Mike Famulare
@famulare_mike
Like polio, Twitter lingers on. Learning to be a father, husband, and person. Systems epidemiologist, see Google Scholar. All tweets mine alone.
The Famulare Family COVID Saga: A Rebound Story
The Famulare family COVID saga continues. Up today: rebound 🤬
x.com/famulare_mike/status/1895616959083053369
With my wife Marisa's consent, here is our estimated nose/throat viral load history relative to peak since I first tested positive on day 2 of my symptoms. We're both experiencing rebound!
My COVID: Infectiousness Variations via breath and nose
Next thread: relative infectiousness via mask samples. tl;dr: I'm probably at least 5000x less contagious yesterday (day 8 of symptoms, day 5 of Paxlovid) than I was on day 2 (peak).
x.com/famulare_mike/status/1894899637217304636
As I lazily described here, you can do some simple image processing to make rapid tests quantitative x.com/famulare_mike/status/1894899668787818579
Observations on Viral Load and Recovery
New COVID personal science thread: observations on viral load.🧵
Fun inside!
Viral load plummeted after 4 days of Paxlovid. I did some math* to estimate changes in viral load.
*somewhere between back-of-the-envelope and semi-quantitative modeling
x.com/famulare_mike/status/1894124001204867424
SARS-CoV-2 is airborne: home edition
Round 2: it’s airborne! 🧵
x.com/famulare_mike/status/1893095652462338263
My COVID Surprise: fun science
Feeling okay so far, so let the science fun begin!
(Not gonna lie, I've been happy to avoid COVID for the last 5 years, but I've been looking forward to having fun with it, god-willing, when it got me.)
x.com/famulare_mike/status/1893061064662884675
First, this red hot positive today is on what I think is day 2 of symptoms.
Interestingly, my first symptoms were probably achey legs yesterday. (Vascular disease much??) Since last night, mild sore throat and some stuffiness. Was expecting flu or nada, COVID was a surprise!
Goodbye Dad
After a lovely yesterday of festivities with three generations of chosen family, my wife’s gift to me is time to do whatever I want. Adrift after a sweet morning of tv and cuddles, and waiting to get the courage for a bracing swim, I find myself needing to write about my dad 🧵
My dad has never asked to come visit his granddaughter. Since my first trip to Seattle nearly 20 years ago, where he came to help me move, he’s never asked to come visit me. He hasn’t texted today, and it’s late enough to know he won’t. And yet, I still miss him.
Prevalence of Chronic SARS2: Insights and Frustrations
Great to see estimates of the prevalence of chronic SARS2 from scientists working with the remarkable UK @ONS Covid infection Survey. Chronic prevalence (>60 days) was at least 0.1-0.5% in people infected before July 2022 (thru BA.1/2).
Gonna use this moment to grind an axe...🧵
twitter.com/Mahan_Ghafari/status/1760338169864618124
The interesting and frustrating thing is it was possible to guess this 2 years ago. How?
1) take patient self-reported symptoms seriously @ahandvanish ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8280690/
2) take the ONS long-covid symptom survey seriously (the best survey in the world for this).
My Frustration with COVID Forecasting
I started looking at COVID forecasting papers and got angry. To move on with my life, posting a few things.
tl;dr: a huge amount of effort was wasted on COVID forecasting, and the allure of forecasting without exponentially better data is continuing to waste a lot of effort.
Evaluation of ... forecasts of COVID-19 mortality in the US pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2113561119
Evaluation of the US COVID-19 Scenario Modeling Hub... nature.com/articles/s41467-023-42680-x
Predictive performance of multi-model ensemble forecasts of COVID-19 across Europe... elifesciences.org/articles/81916#content
Very amateur notes on the UV Can Lily personal far UV-C device
As an interested amateur looking to learn about personal far UV-C as an infection prevention tool, I did some playing with the 222nm irradiance data from the UV Can Lily from @joeyfox85. For those interested in learning along with me, here are notes: twitter.com/joeyfox85/status/1575882717107224576
Caveat #1. Did I mention I'm an amateur? While I have earned my place to claim a fair amount infectious disease transmission expertise, when it comes to UV sterilization, I'm currently at the "white guy with a physics degree" stage of personal development. HERE BE DRAGONS.
Polio shows us the way for COVID
MFW all the hot takes on SARS2, polio, transmission blocking, mucosal immunity, and community-level risk differences collide🤯
The story of polio epi today is the story of how mucosal vaccines and clean indoor air will together be transformative against respiratory infections.🧵
Here's the shortest version I can muster... (42 tweets is not short.)