BC SCIENCE
Saved by @Alex1Powell

Sorry, Dr. Jha, but you shouldn't confuse medical care with the scientific enterprise. Although the 2 are commonly conflated, they are really distinct. 1/

 The goal of science is to acquire knowledge. The goal of medicine is to help the sick. That's a fundamental distinction.

Also, scientists stand apart from their subject matter--as distantly as possible. Physicians, on the contrary, are in "a relationship" with patients. 2/
Of course, medical care should rely on scientific knowledge, but that means that science should be at the service of the patient-physician relationship, not the other way around! /3
Also, scientific knowledge can never be the ultimate arbiter of medical decisions.

First, scientific knowledge is often limited or provisional, especially with a new disease.

Second, for every patient there are myriad circumstances that influence a medical decision. /3
Third, even if excellent scientific knowledge is present, the physician must always judge how it applies to the patient, or whether it applies at all.

Fourth--and most pertinent here--one cannot narrowly limit the scientific knowledge to only RCTs as you do in your statement. /4
By now, it's almost a cliché that the enthusiasm for EBM and RCTs did not live to its promise.

I won't rehash all the arguments here (and there are many!) but I'm sure you're familiar with this piece by Dr. Frieden from only a couple of years ago https://t.co/f7jHvDujUZ /5
(Note: I don't agree with a lot of what it says, but it serves to make my point). /6
Why do you think that doctors who wish to use a combination of safe, available, and affordable agents (and you know that they are so) "threaten" to "derail" the scientific enterprise? That makes no sense. /7
There is always a tension between the need to acquire scientific knowledge and the practical demands of patients and physicians. But, from a moral standpoint, it is the latter who should have priority. /8
The scientists should patiently (!) make their case and ask for volunteer participation in their experiments. They should not impose their desire for scientific advancement over and above the needs of patients and of the physicians who serve them. /9
You admit in your piece that "patients continue to demand" access to early therapies. Why are you so intent on denying them such access? /10
And, by the way, the therapy is not just HCQ. As I'm sure you know, those who advocate for early outpatient therapy propose various combinations of agents to tackle the virus--another reason existing RCTs may be inadequate. /11
I don't want to pronounce on whether these various approaches would "prove themselves" in a RCT.

My point is that your attacks miss the point: Medical standards cannot be reduced to scientific ones. /12
There was a time when saying so wasn't the least bit controversial. But the medical profession--or at least its leadership--seems to have lost the compass on this. /13
The root of the problem is in medical education, by the way.

If you have an interest in the historical background for this, here are a couple of the pieces that I wrote on this topic a few years ago: /14
https://t.co/q5ECfaN47b
and /15 https://t.co/gaOt8roUBK

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Brahmasri Samavedam Shanmukha Sarma
Brahmasri Samavedam Sh...
@SriSamavedam
The distinction of measuring the time in a scientific manner is achieved only by Bhāratīyas. Time has been measured from the smallest dimension to infiniteness. Even Time is envisioned as God and venerated. Paramēśvara was extolled as ‘Mahākāla’, the very embodiment of Time.


Nārāyaṇa Upaniṣad envisages Nārāyaṇa as ‘Kālaśca Nārāyaṇa:’, the very embodiment of Time, ages ago. The measurement of Time by Bhāratīyas is as ancient as the very God Himself. Count of many future ages has also been done even from very ancient times.

Since these calculations aren't dependent upon the birth & death of any individual, but are done based on astronomical science, they are thoroughly scientific. Unfortunately, during the British rule, the Bhāratīya way of Time measurement was casted as an illusion...

...with an evil intention to establish their command. Though it is 70+ years since independence, blindly time is still measured as BC & AD or CE in this religion-less land without even making any attempt to comprehend the magnanimity of Bhāratīya Time measurement methods.


Time measurement based on inhalation and exhalation : (image)
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Benedikt Kuhnhaeuser
Benedikt Kuhnhaeuser
@BenKuhnhaeuser
The calamoid palms 🌴 have over 500 species spread across the world, but their higher-level relationships were a bit of a mystery. Until now.

