Pinned toot
A Concerned Scientist

I've alluded to the fact that I spent many years working on a nation-wide(US) water testing project once and that I don't own the results, they were never published, and I can't specifically give away those results that I don't own. All of this recent talk about PFAs in water is absolutely killing me. This new water testing is going to take place over the next three years, and it's important to note that it's *only* talking about a handful of chemicals.

I've found that particularly US-based people really think their water is great and vastly overestimate how great it is. It comes out of the tap, you drink it and you don't die of waterborne illnesses. Woohoo. Really, it's an accomplishment.

But until you spend time in a water testing lab you don't really begin to realize how much isn't tested for in that water you drink and bathe in. It's just not possible.

People would ask me all the time "How do I get my water tested for everything?" You can't. Think of the story recently about how many chemicals are in plastics, for instance. 16,000-ish and over 4,000 that are potentially hazardous. Basically zero of those are tested for in any way whatsoever. To get something tested, someone has to care enough that it's there in the first place. Then someone has to create testing procedures and standards. Then there has to be a market for that test.

Let's JUST talk about PFAs. You know how many there are? Ballpark is ~15,000 different PFAs. You know how many are tested in this new EPA program? 25.

Now that we've established that, just how likely is it that testing will find PFAs in YOUR water in the US?

ewg.org/interactive-maps/pfas_

Pretty likely.

While I can't really talk about what states are likely to find if they honestly look, what I do talk about, and have for probably 20 years now, is what I did when I realized what's really in your water. I put in a whole home filter outside of our home to filter out a lot of stuff for showering and hand washing. No one so much as cleans vegetables here unless the water comes from the reverse osmosis system in our kitchen. Drinking water, ice, pasta water, fruit and veggie washing water, etc all comes from that.

I'm very sensitive to the fact that not everyone can do all of that. It's a step in the right direction that the EPA is beginning to do something about this, but it's far later than it should be and doesn't go nearly far enough. All I can say is that you should demand better, and not just about PFAs, but all contaminants in your water supply.

And before anyone asks, yes, the spring water on the homestead is about as clean as you can find anymore. Under 10 TDS and no contaminants that I've found to date. Again, can't test for everything even if you wanted to and had a million dollars to throw at it. It was a major selling point on the property for us.

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Pinned toot
A Concerned Scientist

Big thank you to @EricCarroll for pointing out this new WHO document on SARS-CoV-2 transmission.

This document is pretty complex, in-depth, dense, and I still expect it to evolve as we learn along the way. They have some of the correct people to be working on this, for once. Hello Lidia Morawska signing off on it at the beginning of the forward.

First, a tldr. If you don't care about how it came to be, or the science, and just want to know the outcome, here it is:

partnersplatform.who.int/tools

Go to the calculator, enter your data, and come out with a probability of infection in a given situation along with the number of expected secondary infections from that interaction.

Here's the document itself if you want to follow along:

iris.who.int/bitstream/handle/

Disclaimer - This is evolving science.

I'm going to split this up in a thread, because I took a lot of notes of what stood out to me on a first read, and I hope to come back to it, and use it as a general reference moving forward.

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Pinned toot
A Concerned Scientist

I've been thinking about writing a little about the latest CDC guidance for a couple of days, but, life's been hectic. So, instead of one of my patented novels, I'm going to use the quote-toot feature, let you read what Dr Ding already ranted about, and pick it up from there(don't worry, it'll still be a novel, you know how I roll), because what Dr Ding posted is absolutely correct. It's awful. It's vague and we all know what the CDC intentions are in putting this out, and I'm going to trust that while I've been fighting appliance companies and driving thousands of miles we're all at the same starting point here because that's been talked about ad nauseam already.

What do you, the COVID cautious community, do from here?

One, if you can and it's your thing, protest. Here's a decent place to start. Wear masks, though? I'm really dreading seeing maskless people protesting. Don't be that person.

lcdcmarch15.com

Two, while media is pushing the "24 hour quarantine" because it fits their narrative, we need to be pushing what's in there that's *good* and there is some!

Every time anyone is out there spreading diseases, and claiming they're following the CDC guidance, go over what the CDC says they *should* be doing, in the actual guidance. Not someone's interpretation of the guidance, or some infographic cooked up by someone in the media.

cdc.gov/respiratory-viruses/pr

"When you go back to your normal activities, take added precaution over the next 5 days..."

