The University of Liverpool Drug Interaction Group has created a free online tool to check for drug interactions with nirmatrelvir-ritonavir and other COVID-19 drugs.

Perhaps a study should be undertaken of the number of Floridian lives lost due to its Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo’s ill-informed advice re. mRNA Covid vaccines.  Katelyn Jetelina , Edward Nirenberg, and Kristen Pagnathi offer an excellent rebuttal in Jetelina’s Your Local Epidemiologist Substack post here.  Perhaps the most trenchant argument offered was this one:

“Producing vaccines requires us to use cells, and cells contain DNA. This is why DNA fragments are found in all vaccines. DNA fragments aren’t limited to vaccines, either. Insulin, for example, also contains small amounts of DNA from the bacteria used to make it. 

Regardless, we try to limit the number because it can impact the immune response. We aim for the purest form of vaccines so they work as intended and consistently. The FDA requires less than 10 ng/dose of residual DNA fragments in any vaccine for full approval. 

Multiple regulators across the globe have consistently found vaccines to have acceptable levels of DNA fragments. Even the flawed preprint confirms Covid-19 vaccines’ DNA content is far below any levels indicating a safety or manufacturing concern (see below).”

As for the referenced preprint’s attempt to correlate the DNA levels found with VAERS morbidity stats, that’s junk science exemplified.

I’m definitely in agreement with both Ezra Klein in his podcast here and with Tom Friedman today in the NY Times.  At this point, the Israeli response is disproportionate and not likely to yield any long term benefits.

Elon Musk continues his descent into less-than-complete sanity, though I had hoped he’d learned a lesson from his most recent ill-advised antisemitic tweet.  Alas, wrong again.  He’s reached new lows by reinstating Alex Jones’ X account despite Jones previously being permanently banned for his horribly egregious Sandy Hook actions.  Musk this time hiding behind his “the people have spoken”  poll results (which apparently confirm what a cesspool X has become). I don’t know if Musk is mentally ill, or simply completely amoral and grasping for any new users to prop up what’s left of Twitter.  Either way, it’s sickening. See the December 11 Joy of Tech…

From the Harvard Gazette, quoting from this paper in Science by Henneman, Choirat, Dedoussi et al, Mortality risk from United States coal electricity generation:

“Exposure to fine particulate air pollutants from coal-fired power plants (coal PM2.5) is associated with a risk of mortality more than double that of exposure to PM2.5 from other sources…Examining Medicare and emissions data in the U.S. from 1999 to 2020, the researchers also found that 460,000 deaths were attributable to coal PM2.5 during the study period — most of them occurring between 1999 and 2007, when coal PM2.5 levels were highest.”

When someone tells you who they are, over and over, in words and actions, BELIEVE THEM! DJT is an abomination who openly talks about how he will dismantle our democracy, violate the Constitution, and take vengeance on his perceived enemies using the apparatus of a government filled with cronies he installs.  See:

Jamelle Bouie in the NYT : “And Donald Trump is telling us, loud and clear, that he wants to end American democracy as we know it.”

Eric Foner in the NYT: “President Trump announced that he plans to issue an executive order ending birthright citizenship, the principle that everyone born in the United States, with a handful of exceptions, is automatically a citizen of the United States.“It was always told to me,” the president declared, “that you needed a constitutional amendment. Guess what? You don’t.””

Catherine Rampell, WashPo, quoting DJT: “If I happen to be president, and I see somebody who’s doing well and beating me very badly, I say, ‘Go down and indict them,’” he said. “They’d be out of business. They’d be out of the election.”

Heather Cox Richardson in her Letters From an American, also quoting the weirdly bronzed one: “In honor of our great Veterans on Veteran’s Day [sic] we pledge to you that we will root out the Communists, Marxists, Racists, and Radical Left Thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our Country, lie, steal, and cheat on Elections, and will do anything possible, whether legally or illegally, to destroy America, and the American Dream”

David Graham, writing in the Atlantic: “In fact, much of what Trump is discussing is un-American, not merely in the sense of being antithetical to some imagined national set of mores, but in that his ideas contravene basic principles of the Constitution or other bedrock bases of American government. They are the sorts of ideas that would have been shocking to hear from any mainstream politician just a decade ago.”

A reasonable summary of the state of the small nuclear reactor industry by Brad Plumer and Ivan Penn appears here in the NYT .  I support development of this industry as an adjunct to other carbon neutral sources, since wind and solar’s intermittent availability, combined with the inevitably increasing demands of electrification (as well as the inefficiencies and inadequacy of out transmission grid), make achieving net zero otherwise nearly impossible.

Ezra Klein interviews Zack Beauchamp and they discuss Israel’s response to the Hamas attacks of October 7 in this excellent podcast.

Katelyn Jetelina talks about the evidence showing that masks do work – especially for individuals who wear a high quality mask (N95 or KN95) correctly.  She summarizes the pros and cons well in her Substack post.

Odds Ratios and 95% confidence intervals of a subset of eligible included studies comparing masked versus unmasked.
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