Your Local Epidemiologist

There's a really great epidemiologist who has been publishing data-driven articles on substack on the subject of COVID, from samples from waste water to control groups across the world. Her insights are often super valuable and she only speaks to what she knows and the rest goes off of data she comes across. I'd really recommend her thoughts on anything COVID-related https://yourlocalepidemiologist.substack.com/

One more, a reliable attempt at making sense of sources, started during COVID but now broader: https://yourlocalepidemiologist.substack.com/ Who am I? My name is Dr. Katelyn Jetelina. I have a Masters in Public Health and PhD in Epidemiology and Biostatistics. I am an epidemiologist, data scientist, wife, and mom to two little girls. During the day I work at a nonpartisan health policy think tank and am a senior scientific consultant to a number of organizations, including the CDC. At night I write this newsletter. My main goal is to “translate” the ever-evolving public health science so that people will be well equipped to make evidence-based decisions. This newsletter started in March 2020 to update students, faculty, and staff on the developments of the pandemic. In 36 months, it’s grown to an international audience. What is this? The purpose of this newsletter is to provide a direct line of “translated” public health science to the local, national, and international community. Over the past two years, I’ve covered COVID-19 topics ranging from variants, to vaccines and booster roll outs, to exciting new developments like antivirals, and context to some of our greatest unanswered questions. YLE has also started to dip into other public health topics, like mental health, other infectious diseases, and public health current events (thanks to the feedback from the YLE audience). My hope is that, together, YLE provides breadth and depth into the pandemic,…

Substack is a really, really good place for this. I don't remember how I found https://paxtier.substack.com/, but it's a great source of news on algae + seaweed technology/science. https://thealgorithmicbridge.substack.com/ for AI https://www.parentdata.org/ for studies related to all things parenting https://blog.jatan.space/ for space (especially moon-related) stuff https://yourlocalepidemiologist.substack.com/ for Covid/general epidemiology news

You may find this blog helpful, she's been generally ahead of the curve on where coronavirus is going. https://yourlocalepidemiologist.substack.com/

Katelyn Jetelina, at your local epidemiologist did a great job of explaining it a few days before[0]. This is Simpson's paradox in action and is an interesting read. [0]: https://yourlocalepidemiologist.substack.com/p/the-morning-today-iswro…

here's a good read on the details for anyone wanting a nerdy amount of details for antigen testing https://yourlocalepidemiologist.substack.com/p/antigen-tests-real-worl…

It's worth noting that rapid test results roughly align with contagiousness, which makes them an excellent tool to fight the spread of this thing. [1] (See the 2nd image on this page). PCR tests will report COVID infections that are way below the threshold of transmissibility, and they'll keep reporting positive results long after the infected person is no longer contagious. "Am I contagious?" is arguably a more useful question to answer than, "Do I have any detectable amount of COVID in my body, at all, using the best laboratory testing processes available?" [1] https://yourlocalepidemiologist.substack.com/p/antigen-tests-and-omicr…

Yep, especially Omicron. > This is the first evidence to show us that the rate of reinfection with Omicron is high—3 times higher than Delta. In other words, infection-induced immunity is not doing a great job at stopping Omicron. https://yourlocalepidemiologist.substack.com/p/omicron-update-dec-4

> ... preliminary evidence WHO based their recommendation on earlier this week: People who have previously had COVID-19 could become reinfected more easily with Omicron. https://yourlocalepidemiologist.substack.com/p/omicron-update-dec-4

another interesting source is https://yourlocalepidemiologist.substack.com

It's unclear at this point, but it's not looking great https://yourlocalepidemiologist.substack.com/p/pediatric-numbers-3-thi…

His decisions are not arbitrary. He lays out his logic, rationale, and evidence, but people seemingly are either unaware or uninterested in such, instead preferring to create strawmen to fight against. For instance another post here claims he doesn't "believe" in germ theory. That should immediately be a red flag of something taken out of context or misrepresented, and indeed it was. Here [1] is a blog which is highly critical of RFK's view on germ theory yet, unlike most media sources, it also lays out what he said in a vaguely reasonable way. He obviously does not reject germ theory in the least, but believes that having an overall healthier lifestyle and avoiding environmental toxins is a more effective means of ensuring your body can fight off infection than by focusing solely on specific germs. The article offers a quote that seems reasonable: "When a starving African child succumbs to measles, the miasmist attributes the death to malnutrition; germ theory proponents (a.k.a. virologists) blame the virus. The miasmist approach to public health is to boost individual immune response." Of course one can engage with modern medicine and live a healthy life, but I think his entire schtick is that the whole live a healthy life aspect of healthcare has been largely neglected over the past half century. Just reducing the obesity rate, for instance, would probably have a dramatically greater impact on health outcomes than any new medical discovery over the next 50 years - as we…

I find the occasional research roundups from the “your local epidemiologist” newsletter informative: https://yourlocalepidemiologist.substack.com/p/long-covid-research-rou…

Here's a recap from about a year ago covering some of the evidence for ventilation and filtration: https://yourlocalepidemiologist.substack.com/p/the-power-of-ventilatio… > A study last summer found that open windows in classrooms can have up to a 14.1 fold reduction in COVID19 transmission. > Another study found that one HEPA filter is as effective as two windows partly open all day during the winter (2.5-fold decrease in transmission). Two HEPA filters are even more effective (4-fold decrease in transmission).