It doesn't say "should" and it doesn't hedge. If people want to go out after 24 hours and your boss wants you in at work, there should be added precautions in place, for at least *5 DAYS*. Let's go over them.

First thing in the guidance is taking steps for cleaner air.

cdc.gov/respiratory-viruses/pr

Is this person who's symptomatic and out in the world doing what they can from the guidance, such as:

- Bringing fresh air in
- Setting the HVAC fan to "ON"
- Using a HEPA filter
- Moving activities outdoors

Has your boss:

- Ensured that HVAC systems are meeting minimum air flow codes
- Tested to see if indoor ACH are 5 or over

If not, then THEY are not following the CDC guidelines.

Second thing in the guidance is hygiene.

cdc.gov/respiratory-viruses/pr

I don't want to beat a dead horse here, everyone seems to just be coughing and sneezing at will with maximum aerosol velocity. That's not what we do, nor what CDC guidance is, surprisingly.

Third thing is masks!

cdc.gov/respiratory-viruses/pr

Scroll past the dude with a baggy blue on. That's just embarrassing.

What does the CDC guidance actually say?

- Wear the best mask that you can, preferably an N95.
- At least minimally fit test it.

Again, it's key to point out to people that if they are sick and out of their home, or you are sick and they are forcing you into work, or jury duty, etc. everyone needs to be following the actual guidance and that means there should be masks involved. Good masks.

The fourth one is physical distancing.

cdc.gov/respiratory-viruses/pr

The key point here is that there's none of this 6' for 15 minutes nonsense.

- Avoid being *near* someone with a respiratory virus
- Avoid crowded areas

Your boss should, and I want to quote this exactly:

"Provide employees with paid time off and flexible telework policies to support workers to stay home if sick."

Not doing any of that? Then you're not following the actual guidance. Period.

The fifth, and final thing, that should be happening under this new guidance is testing.

cdc.gov/respiratory-viruses/pr

Should we have a single panel test that tests for COVID, RSV, flu, etc? Of course. Here in the US, do we? Nope.

So they tell you to test for COVID, and, importantly, mentioned again:

"Provide employees with paid time off to seek testing for respiratory viruses, as needed."

tldr; Yes, the guidance is intentionally vague and put out in a way that everyone will go "24 hours. Got it."

Don't fall for that. Make your boss read it ALL. Tell your co-workers they're not following the guidance if they tell you that they are. Tell your family and friends that the new guidance isn't "24 hours" and nothing else. Force them to acknowledge ALL of the steps.
QT: bird.makeup/users/trekkerteach

TrekkerTeach  
"This is honestly one of the WORST guidelines the @cdcgov has ever written. It is purposefully vague & allows a myriad of loopholes & subje...
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Pinned toot
A Concerned Scientist

I have some personal news to share. We're moving! As some of you already know, we have been working on a formerly abandoned homestead site, completely off-grid, with a small log cabin in the woods, for years now, trying to make it livable again. We are finally at the point where we can make this happen in the coming months. We are tentatively planning this for the summer.

For the first time in my life, really, I will no longer be an active chemist. The push and pull of going back into the office, where I am not needed, has reached a boiling point for me. I am resigning from the company I helped start and build and moving onto the next thing in my life as a forest farmer, dad and homeschool parent. Wish me luck. I've done one thing for the last 30+ years and now I'm going cold turkey away from it, to something pretty much the opposite.

I think I will be posting some about our successes and failures with the new adventure. Don't expect any pictures of us or anything. I have never found a picture of myself on the internet and there's not one of either of my boys. We're pretty private people, but, hopefully there'll be lots of nature photos along our trails and pictures of our soon-to-be plant based foods.

This year I am hoping to get some good information from the brilliant minds of Mastodon about a lot of things, including:

gardening. We have an ~800 sq ft, completely empty greenhouse. It has a large built in fan on one end, but no power. We have some solar panels on a hillside near it that are decades old, but still functional, that we are planning on repurposing to power the greenhouse along with the EcoFlow solar generators that we previously used to power the cabin before getting our permanent power up and running. Depending on how power hungry the motor is, we may need to add onto that. We'll see! I honestly don't know how many hours a day we'll need use the fans, for instance.

It's a blank slate, though. Zone 7b under the latest USDA map. Concrete floor. Otherwise completely empty. We have lots of thoughts about how best to use it, both to feed the family and have some left over. In the short term we would like to can and jar excess food, but we have plans to donate to the local community in the long term.

