Before we get too far into 2021, I thought I’d write a thread recapping some of the research that came out of my lab in 2020. Most of this work was led by my talented team of graduate students, Kerrianne Morrison, @kmdebrabander, and @DesiRJones.

UAMS has taken the extraordinary step of asking leadership across our health system to refrain from traveling over the coming holidays and report to work or be available if needed. Other hospitals in our state are considering similar measures.

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Although the health care system in the state of Arkansas is stressed right now, it is holding up, and additional surge capacity exists. But that capacity is not infinite.  Every day, we become more and more concerned about our ability to manage what lies ahead.

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As health professionals, we are doing all we can. However, one thing is certain. We can’t meet this challenge unless you are with us. As Secretary Jose Romero of the AR Dept. of Health has said, we are in the midst of a “surge within a surge” in this COVID-19 pandemic.

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Right now, the @UAMS_COPH COVID-19 forecasts, which have been strikingly accurate so far, indicate that the density of COVID-19 infections exceeds each of our abilities—yours & mine -- to avoid contact with actively infected individuals in our state...

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...whenever we venture outside our homes. They predict an exponential increase in coronavirus deaths in the next two weeks, more than we saw in the first four months of the pandemic. We may soon exceed the number of beds, ventilators, & most importantly...

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I gave masks the benefit of the doubt in the spring/summer of 2020. I have since changed my mind and see no scenario where it makes sense to wear them in public.

Even if they provided 100% protection, I believe masks to be harmful. An explanation below 👇👇👇

Let's say masks provide 100% protection to both the wearer and others (perhaps non-masked individuals) in close proximity. This is perhaps the worst scenario.

The immune system requires a consistent influx of both microbes and viruses to remain trained.

Halting the exposure to microbes and viruses is extremely harmful in the long run and leaves you exposed to enormous risk in the future.

Without training, you will become susceptible to even weaker microbes that your immune system would have normally handled with ease.

This is no different than laying in bed for a prolonged period of time. Walking up stairs, an activity that normally would not be a challenge, would all of a sudden become difficult.

Your immune system would slowly degrade similarly not able to complete previous tasks.

This is particularly harmful to children who's immune systems do not have the training of adults and would leave them more vulnerable. Children have the most life to lose so it harms them the most.

Our conscious experience exists. In fact, it's the only thing you can directly observe, as everything about reality and how we perceive it is filtered through how our brains process stimuli and information. You are the only one who can define who and what you are.

Don't get me wrong, I am a materialist who believes the universe exists in the absence of beings who can observe it from an intelligence standpoint, but we are all collections of atoms, our function governed by chemical processes, not perfectly replicated by the process of birth.

Our means of DNA replication is imprecise because of billions of years of random evolution. We are on one branch of many, and there is countless variation in how all living beings are formed, and how we classify traits of those creatures, including sex and reproduction methods.

It would be an error to say that people who are intersex and/or transgender are the results of mistakes or errors in reproduction, because it implies DNA is "trying" to create a binary model of people and sometimes gets it wrong. It doesn't "try" to do anything; DNA != conscious.

Rather, our biological blueprints are not precise, and this is true for all living things. We can crossbreed plants and animals because of that imprecise nature, it's responsible for what we perceive as the "races" of people, etc. We can observe variation everywhere.

@sbarnettARK Epigenomic biomarkers are becoming more established for #LiquidBiopsy and #CancerScreening, and we have seen the big players positioning themselves in this #epigenomics race recently.

Catching signs of #cancer early is crucially important to the disease management and survival rates, so the question is: how can we find out if there is something wrong going on early enough?

The first generation of high-throughput technologies was predicated on finding mutated (tumor) DNA in the individual's body (somatic), different from their (normal) DNA. Tumor/Normal (T/N) comparisons of the individual's samples, biopsies or ctDNA will indicate if there

are signs of cancer already underway. So why do we need #epigenomic profiling if we can do all this with the detection of mutations? Well, the argument is that if you can see sufficient mutated copies of DNA, cancer may already have progressed beyond the initial stages.

Then people asked the question: is there an earlier mark that we can detect for earlier stages of cancer before the Tumor/Normal mutations signal amps up? Here is where #epigenomics profiling took hold.