Out today in #MolecularPhylogeneticsAndEvolution:

A robust phylogenomic framework for the calamoid palms https://t.co/JiCbSUlheH

1/10


First some background info, so that you know what we are talking about:

Calamoid palms look a bit like snakes 🐍 (don't they!?!), because their fruits are covered in overlapping scales. And with their often fierce spines, they are equally fearsome. 😱

2/10


They are classified into 17 genera, 10 subtribes and 3 tribes. They have an amazing variety of growth forms, from stemless to climbing to tree habit. 🌱🌴

3/10


But as I said, their relationships have been a bit of a mystery. Here's the varying relationships previous studies found over the last 20 years.

4/10


We tackled this mystery with a phylogenomic approach: we sampled almost a thousand genes (a hundred times more than previous studies!) of 75 species representing all calamoid tribes, subtribes and genera.

The resulting data matrix is pretty massive...

5/10
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Eric Feigl-Ding
Eric Feigl-Ding
@DrEricDing
JUST ONE PERSON—UK 🇬🇧 scientists think one immunocompromised person who cleared virus slowly & only partially wiped out an infection, leaving behind genetically-hardier viruses that rebound & learn how to survive better. That’s likely how #B117 started. 🧵 https://t.co/bMMjM8Hiuz


2) The leading hypothesis is that the new variant evolved within just one person, chronically infected with the virus for so long it was able to evolve into a new, more infectious form.

same thing happened in Boston in another immunocompromised person that was sick for 155 days.

3) What happened in Boston with one 45 year old man who was highly infectious for 155 days straight before he died... is exactly what scientists think happened in Kent, England that gave rise to #B117.


4) Doctors were shocked to find virus has evolved many different forms inside of this one immunocompromised man. 20 new mutations in one virus, akin to the #B117. This is possibly how #B1351 in South Africa 🇿🇦 and #P1 in Brazil 🇧🇷 also evolved.


5) “On its own, the appearance of a new variant in genomic databases doesn’t tell us much. “That’s just one genome amongst thousands every week. It wouldn’t necessarily stick out,” says Oliver Pybus, a professor of evolution and infectious disease at Oxford.
SCIENCE
Yardley Yeadon
Yardley Yeadon
@MichaelYeadon3
https://t.co/xvP6tVlIaE
Quite a surprise. Ferguson isn’t qualified to comment on such things. He lacks understanding of basic biological concepts, partly explaining why his predictions are often so extreme.


That said, I’ll take him as an ally. It’s clear we’re already at herd immunity. How can I be sure? London had a huge peak of excess deaths in spring. The timing of peak deaths showed clearly that the pandemic was self-limiting. Recall much debate about whether the interval...

...between lockdown & peak deaths was long enough for lockdown to have been the cause of reducing deaths? The answer was “no”. But it was close & I can understand people thinking “well, it’s close, so perhaps it was lockdown that did it?”, thereby establishing a foundational...

...myth favoured by those who genuinely believe lockdown saves lives (it clearly doesn’t).
I’ll get to London & here immunity. But those wavering about the evidence about lockdown in spring really will benefit from cogitating on this graph.


In blue are the 30 trusts with the earliest date of peak deaths in spring. In red, the 30 with the latest peak deaths. For me, this is proof that national lockdown, which began Mar 23, played no role whatsoever in turning the pandemic. You’ll see some areas had peak daily...
SCIENCE
Asbj\xf8rn St\xf8ylen
Asbjørn Støylen
@strain_rate
1/ #LBBB generates often a classical pattern on #EchoFirst. The pattern is very distinctive in Tissue Doppler of the septum.


The classical pattern arises from the time lapse of the activation and relaxation of the two walls, creating a pattern of interaction due to a sequence temporal imbalances of the tension between the two walls.


2/ As the septum is activated first, it contracts (shortening - septal flash) without activation of the lateral wall, which stretches. This generates slower pressure build up than a normal IVC, which then is prolonged.


3/ During ejection, the LV volume decreases, so both walls shorten. Tension, however, declines first in the septum, as this was activated first. This leads to a tension imbalance, so the lateral wall continues to shorten, the more relaxed septum stretches.


4/ The stretching of the septum builds up an elastic tension in the septum, which is released as recoil, when tension declines in the lateral wall, showing a post systolic shortening in the septum which is due to elasticity.
SCIENCE

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Black movie goers know which movies are for us and which films aren’t. We really don’t like our stories being made into films that center (and humanize) people that hate us. The filmmakers/studio know that by naming the film “The Green Book”, black movie goers...

