Read on Twitter
Today marks 11 years on @twitter for me.
Thanks for reading along
I wrote a
about what I learned in the first decade here:
https://twitter.com/erictopol/status/1147885195145572354?lang=en
This one is about what I learned this year, a most challenging one for all of us 1/
Thanks for reading along
I wrote a
about what I learned in the first decade here:https://twitter.com/erictopol/status/1147885195145572354?lang=en
This one is about what I learned this year, a most challenging one for all of us 1/
For 10 years, I posted biomedical and science stuff mainly about genomics, digital medicine, #AI. As the pandemic became a reality in February, I shifted attention to it, almost exclusively 2/
I'd already been tweeting too much (aka twitterrhea, and sorry for that), but this led to more than doubling or even tripling the posts on any given day due to the outpouring of new information (ideal substrate for an info junkie) 3/
It became apparent that really bad, unthinkable things were happening. Like back in March when the medical community was left vulnerable (the war without ammo) in the care of sick #COVID patients https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/927811 4/
Which now has accounts for well over 1400 lost souls in the US, @CTZebra And countless still sick w/ #LongCovid
https://twitter.com/CTZebra/status/1318548999138430976 5/
https://twitter.com/CTZebra/status/1318548999138430976 5/
Soon thereafter, the US pandemic took a horrific turn when Trump went blatantly anti-science and dismantled the CDC, sidelining the efforts of Tony Fauci, and bullying the FDA for emergency authorizations 6/
This culminated in the August "very historic breakthrough" press conference for convalescent plasma, for which there were no data to support. https://twitter.com/erictopol/status/1297653251890765824?lang=en 7/
It was time to go full activist and take on the FDA Commissioner for being complicit with this propaganda and stagecraft, and knowing we're headed to a pivotal vaccine approval decision
https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/936611 8/
https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/936611 8/
What happened after that was reviewed in our interview together https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/938705 @Medscape 9/
And in @KatherineEban's @VanityFair piece https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2020/10/trumps-vaccine-rush-vs-the-fda 10/
The FDA work wasn't enough. It was important to get the Phase 3 vaccine trial protocols released to see the interim analyses, stopping rules, endpoints. And push to avoid shortcuts. A group of 60 of us signed onto the letter @ZekeEmanuel put together https://aboutblaw.com/TnB /11
The editor-in-chief of @ScienceMagazine, @hholdenthorp, has been a leader in the movement to call out the Administration.
"We are sticking to science, but more importantly, we're sticking up for science."
https://science.sciencemag.org/content/370/6514/266 /12
"We are sticking to science, but more importantly, we're sticking up for science."
https://science.sciencemag.org/content/370/6514/266 /12
My close friend @cuttingforstone and I recently wrote about this need for activism @ScienceTM https://stm.sciencemag.org/content/early/2020/10/16/scitranslmed.abf2461 13/
So that's the main thing I've learned about twitter this year, a channel for activism at a time when it's desperately needed, when we can't (unfortunately) just stick to the science. Again, thanks for reading along. 14/
