No man is an island. Except Steve, he’s an island. You remember Steve, from high school? Yeah, the one who always had deciduous greenery and small rock faces growing out of his back? Uh huh yeah from biology. Yep he’s an island out in the Pacific now. He’s doing great, he’s got macaws now which he’s excited about. He even has a wife! You know Nicoya Peninsula? Yep, that Nicoya, god she’s gorgeous. Brilliant as always. What a gal. Yeah they got married a few months ago. Huh? Oh no they don’t really “talk” per se, I mean what are you crazy they’re landmasses they don’t have mouths. But they send each other seismic vibrations through the earth’s crust pretty often. Little notes like “Hey bb how’s Costa Rica?” or “Miss u honey bunch” or the occasional eggplant or peach emoji. You can see them on seismographs (which are super nosy if you ask me). Speaking of, I saw one while I was being nosy the other day that read, “Welcome to The Dose”. Weird.
In today’s news: a COVID-19 update and a possibly tipsy universe.
COVID-19 Update
Human Challenge Trials
Over 1,500 people have volunteered to be part of what is commonly known as a “human challenge trial” for COVID-19—a controversial study model where healthy, young volunteers receive a vaccine and are then intentionally infected with the virus the vaccine seeks to treat. The effort, called 1 Day Sooner, is not affiliated with or backed by any groups or companies developing or funding a SARS-CoV-2 vaccine. According to co-founder Josh Morrison, as of now, the effort is seeking to recruit and pre-qualify individuals who are interested in participating in a challenge study model to address the pandemic, in an effort to help lobby to policymakers that there is significant public support for such an approach. Though the ethics of human challenges trials remain controversial, there is precedent for such an approach as challenge trials have been conducted to address diseases such as malaria and influenza, and challenge trials, when conducted, are subject to even more stringent regulatory guidance.
Antibody Testing
Speaking of controversies, there has been increasing debate over the usefulness of antibody tests for COVID-19, and if and how medical professionals should be communicating these results to patients. As opposed to PCR tests, which identify genetic information belonging to the virus itself to determine a diagnosis, antibody tests are based on indicators given by the patient’s immune response, which can be less definitive and require more nuanced interpretation—and more importantly when it comes to this debate—communication to patients.
One particularly strong case in favor of using antibody testing for COVID-19 is its use in cases where patients are not showing symptoms, but are in a position to put others at risk by proximity if they have contracted the virus but are, and may possibly remain asymptomatic. This is especially important given the high rates of patients who may remain asymptomatic throughout their infection (as I have touched on in this newsletter before) and what that could mean for the propagation of the virus, given that asymptomatic transmission rates of the virus may be as high as 40%. Antibody tests have also come into higher consideration due to the fact that many hospitals do not offer the more definitive PCR tests to patients who are not showing symptoms of COVID-19. In these cases, some researchers are recommending performing antibody tests to provide guidance to those possibly infected to help prevent them from spreading the virus until a PCR test can be processed.
On the flip side, some argue that we should be cautious in the widespread implementation of antibody tests considering that all of the tests currently being used for COVID-19 have been developed or indicated for the disease in the past month and have not had a chance to be thoroughly reviewed by the FDA, as well as the fact that some of these tests are known even by their developers to have a significant chance of giving a false negative or positive result. For the case of a false positive, there is not as much concern, as someone who receives a false positive may be exposed to unnecessary anxiety, but poses little risk to others. For the case of a false negative, however, the patient may continue to interact with others and possibly spread the virus, thinking they pose no risk. Proponents for antibody tests still argue however that this eventuality could be mitigated by thorough and nuanced communication of the margin of error in test results and that the benefits of having a test that can help catch some asymptomatic carriers of the virus are better than no test at all.
Go Home Universe, You’re Drunk
According to a new study out this month in Astronomy and Physics, the universe may be lopsided. First of all universe, given that I have one boob that is noticeably bigger than the other, I relate. Second of all, given that I have a deep appreciation for unexpected existential chaos, I stan.
In the study, researchers took a survey of galaxy clusters across the observable universe and their relative distance from each other by using two different methods to measure both the temperature and through that, the luminosity of observable galaxy clusters via the x-rays these clusters send off into the universe. The team selected 313 sample clusters from a meta-database of all of the batches detected via x-ray thus far (side note, just think how badass it is that we have that database, I want to see it so bad). They found, much to many astronomers’ dismay, that matter in the universe may be unevenly distributed in a way that indicates that the universe might not have expanded as evenly as previously thought, with one region being measured at 30% brighter and another 30% fainter than expected.
One of the pillars of physics as we currently understand it that the universe is isotropic at large, meaning that it is relatively uniform in all directions and in all orientations. Think of those glittery bouncy balls you might have played with as a kid with like glittery shit suspended inside of it. An isotropic bouncy ball would be a sphere with glittery shit suspended evenly throughout it in all directions. An anisotropic bouncy ball, however, would be like egg-shaped and all the glitter would be on one end. Also, that bouncy ball would suck ass.
An isotropic universe is built into our current understanding of physics and lies heavily in the idea that after the big bang, the universe is thought to have expanded evenly and uniformly in all directions. An anisotropic universe would shatter many of our key understandings of not only how the universe evolved, as well as the physical theories based around our understanding of that evolution; but it may also have implications even for our ability to theoretically explore the known universe— as much of what we know and how we build on what we know as of now is based on the assumption that what holds true theoretically in one direction of the universe could be applied at large and at scale to the universe in other directions.
The finding isn’t definitive by any means, however, as other studies using similar data sets but different methods of measurement have detected similar anisotropies or none at all and there’s always the possibility that the finding could be due to a flaw or gap in the study’s data set or methods, so more information is needed to come anywhere close to a definitive claim on a tipsy universe. Still, the finding is enough to leave astronomers and physicists a little knocked sideways (pun absolutely intended).
And that’s all nerds! For today’s personal news I have no news because I literally have been doing nothing but working and playing the new Final Fantasy 7 remake. It’s so fucking good. I’ll talk more about it later. I can’t even put into words how good it is right now. Also it was my birthday on Saturday, that’s news I guess. It went great, my friends and family are so sweet and so amazing and still made it special even in lockdown. PS, I know you’re reading this because y’all are my biggest supporters so just want to minute to say I’m gonna hug each and every one of you so hard post-quarantine.
Anyways later nerds. Love ya stay safe be well muuuuuah!