We have a year-round running spring at an appropriate elevation above it, but it would be quite the chore to collect and get that water to the greenhouse. We also have a year-round creek below it that we could conceivably pump water up from. We also have two boys who may end up running a lot of water around manually in the short term.

- I want our equipment to talk to our HomeKit in the end. While I don't *intend* to expand our HomeAssistant usage dramatically beyond that, I know that's how these things start and next thing you know you have 100 devices. It would be pretty cool to have greenhouse monitoring equipment as well.

Do I start a setup with something simple like the HomeAssistant Yellow if I don't want to spend a ton of time on this part of the plan?

It *might* be possible to get this to communicate to our new Rheem heat pump hot water heater, too, but that's the extent of our current HomeAssistant thoughts.

- We have some endangered native plants, as well as some cash crops growing both natively and intentionally planted in the forest as some test plots. Think ramps, ginseng, etc. but we are forest farming noobs.

We also have some test mushrooms going in log plugs that we intend to expand as we learn what works and what doesn't.

and - The state we are moving to has pretty decent LIDAR data of our property. I've played around with it quite a bit and made some fun maps. I was even able to find some hidden old logging roads that haven't been used in 100 years. I don't even know what I don't know in this area, but I'm planning to keep playing with it for data for the forest farming, running water from springs, etc.

I'm sure I'll add to this in a thread as we go and more things come up. It's all, honestly, terrifying and exhilarating at the same time at the moment, particularly for our boys who will be leaving the only home they've ever known this summer.

Also, wish me luck on my first ever public toot, I believe. I block and mute a lot of people anyway, so at least I know where those buttons are up front :)

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Pinned toot
A Concerned Scientist

Given that hundreds of thousands of papers have been published in the scientific literature over the last three years about COVID, I highly recommend you stop and think about why one that you may hear about on the news, or covered in CNN, may have gotten there.

It would be a good idea to actually read the paper, before sharing, if you're willing and able.

I see a lot of probably well meaning sharing of information just because a certain paper may gotten on CNN or NBC and they're not always conveying the best information(some papers are better than others) or sometimes what the paper itself was even trying to say in the first place.

Yes, I'm referring to a certain one that's all over today, but, what I wrote will never be wrong.

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A Concerned Scientist boosted
Bodhipaksa

This is pretty scary. You just can't escape microplastics. And as a species we don't seem to be doing much, if anything, about it.

cnn.com/2024/04/22/health/plas

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A Concerned Scientist boosted
CurrentBias

CIDRAP: "Contaminated meat likely source of avian flu that killed bush dogs in UK zoo, preprint suggests"

'Likely' is an interesting choice. Let's take a look at the alternative transmission possibilities noted in the study:

* scavenging of wild bird carcases/sick wild birds landing in the un-netted pen
* indirect contact (e.g., wild bird faeces)

Both of these possibilities can involve bioaerosols

"Wild bird activity was observed on the site during epidemiological investigations"

(Cont.) 🧵

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A Concerned Scientist boosted
Prof. Jose-Luis Jimenez

To this day, 4+ yrs later, @who has not apologized for their huge error of denying #CovidIsAirborne in March 2020...

That is still pending. They seem to have no intention of doing so.

@jeremyfarrar ?

bird.makeup/@jljcolorado/15780

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A Concerned Scientist boosted
trendle.55

Absence of symptoms doesn't mean absence of infection

Don't be a carrier; asymptomatic covid isn't harmless

#MaskUp #SaveYourOrgans #ProtectYourBrain

#MaskMeansRespirator #N95

@covidisnotover @covidisairborne

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A Concerned Scientist

I had no scheduled time today for journal reading, but, when I saw this article I had to take a break from other stuff and give it a read. Apologies if I missed anything. As always, point out if I did, or if I misinterpreted anything.

thelancet.com/journals/laninf/

I find this interesting, because next to a large-scale autopsy study(I do not know why this hasn't been done), this is probably the next best thing to look for viral persistence.

In their own words:

"This single-centre, cross-sectional cohort study was done at China–Japan Friendship Hospital in Beijing, China, following the omicron wave of COVID-19 in December, 2022. Individuals with mild COVID-19 confirmed by PCR or a lateral flow test scheduled to undergo gastroscopy, surgery, or chemotherapy, or scheduled for treatment in hospital for other reasons, at 1 month, 2 months, or 4 months after infection were enrolled in this study. Residual surgical samples, gastroscopy samples, and blood samples were collected approximately 1 month (18–33 days), 2 months (55–84 days), or 4 months (115–134 days) after infection. SARS-CoV-2 was detected by digital droplet PCR and further confirmed through RNA in-situ hybridisation, immunofluorescence, and immunohistochemistry. Telephone follow-up was done at 4 months post-infection to assess the association between the persistence of SARS-CoV-2 RNA and long COVID symptoms."

