Marcus writes:
When you were discussing spiders and whether or not they eat roaches: yes, baby roaches get clobbered.
Spider joke: that spider you just killed for being in your apartment thought you were his roommate. Way to go.
Love your show,
mjr.
Matt writes:
In your response to the email by Peter in TWIV 1133, you claim there is no evidence that WIV was working on SARS-CoV-2, which is true. But it’s very different from your subsequent claim that you know what viruses WIV was working on – from their publications – and they weren’t working on SARS-CoV-2.
In some countries, it is not uncommon for institutes to be involved in both civilian and military research. It’s also common that publications require prior institute approval. We can judge what an institute is working on by its publications, but this does not automatically mean we see the complete picture.
An associated claim that I’ve heard from TWIV is that the absence of a whistleblower lends support to the virus not originating from a lab accident. This is nonsense. Zhang Yongzhen ended up without a lab because he released the genomic sequence without authorization. Humiliating country and party by whistleblowing on eg. a military project would likely be viewed as treasonous and the consequences much worse than for Zhang.
The above two arguments also fail to consider large cultural differences, and by association weaken the sensible scientific arguments that you make.
Regards,
Matt – a researcher in an East Asian institute who has worked on military projects in past jobs and has for the past decade been unable to publish without explicit upper-level authorization.
V: there is zero evidence that they were working on any virus close to CoV2. There is plenty of evidence for a natural origin. How many times do we have to say this?
Charles writes:
Hello TWiVers;
89 F, 32 C, looks like it could rain, but the forecast says we will stay dry for the rest of the day in Spotswood, NJ.
This email was prompted by a letter read on TWiV 1131 from Greg. Warning, I am sarcastic by nature and this email cries out for sarcasm. But sarcasm does not work well in emails. So, anything you see in this email that is written in italic and bold should be taken as sarcasm.
Dr. Jay Bhattacharya (specialty unknown to me, but from his papers he must be an epidemiologist) and Dr. Vinay Prasad (oncologist) are two of my three favorite Bay Area doctors. The third one being Dr. Scott W. Atlas (radiologist). Dr. Bhattacharya for his excellent work on the Great Barrington Declaration. Dr. Atlas for his incredible advice to President Trump during the COVID-19 pandemic. Dr. Prasad for making McGill University’s “What’s Trending in the World of Pseudoscience” (link 1). Trend #6: Anti-vaccination to be specific.
I am sure you remember Dr. Bhattacharya from the Great Barrington Declaration. You may not know of some of his other work. I first noticed him when I saw a news article about a pre-print paper he had written. The paper: COVID-19 Antibody Seroprevalence in Santa Clara County, California (link 2). This paper should be required reading in every entry level epidemiology class. Note, I did not use the sarcasm font. The paper drew my attention because it made two extraordinary claims. The first claim was that 2.76% of the county had been infected with SARS-CoV-2 by late March of 2020. That seemed high to me. The second claim was that the infection fatality rate was 0.17%. That was out of line with most other studies at the time that were close to 1%. Following Carl Sagan’s advice: “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence”. I looked through the paper looking for the evidence and how the paper could mess up and produce such an extraordinary result. I found the latter, but not the former. I found this in the paper: “We recruited participants by placing targeted advertisements on Facebook aimed at residents of Santa Clara County.” That told me all I needed to know. Who is more likely to volunteer for a study like this, a person that has been sick over the last three months or a person that has not? I think the answer is obvious. A prime example of selection bias if I have ever seen one. Not trusting my own analysis, after all I am just a computer programmer. I searched for qualified people that agreed with me. I found an article by Balaji S. Srinivasan, Peer Review of COVID-19 Antibody Seroprevalence in Santa Clara County (link 3). There are others, but I liked this one. I did not find any that agreed with Dr. Bhattacharya. This paper ended up published in the International Journal of Epidemiology. That never should have happened. I do not understand why people pay any attention to this person.