...are going to be expecting a story about black people trying to safely navigate the country (real history) and instead will get a white savior film. Like folks went to see Detroit thinking it was about the riots...

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This feeds into the ignorant anti-Black American stereotype of “Black Americans don’t have any culture/history/mythology” or whatever. That our stories are still both being used while simultaneously erased in 2018 is wild to me. It’s gonna clean up come award season. 🤦🏾‍♀️

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In regards to the #CapitolCoup, I’m in a unique position. I monitored forums ahead of time and then was present for the coup itself.

These are my observations based on what I saw and the evidence that’s been collected so far. I reserve the right to adjust my analysis as needed.

Let’s talk about the organization of the coup first. Seeing some people insist that the coup must have been highly planned and coordinated.

Yes and no. This was a #StochasticCoup. We’ll see little evidence of direct communication between Trump and the insurrectionists.

Within the insurrectionists, there was not one group that executed the storming of the Capitol.

Rather, there were a number of smaller groups working independently towards the same goal. I expect you’ll see little evidence that these various groups communicated with each other.

What you will see is detailed planning and coordination within these small groups.

Then there were the joyriders, those Trump supporters who weren’t directly involved in any plotting but who were more than happy to go along for the ride once the coup was in motion.

After four years, the insurrectionists were carefully attuned to Trump’s messaging.

Every tweet and statement of his was treated as marching orders and carefully dissected for meaning.

It’s why shutting down Trump’s Twitter account was so important.
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Dr. Jane Clare Jones
Dr. Jane Clare Jones
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So, on the subject of bonkers hyperbolic pretzeling over the Bell judgement, Grace 'destroy books I don't like & make inappropriate jokes about sterilising teenage girls' Lavery has some thoughts.

Tell me why my feminism is wrong Grace.

Oh

Well, if anyone thought the Bell judgment was going to make TRAs reconsider making massively overblown claims with no evidence backed up with nothing but a thick wadge of emotional blackmail.... HAHAHA, no one thought that.


A high court in the UK made a delimited judgment about teenager's ability to consent to puberty blockers. This puts all trans people everywhere in the world at risk.

Because if any human anywhere has any thoughts that deviate in any way from the rote line dictated by

the trans rights movement, this puts all trans people everywhere in mortal danger.

Let's be honest Grace. It doesn't put trans people at risk. It puts trans ideology at risk. Because trans ideology depends on the idea of innate gender identity, and the trans child is the

necessary material evidence of the ontology of gender identity.

That is, children are being medicalised to provide evidence to underwrite adults identities.

Nothing to see here.
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Professor
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Some ofthe biggest breakouts occur after Volatility Contraction, the analogy is that more a spring is pressed, higher it jumps whenever it gets released.

There is a VCP Scanner on chartink (Not mine). This may also be used to find potential Breakouts.
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Dr Catherine Pemble is #SocialDistancing
Dr Catherine Pemble is...
@CatherinePemble
Right, screw it. Here's a thread on *that* FBLive by Alex Cairnie about #Govanhill. Lets do a watch-through shall we? (Mind, I'm a resident of Govanhill, and a sociologist. I'm also 5'3, and a visibly queer woman so if half his claims are true I should be living in terror)

00:30: Welcomes viewers and uses points out that his videos are only getting attention b/c they're 'horrific'. Directs folk to his Youtube page. So already clout hunting.

1:08: "I've been warned to stay out of Govanhill. I'm a marked man" (proceeds to use a beanie as a disguise)

1:30 "Laughing and joking aside, here's somebodys front garden." Proceeds to show litter and claim its thrown from windows and this is 'common'. I know a handful of streets with litter issues like this, but its neither common nor unique to #govanhill and other deprived areas.

2:10 "Don't be under any illusion I'm only showing you the bad bits" - only shows you the bad bits.

3:45: He's had offers of help, but hes said no because hes not responsible for 'anybody elses safety' Good lord.

5:01: "Its not that bad. But its not all good either" -Correct

6:00: TW: child abuse - He starts claiming to have been contacted by a health professional and told about child abuse 'in the area'. Huge ethical issues here as the 'professional' who has 'been in the game a long time' is reporting to Facebook Dude and not authorities.
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