A colleague of mine is looking for free resources to supplement his lectures in an intro course on data science with #rstats. We have the amazing Ted Laderas @[email protected] and @datapointier's R Bootcamp r-bootcamp.netlify.app but would love other suggestions!

Updated the White House Covid-19 table with 11 confirmed positives, 28 confirmed negatives and 31 possible contacts for a total of 70 people involved so far. Track updates at this link, which contains information on the events each individual attended. datawrapper.dwcdn.net/d8XRQ/2/

With the help of @PeterJ_walker, we are tracking all the contacts known from the White House outbreak. So far: - 12 positive - 31 negative - 29 contacts yet to be tested Check regularly for updates as they come in. Carl T. Bergstrom @gregggonsalves public.tableau.com/profile/peter.…

Great visual on #masks via The New York Times nytimes.com/interactive/20…

Don’t be distracted. We’re still in the midst of a pandemic with the highest daily case count on record today - 103K cases.

The virus doesn't wait until 10 pm to come out. It doesn't stop at 6 feet. It doesn't care that a vaccine is on the way. So wear a mask, avoid crowds, avoid closed spaces, avoid close conversation at all hours.

We started studying cloth masks in March. Preprint now at medrxiv.org/content/10.110… Take-home: Cloth masks are not an N95, but they work reasonably well for aerosols 1-2 microns and larger, which is the size that we think mostly mediates transmission. See thread. /1

Make the outdoors the easy option! #covid #FlattenTheCurve

1/ This did not have to be. Over 100,000 Americans currently in hospitals with COVID-19 and over 210,000 new cases today. We are converging on and will soon surpass the 9/11 death toll EVERY SINGLE DAY. And we are going to see a huge surge in the next several weeks & months.

Powerful, accurate new guidance from CDC on how to improve ventilation in your workplace, school, home with options from $0 (open windows & doors, adjust dampers in HVAC for more outdoor air) to HEPA air cleaners to >$1000 for upper room UVGI. cdc.gov/coronavirus/20…

Another update of CDC's ventilation guidelines listing “tools in the mitigation toolbox": windows, fans, reduced occupancy, HVAC *on* rather than *auto*, filtration, exhaust fans, maintenance, HEPA, UV

So, when the vaccines were proved to 90%+ effective at preventing people from getting COVID, science communication world (including me) was quick to have some caveats. One being that the vaccines weren’t proven to prevent you from spreading the disease.

I think we need to double-down on everything: convince more people to follow guidelines, add a little more distance, improve our masks, further improve ventilation and filtration, think about shorter times indoors, wash hands well and often.

Our paper, "An evidence review of face masks against COVID-19", written by a cross-disciplinary team of 19 international experts, was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences today. No time for the paper? Then read this thread! pnas.org/content/118/4/…

Which portable air cleaner do I need to buy ? #SARSCoV2 Factors: mechanism of filtration, airflow + efficiency (CADR), purchase price, replacement cost + filter life, and noise. 1/5 🧵

Sneak peek. Here's what I should have said in an upcoming interview with PBS News: 6 feet is still a guideline. The new variants don't travel farther than the original virus; it's just that people release more of them and/or it takes fewer of them to get infected (probably).

Covid Epi Weekly Jan 22: Racing Against Mutants! The post-holiday flood cresting but cases, hospitalizations and deaths remain astronomically high. Viral mutants increasingly concerning. Vaccination is our best tool but only one of several we must use more and better. 1/17

How do we measure how well the flu vaccine works every year? We use an observational study called the "test negative design." A few tweets on how it works, and why it will be a big part of ongoing COVID-19 vaccine evaluation. 1/8 Figure source: Fukushima et al. (2017) Vaccine

THINK LIKE AN EPIDEMIOLOGIST: evaluating news stories edition No one is immune to sensational headlines but epidemiologists are trained to automatically ask a few useful questions that help us spot the forest for the trees.

Ever wonder about the scope of climate research published in @nature? Here are the papers published in 2021 I handled as climate science editor. Two threads. Here's part 2 on modern+future.