clock to evaluate 14 antibody tests. A few worked as advertised. Most did not."
Dennis OConnor

COVID-19 Testing Project - Pre-print manuscript - 0 views

  • April 24, 2020: Read our pre-print manuscript. This is a preliminary report of work that has not been certified by peer review. This should not be relied on to guide clinical practice or health-related behavior and should not be reported in news media as established information.
  •  
    "We are a multidisciplinary team of researchers and physicians at UCSF, UC Berkeley, Chan Zuckerberg Biohub, and Innovative Genomics Institute."
Dennis OConnor

Researchers Cast Doubt On Theory Of Coronavirus Lab Accident : Goats and Soda : NPR - 1 views

  • April 23, 2020
  • Virus researchers say there is virtually no chance that the new coronavirus was released as result of a laboratory accident in China or anywhere else.
  • after corresponding with 10 leading scientists who collect samples of viruses from animals in the wild, study virus genomes and understand how lab accidents can happen, NPR found that an accidental release would have required a remarkable series of coincidences and deviations from well-established experimental protocols.
  • ...12 more annotations...
  • All of the evidence points to this not being a laboratory accident," says Jonna Mazet, a professor of epidemiology at the University of California, Davis and director of a global project to watch for emerging viruses called PREDICT.
  • all believe that the virus was transmitted between animals and humans in nature, as has happened in previous outbreaks — from Ebola to the Marburg virus — and with other known coronaviruses such as SARS and MERS.
  • Rather than a laboratory misstep, researchers believe that this new coronavirus reached humans in the same way that other coronaviruses have: through "zoonotic spillover," or humans picking up pathogens from wildlife.
  • the exact route from nature to people remains a mystery,
  • Regardless, genetic analysis shows the virus began to spread sometime in the fall or winter of 2019, says Robert Garry, a microbiologist at Tulane University. Those same analyses refuted an earlier theory that the virus was genetically engineered in a laboratory.
  • The CDC estimates that 6 out of 10 infectious diseases in people come from animals, including diseases caused by coronaviruses.
  • "As we change the landscape to suit our purposes, we come more and more into contact with viruses and other pathogens that we don't have much exposure to," says Dr. Brian Bird, associate director of the OneHealth Institute at UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine and a former CDC scientist.
  • "Zoonotic transmission" or "zoonotic spillover" generally happens three ways: through excretion (feces that comes into contact with humans), slaughter (meat consumed by humans) and vector-borne (an animal biting a human). But even under these circumstances, the virus must then overcome barriers within the human body, defeating the immune system, to successfully replicate and transmit between humans themselves.
  • Despite the evidence, misinformation about the virus's origins continue to proliferate. For Daszak, who has worked on other outbreaks, the pattern is all too familiar: "Every time we get a new virus emerging, we have people that say, 'This could have come from a lab,' " he says.
  • "It's a real shame that the conspiracy theories can get to the level they've got with policymakers,"
  • The political heat has strained the very scientific collaborations meant to detect these viruses as they emerge, warns Jonna Mazet.
  • Daszak says the time for finger-pointing is over. "We have a bat virus in my neighborhood in New York killing people," he says. "Let's get real about this."
  •  
    "April 23, 2020"
Dennis OConnor

The Lancet: Statement in support of the scientists, public health professionals, and me... - 1 views

  • Statement in support of the scientists, public health professionals, and medical professionals of China combatting COVID-19
  •  
    March 7, 2020: The rapid, open, and transparent sharing of data on this outbreak is now being threatened by rumours and misinformation around its origins. We stand together to strongly condemn conspiracy theories suggesting that COVID-19 does not have a natural origin. Scientists from multiple countries have published and analysed genomes of the causative agent, severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2),1 and they overwhelmingly conclude that this coronavirus originated in wildlife,2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 as have so many other emerging pathogens.11, 12 This is further supported by a letter from the presidents of the US National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine13 and by the scientific communities they represent. Conspiracy theories do nothing but create fear, rumours, and prejudice that jeopardise our global collaboration in the fight against this virus. We support the call from the Director-General of WHO to promote scientific evidence and unity over misinformation and conjecture.14 We want you, the science and health professionals of China, to know that we stand with you in your fight against this virus.
Dennis OConnor