So, in short, what did they find? In patients who no longer tested positive via nasopharyngeal RT-PCR, a lot of viral persistence, in both "viral RNA" and "subgenomic RNA" but not universal viral persistence. Of course, they were unable to search all tissues in anyone's body, so that's not to eliminate the possibility that it was elsewhere in any test subject.

The big question to me here, and at least on my first read I think they were careful not to discuss it; was the viral RNA replicating? Given the lack of discussion on it in the article, let's just move on, but it's in the back of my mind.

Viral RNA was found, overall, in 30% of solid tissue samples collected at one month, 27% of those at two months, and 11% of those at 4 months. Further, additional subgenomic RNA was detected in 61% of samples that had viral RNA.

Also, viral RNA was detected in blood plasma, white blood cells, and peripheral blood mononuclear cells(think T cells and B cells here) of 9 patients, all of whom were immunocompromised, but none in 10 patients who were immunocompetent. Of course, everyone is immunocompetent until they're not.

Importantly, "Detection of viral RNA in recovered patients was significantly associated with the development of long COVID symptoms" and "Patients with higher virus copy numbers had a higher likelihood of developing long COVID symptoms."

There's an awful lot here, but a few other things were interesting to me:

- An even split, essentially, in long COVID between men and women.

- 78% of the patients with long COVID had 3 vaccine doses(I'm sorry, vaccination does not mean you can't get long COVID and it can't be said enough) while 86% without long COVID had 3 vaccine doses. Only 6% were unvaccinated in both the long COVID and no long COVID cohorts.

- 46% of the long COVID cohort were given one of oseltamivir, baloxavir, nirmatrelvir–ritonavir, famciclovir, and ganciclovir, while 52% of the no long COVID group were.

- Viral RNA was found in:

liver, kidney, stomach, intestine, brain, blood vessel, lung, breast, skin, and thyroid

but not pancreas, gallbladder and appendix.

- "Furthermore, to explore whether any difference in viral load was due to different concentrations of the SARS-CoV-2 receptors ACE2 and TMPRSS2, we compared the expression levels of ACE2 and TMPRSS2 in tumour tissues and paratumour tissues, and the results showed that the mRNA levels of ACE2 (p=0·83) and TMPRSS2 (p=0·49) were not significantly different"

- "Long COVID symptoms at 4 months were significantly associated with viral persistence at 1 month and 2 months post-infection but not at 4 months."

- "The host cell dysfunction caused by viral persistence might be a crucial aspect of long COVID pathogenesis."

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A Concerned Scientist boosted
nullagent

This afternoon I'm at the Houses Not Handcuffs rally in Seattle.

This morning the US supreme court heard oral arguments in the Grants Pass v Johnson case. This case deals with the rights of homeless people and considers whether the act of sleeping outside can be criminalized.

#GrantsPass #USPol #Homeless #ServicesNotSweeps

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A Concerned Scientist boosted
IT News

Concern grows as bird flu spreads further in US cows: 32 herds in 8 states - Enlarge / Greylag geese sit on a field and rest while a cow passes by i... - arstechnica.com/?p=2019245 #avianinfluenza #dairycows #infection #outbreak #science #birdflu #herds #virus #cows #h5n1 #milk #usda #cdc #fda

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A Concerned Scientist boosted
malena

talking to my 75 yr old mom who has breast cancer & went to the doc today for what seems to be a full body drug resistant bacterial skin infection (very itchy and painful) and she’s telling me how the doc of course is not masking and also telling her all about the major medical conference he just flew in from and I just… really cannot with healthcare professionals in full covid denial — I literally can’t imagine taking an oath to do no harm and then being willing to hurt and kill your patients

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A Concerned Scientist boosted
Helen Branswell

Sunday night's excitement about an upload from the #USDA of sequence data on the #H5N1 #birdflu outbreaks in cows led to frustration Monday as scientists realized key information had been left out of the files. Without it, it's very hard to assess what's going on. statnews.com/2024/04/21/usda-r

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A Concerned Scientist boosted
In Search of a Better World

Holy Crap. I didn't think it was possible, but #NASA got #Voyager back online.

gizmodo.com/nasa-voyager-probe

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A Concerned Scientist boosted
Dr Pieter Peach

The *only* way we can adequately manage risk in healthcare in a pandemic with an airborne pathogen is by having sustainable processes & resources in place to cope with a high volume of cases.