The good news is that the new boosters do in practice seem to be effective at boosting omicron protection, overcoming this theorized original antigenic sin: https://yourlocalepidemiologist.substack.com/p/fall-bivalent-boosters-…

An epidemiologist's take - https://yourlocalepidemiologist.substack.com/p/polio-an-unfortunate-re…

> According to the article, in the only large randomized studies that have been performed, masking showed little, if any benefit. I have this open in another tab. It links to three studies that show masks in school do work: https://yourlocalepidemiologist.substack.com/p/mask-requirements-in-sc… > most studies, including WHO, show that lockdowns were counter productive, and could result in increased transmission. Do you have a source for this?

In the U.S. at least: > There are two states and 618 counties that require circuit breakers (i.e. short-term mitigation measures needed to preserve hospital functioning) at this point because their hospitals are at or above 100% capacity (assuming that the number of staffed beds has not increased in the past week). Medical military personnel have already been dispatched to a number of hospitals across the nation. Nebraska also joined a short list of states that have enacted its Crisis Standards of Care plan. But community-wide efforts to reduce spread desperately need to be taken, too. Fourteen additional states are at high risk of exceeding 100% hospital capacity in the next 1-10 days. Source: https://yourlocalepidemiologist.substack.com/p/state-of-affairs-jan-18

What does that have to do with #2? If everyone in the target group is vaccinated, you don't need to worry about it. The alternative -- "covid parties" where people infect each other intentionally -- is vastly more likely to kill someone who could otherwise get a vaccine. Anyway, vaccines reduce transmission[1][2][3][4]. 1. https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2116597 2. https://yourlocalepidemiologist.substack.com/p/how-vaccines-reduce-tra… 3. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02689-y 4. https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2021/12/vaccinated-who-get-brea…

I think that stat came from a chart in this article https://yourlocalepidemiologist.substack.com/p/a-quick-note-on-masks-a…

Dr. Katelyn Jetelina, MPH PhD, has a nice substack from perspective of an epidemiologist. Two notable recent Omicron posts on that substack: The potentially scary aspects: https://yourlocalepidemiologist.substack.com/p/state-of-affairs-jan-4 The potentially good news: https://yourlocalepidemiologist.substack.com/p/there-is-good-news Obviously it is still early, but imo those 2 posts give a decent lay of the land.

Pretty good one here: https://yourlocalepidemiologist.substack.com/p/omicron-update-dec-22

> Are there clinical trials which mix and match vaccines, e.g. as boosters? https://yourlocalepidemiologist.substack.com/p/mixing-vaccines-the-stu…

Yes. See https://yourlocalepidemiologist.substack.com/p/omicron-update-dec-13

Given the large amount of mutation in this variant, theory point to high likelihood of this being evolved from a single individual with compromised immune system, likely a person in advanced stages of HIV infection. Source: https://yourlocalepidemiologist.substack.com/p/new-concerning-variant-… Globally speaking, most of the HIV positives live in sub-saharan Africa, with South Africa having 17.30% of adults carrying HIV, and countries around it in similar ballpark. This points to the variant being evolved in South Africa or its neighbors Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_HIV/AIDS_adult_prev…

That's not wrong, but this time it was scientists who were ringing the bell. This write-up [1] explains the particular mutations in Omicron in more detail. Basically, Omicron appears to be a perfect storm of various concerning mutations that had appeared in individual strains before - now all assembled into one strain. Add to that a sudden, unusual spike in infections right where the variant is found and I guess things can start to look scary for a moment. Of course, it's still guesswork and even though the genome looks scary, the real-world effects may be mild. [1] https://yourlocalepidemiologist.substack.com/p/new-concerning-variant-…

I think this might be the most level headed information I’ve seen so far: https://yourlocalepidemiologist.substack.com/p/go-get-your-vaccine-esp…

See e.g.: https://yourlocalepidemiologist.substack.com/p/how-vaccines-reduce-tra… Country-level anecdata is basically useless without a multi-factor analysis due to huge differences in restrictions and self-directed prevention by the public.

After researching a bit and finding this: https://yourlocalepidemiologist.substack.com/p/israel-50-of-infected-a… I'm wondering whether this number is a population-level observational result that has more to do with someone ignoring base rates rather than delta actually being much better at causing infection.