Professor Francois Balloux is Director of the University College London Genetics Institute and a professor of Computational Systems Biology. He’s someone else I’ve discovered recently on Twitter who is a voice of calm and common sense. Below is a copy-paste of his latest series of 13 tweets, comparing Covid-19 to Influenza. It supports the relevance … More Comparing Covid: A Copy-Paste
Last year the World Health Organisation’s Global Influenza Programme published Non-pharmaceutical public health measures for mitigating the risk and impact of epidemic and pandemic influenza. Coronavirus is not an influenza but it is a respiratory virus with similar genetic material, similar transmission with epidemic/pandemic potential and similar human illness, so this document is highly relevant … More Public Health vs Panic
Professor Karol Sikora is a British Oncologist / Immunologist. He has taken a vocal stand on the topic of Covid-19. The UK’s backlog in cancer services due to Covid lockdown has been described as an unfolding disaster which will see many thousands of deaths for years to come. Delayed diagnosis and delayed or disrupted treatments … More Graphing Some Positive Vibes
Florence Nightingale invented the coxcomb during her time nursing soldiers in the Crimea in the 1850s. This pie chart demonstrated that more soldiers were dying from contagion (mainly cholera and typhus) than battle injury. It helped her convince authorities of the need for infection control practices. Another English influencer who used mathematical diagrams to explain … More Coxcombs and Bell Curves
This week I discovered that “TB Baby”, 18 months old and severely malnourished with no weight gain in many months, is unable to sit independently, unable to crawl, unable to weight bear on her legs and unable to walk. We don’t think help will be forthcoming. Perhaps, after all, it never was TB? It is … More Viral Panic
There has always been a nagging doubt somewhere in the back of my mind about the mainstream response to the Covid-19 pandemic. It started when a friend pointed out that when China locked down Hubei province, the violations of human rights were condemned quickly by the likes of Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and others. … More Questioning the New Normal
The other day a friend in Cambodia shared this photograph of a young man not receiving his anti-HIV medications. In the same email she told the story of a dog she was unable to save before it died of starvation in front of her. Cambodia continues to report no local transmission of Coronavirus despite concerted … More A Picture Paints a Thousand Words
People are going hungry. This immediately increases the rate of malnutrition allowing Tuberculosis to emerge. Stop TB Partnership have predicted an extra 6.3 million cases of TB and 1.4 million extra TB deaths over the next five years. During global lockdowns cases of notified TB have declined as people are unable to access the services … More Hidden Coronavirus Victims
Countries where the Covid-19 epidemic hit hard are starting to ease their lockdown restrictions. Paradoxically, Cambodia, who has not really experienced the epidemic except by way of psychological and economic impact, continues to receive strong messages of “the second wave is coming” and “risk level for transmission is at an alarming rate”. Until two days … More A Very Important Triangle
It is now over a month since Cambodia reported their last case of Coronavirus. They currently sit at 122 cases, 122 recoveries and 0 deaths. Nevertheless, messages of the grim reaper coming continue from various sources. The grim reaper certainly will come but perhaps not by actual Coronavirus, and rather by Coronavirus fears. As a … More An Interesting Picture
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