Stockpiles of disposable PPE expire & run out quickly, ramping up processes/skills takes too long, & we can’t rely on building infrastructure being brought up to scratch in a hurry.

Airborne precautions for respiratory tract pathogens needs to be an increasing part of our healthcare routine.

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A Concerned Scientist boosted
sidereal

Do any of you have experience with so-called "Murphy" beds/wall beds?

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A Concerned Scientist boosted
Heinke

Today I did in-person shopping for only the second time this year. At Costco the person who checks your membership card had a 30 second coughing fit before she could look at my card. She apologized and said it was allergies. I pointed at my mask and said that it works great for allergies. Blank stare in return. 🙃

It's quite stressful doing shopping when I'm not used to it. I did get some decaf coffee beans that taste great. 😀 Lots of fresh fruit that's too expensive elsewhere.

I do find it weird with gasoline now being almost 2 dollars a litre how every enormous truck races from one red light to the next. :blobfacepalm: They're probably angry about the environmental tax. 😂

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A Concerned Scientist boosted
Shannon Skinner (she/her)

The US can't even deal effectively with the pandemic we currently face much less claim to avoid future pandemics.

Allowing media outlets to spread the dangerous claim that the COVID 19 pandemic is "long past" is a major part of the problem.

The US still sees persistently high COVID death rates (over 1,000 per week in 2024 in the US alone), and Long COVID is at its highest point and rising.

The White House has released its U.S. GOVERNMENT GLOBAL HEALTH SECURITY STRATEGY 2024. PDF: whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uplo)

I searched the document hoping to find a plan to regulate indoor air quality but found only three instances of the word "air." One refers to air travel safety. One refers to air pollution.

The other is: "continued
support for the Global Influenza Surveillance and Response System, is imperative considering
the likelihood of a future pandemic being caused by an airborne pathogen."

I do not believe we can effectively fight airborne pathogens without regulating indoor air quality, but the US government seems to disagree.

#COVID #COVIDIsNotOver #COVID19 #USPol #USPolitics #Healthcare #Pandemic #USA #MaskUp #AirQuality

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A Concerned Scientist boosted
Kari Birrer-Lundgren, PhD 🏳️‍🌈

#CovidCautious community, I’m tabling at an academic conference next month to spread awareness of both the Public Health Pledge (@phpledge) and COVID precautions as paths toward inclusivity, and I’m trying to think of what would make this table both useful and appealing to passersby. Does anyone have suggestions on what else I can do, in terms of signage, giveaways, activities, etc.?

#CovidIsNotOver #CovidIsAirborne #academiclife #Covid #PublicHealth #WearAMask

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A Concerned Scientist boosted
Tinker ☀️

THEY DID IT!!!!

My local library built the seed library!

The local Master Gardeners provided a lot of the intitial seeds (oh my gosh we are stocked!!!). They used an old card catalogue to store them. Today's the kickoff!

The idea is you "check out seeds" from the library, plant/grow/harvest, let some go to seed, then "return the seeds" back to the library!

Free seeds for everyone!

#solarPunk #postScarcity #gardening #mutualAid

Show thread
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A Concerned Scientist boosted
Science for ME

A thread for thirteen #MECFS, #LongCovid and related research papers from w/c 15th April 2024.

Links are to our forum discussion threads, where abstracts, links to paper, analysis and discussion can be found. Inclusion does not equal recommendation.

1/14

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A Concerned Scientist boosted
Michael Stanclift

Ghost appears to be going all in on ActivityPub activitypub.ghost.org

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A Concerned Scientist boosted
Grateful Dread

Earth Day Reality Check commondreams.org/opinion/earth

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A Concerned Scientist boosted
RebelGeek99

Walking around Sriracha #Thailand to get breakfast this morning, some 60%-90% of folks in mostly #KF94 respirators. It was just the Thai New Year's celebrations here over the weekend, maybe folks are seeing an uptick in sickies and responding appropriately, or just taking a simple effective precaution to avoid illness.

Fwiw, I've encountered very few coughers or wheezers in shared indoor spaces compared to what's been normalized in the US. Go figure 😒 #CovidIsNotOver #MaskUp

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