Anonymous writes:
Dear Vincent and TWiV Team,
Thank you for all you do!
I’m a long time listener (just an accountant) and reacted strongly during TWiV 1187 (The tau of herpesvirus) when you, Vincent, spoke about latent herpes virus being reactivated during head trauma, leading to inflammation and dementia. As an elderly female survivor of domestic violence, the connection got my attention.
If you review the article ‘Head trauma wakes the brain’s sleeping viruses’ (NEUROIMMUNOLOGY | SCIENCE SIGNALING) I want you to consider for your audience that head trauma can come from more than the sports injuries referenced in the paper.
I’ve personally experienced the domestic abuser’s go-to technique: grab the victim by the throat and bang their head against a solid object such as the floor or a wall. Of course I’ve learned how common this is and that it mostly affects women.
I think this should be added to the suppositions of why more women than men suffer from Alzheimer’s. It is not just because women tend to live longer than men.
I will be sure to make my new doctor aware, and alert her to why I need to have a prescription of Acyclovir on hand to take at the first sign of a herpes eruption.
Gratefully,
John writes:
I share your sentiments about protein nomenclature. Why on earth should anyone continue to use a name that was acquired before anyone knew the function to attach to it? Give it a name in the paper and state in the text that it had earlier been given whatever name and even mention what that stood for.
But some people are OCD about original names. A long time ago there was someone in my department who worked on a protein called BiP from some organism that I’ve forgotten except that I think it that it was something in the micro space. It turned out that this same protein was known in other organisms and it had a different name in EACH of them. How in hell is anyone supposed to be able to follow the literature on that with different names in each? But this lab doggedly stuck to BiP and thought that I was the screwball.
Oh, and here’s the kicker. What did BiP stand for?? Get ready for it. Big Protein! Some people with PhDs give others with PhDs a bad name.
Otherwise, in an epitope not all that long ago you mentioned that your French from school degrades into the Italian that you learned as a kid. Similarly, I can usually read French pretty well after 5yrs of it in secondary school, but I’m incapable, hard as I’ll try, to say a sentence in French without ending in the Swedish that I learned during my 3.6yrs as a post-doc there.
What’s interesting is that apparently native languages and foreign languages are stored in different places in the brain, as are nouns and verbs in a given language. It’s like separate hard drives. I learned this long ago from IIRC a center column in a Wall St Journal that I happened to pick up. This has been figured out from study of certain stroke patients who lose their native language but retain the foreign, lose the verbs but retain the nouns, etc.
Meanwhile, as you’ve doubtless already seen, the Orange Julius admin is at it again, and the WaPo isn’t helping any with their coverage: https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2025/01/25/cia-covid-origins-fauci-republicans-lab-leak/
I left a comment that they should have talked to TWiV, but what’s heartening is that most of the commentariat @ WaPo isn’t buying it either. The AI summary of comments a little while ago was this:
“The comments reflect skepticism and criticism regarding the CIA’s low-confidence assessment favoring the lab-leak theory as the origin of the coronavirus pandemic. Many commenters argue that the assessment is politically motivated, with some suggesting it aligns with right-wing narratives or Trump’s influence. Others emphasize the lack of scientific evidence supporting the lab-leak theory and criticize the politicization of intelligence agencies. There is also a focus on the mishandling of the pandemic response by the Trump administration, with some commenters expressing that the origin of the virus is less important than the inadequate response to it.”
Also, Elizabeth Warren has fired a 34-page shot over JrK’s bow. VERY good! https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/25497323-sen-elizabeth-warren-letter-to-robert-f-kennedy-jr/
But here in Greater Braddock when I started to write this, 26Jan’25, it was white but thin, with a meaningful thaw predicted in about 8days.
Best regards,
John
Gerri writes:
Based on something Daniel said in his clinical update, I started subscribing to ProMed and I love their updates. But now I have a question: if the president just said that our health agencies can’t report, how will ProMed get information on the United States? I’m just trying to find a way to stay informed on what is surging and what’s not, and I thought this would be the answer, but then I realized not if they can’t get the information.
Thank you for being for truth! Get as cranky as you want because this is crazy town!
Gerri
Christiane writes:
Contact your members of Congress about the Pause in Federal Grant Funding
Charles writes:
Hello TWiVers;
I just read a post where the person tried to justify not blaming RFK Jr. for the measles outbreak on American Samoa based on an article by Dr. Vinayak Prasad. When I see Dr. Prasad’s name on something, I discount the work to just about zero. But who am I to question his work? Well someone that reads and saw a very nice website at McGill University, that I may have sent you before. It is worth a read, especially #6. Here is the link to “What’s Trending in the World of Pseudoscience”:
https://www.mcgill.ca/oss/article/critical-thinking-pseudoscience/whats-trending-world-pseudoscience
Thanks,
Charles Fischer