Not sure you have ever heard of Dr. Prasad, but I assure you the antivaxxers have. I have two big issues with Dr. Prasad and his views of vaccines for young people and how he came to those views. He treats myocarditis induced by vaccines and those induced by SARS-CoV-2 infection as equal. That is not my understanding. I think Dr. Griffin would agree with me. With this view, he does not believe that the mRNA vaccines should be given to young people. He also thinks that testing for the N protein antibodies at this point in time is still valid for determining if a person has been infected with SARS-CoV-2. The problem with this is that the antibodies fade with time and vaccinated people tend to produce S protein antibodies at a much lower rate (link 4). I don’t disagree with everything he says, but I do not agree with his main points. Others agree with me (link 5).
End of this long rant.
Thanks,
Charles
Links:
1: https://www.mcgill.ca/oss/article/critical-thinking-pseudoscience/whats-trending-world-pseudoscience
2: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7928865/
4: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1155/2022/8287087
Timothy writes:
Hello TWIV,
Long time listener.
I work at a small cancer centre in Ontario Canada, where a lot of our patients are treated with various immunotherapies.
There’s actually is a monoclonal antibody (leronlimab) targeted against the CCR5 receptor, which may eventually be used to treat metastatic breast cancer (Hamid et al, 2023) as CCR5 is expressed in a high percentage of metastatic breast cancer cells (Velasco-Velázquez M et al, 2012).
There’s actually a lot of promise for leronlimab’s use in treating triple negative breast cancer (Jiao X et al, 2021), though not yet approved in Canada.Just wanted to point this out.
Thank you for all your hard work in bringing science to the masses!
Kind regards,
Timothy
References:
Hamid R, Alaziz M, Mahal AS, Ashton AW, Halama N, Jaeger D, Jiao X, Pestell RG. The Role and Therapeutic Targeting of CCR5 in Breast Cancer. Cells. 2023 Sep 8;12(18):2237. doi: 10.3390/cells12182237. PMID: 37759462; PMCID: PMC10526962.
Velasco-Velázquez M, Jiao X, De La Fuente M, Pestell TG, Ertel A, Lisanti MP, Pestell RG. CCR5 antagonist blocks metastasis of basal breast cancer cells. Cancer Res. 2012 Aug 1;72(15):3839-50. doi: 10.1158/0008-5472.CAN-11-3917. Epub 2012 May 25. PMID: 22637726
Jiao X, Wang M, Zhang Z, Li Z, Ni D, Ashton AW, Tang HY, Speicher DW, Pestell RG. Leronlimab, a humanized monoclonal antibody to CCR5, blocks breast cancer cellular metastasis and enhances cell death induced by DNA damaging chemotherapy. Breast Cancer Res. 2021 Jan 23;23(1):11. doi: 10.1186/s13058-021-01391-1. PMID: 33485378; PMCID: PMC7825185.
Peter writes:
Vincent, I have been thinking of the last decade, more or less, of listening.
The essence of TWIV (and others) is/was your podcasts can go for hours. where you talk gibberish. Thanks to some one on the call (it could be any of you, that is the joy) I know a hawk from a handsaw, then someone chimes in to explain to the rest of us what that means.
And that is part of the beauty of what you do.
Many thanks, Pete
PS think you should capture much of DDD as you can, but you are already doing that.
Mike writes:
Hello Vincent & gang,
Long time listener.
Ran across this article and thought it was worth sharing since it gives a fairly cogent summary of current issues and challenges for science communication.
Enjoy, and keep up the great work.
All the best,
Mike
Lisa writes:
I have a suggestion for you after your weekly pick. Listen to NASA’s podcast “On A Mission“ season four.
Season four discusses the Mars rover program.
“In the fourth season of “On a Mission” we’ll be transported to the Red Planet with all five of NASA’s Mars rovers.”
It was fascinating. Well written. The guests are interesting to listen to. I enjoyed every one of the episodes.
– Lisa