The proximal origin of SARS-CoV-2 | Nature Medicine - 1 views

  • Here we review what can be deduced about the origin of SARS-CoV-2 from comparative analysis of genomic data
  • Our analyses clearly show that SARS-CoV-2 is not a laboratory construct or a purposefully manipulated virus.
  • The receptor-binding domain (RBD) in the spike protein is the most variable part of the coronavirus genome1,2. Six RBD amino acids have been shown to be critical for binding to ACE2 receptors and for determining the host range of SARS-CoV-like viruses7.
  • ...18 more annotations...
  • Theories of SARS-CoV-2 originsIt is improbable that SARS-CoV-2 emerged through laboratory manipulation of a related SARS-CoV-like coronavirus.
  • the genetic data irrefutably show that SARS-CoV-2 is not derived from any previously used virus backbone
  • we propose two scenarios that can plausibly explain the origin of SARS-CoV-2: (i) natural selection in an animal host before zoonotic transfer; and (ii) natural selection in humans following zoonotic transfer.
  • COVID-19 were linked to the Huanan market in Wuhan
  • it is likely that bats serve as reservoir hosts for its progenitor
  • Malayan pangolins (Manis javanica) illegally imported into Guangdong province contain coronaviruses similar to SARS-CoV-221
  • Although no animal coronavirus has been identified that is sufficiently similar to have served as the direct progenitor of SARS-CoV-2, the diversity of coronaviruses in bats and other species is massively undersampled
  • Detailed understanding of how an animal virus jumped species boundaries to infect humans so productively will help in the prevention of future zoonotic events.
  • It is possible that a progenitor of SARS-CoV-2 jumped into humans, acquiring the genomic features described above through adaptation during undetected human-to-human transmission.
  • All SARS-CoV-2 genomes sequenced so
  • are thus derived from a common ancestor that had them too
  • Estimates of the timing of the most recent common ancestor of SARS-CoV-2 made with current sequence data point to emergence of the virus in late November 2019 to early December 201923,
  • compatible with the earliest retrospectively confirmed cases
  • Basic research involving passage of bat SARS-CoV-like coronaviruses in cell culture and/or animal models has been ongoing for many years in biosafety level 2 laboratories across the world27, and there are documented instances of laboratory escapes of SARS-CoV28. We must therefore examine the possibility of an inadvertent laboratory release of SARS-CoV-2.
  • The finding of SARS-CoV-like coronaviruses from pangolins with nearly identical RBDs, however, provides a much stronger and more parsimonious explanation of how SARS-CoV-2 acquired these via recombination or mutation1
  • it is reasonable to wonder why the origins of the pandemic matter
  • For a precursor virus to acquire both the polybasic cleavage site and mutations in the spike protein suitable for binding to human ACE2, an animal host would probably have to have a high population density (to allow natural selection to proceed efficiently) and an ACE2-encoding gene that is similar to the human ortholog
  • More scientific data could swing the balance of evidence to favor one hypothesis over another.
Dennis OConnor

Karen Sothers - Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction - 0 views

  •  
    Karen has been my teacher since 2012. She is a true soul. Bringing her into the circle would be a wise decision.
Dennis OConnor

Pursuing Safe and Effective Anti-Viral Drugs for COVID-19 - NIH Director's Blog - 0 views

  • Remdesivir
  • when an RNA virus attempts to replicate, its polymerase is tricked into incorporating remdesivir into its genome as a foreign nucleotide, or anomalous letter.
  • undecipherable, extra letter brings the replication process to a crashing halt
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • An important step was just posted as a preprint yesterday—a small study showed infusion of remdesivir was effective in limiting the severity of lung disease in rhesus macaques [2]. That’s encouraging news. But the only sure way to find out if remdesivir will actually help humans who are infected with SARS-CoV-2 is to conduct a randomized, controlled clinical trial.
  • NIAID’s Division of Microbiology and Infectious Diseases, has already enrolled 805 patients at 67 testing sites.
  • All trial participants must have laboratory-confirmed COVID-19 infections and evidence of lung involvement, such as abnormal chest X-rays, rattling sounds when breathing (rales) with a need for supplemental oxygen, or a need for mechanical ventilation.
  • the study is double-blind, meaning
Dennis OConnor

Everything we know about coronavirus immunity, and plenty we still don't - 0 views

  • an accurate positive test may be hard to interpret: the virus is so new that researchers cannot say for sure what sort of results will signal immunity or how long that armor will last.
  • policymakers may be making sweeping economic and social decisions — plans to reopen businesses or schools, for example — based on limited data, assumptions, and what’s known about other viruses.
  • most experts do think an initial infection from the coronavirus, called SARS-CoV-2, will grant people immunity to the virus for some amount of time.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • With data limited, “sometimes you have to act on a historical basis,” Anthony Fauci,
  •  
    Recommended by Tyler Orion: "People who think they've been exposed to the novel coronavirus are clamoring for antibody tests - blood screens that can detect who has previously been infected and, the hope is, signal who is protected from another case of Covid-19."
« First ‹ Previous 321 - 340 of 769 Next › Last »
Showing 20 items per page