The Best Coronavirus Experts to Follow on Twitter
Kira Peikoff was the editor-in-chief of Leaps.org from 2017 to 2021. As a journalist, her work has appeared in The New York Times, Newsweek, Nautilus, Popular Mechanics, The New York Academy of Sciences, and other outlets. She is also the author of four suspense novels that explore controversial issues arising from scientific innovation: Living Proof, No Time to Die, Die Again Tomorrow, and Mother Knows Best. Peikoff holds a B.A. in Journalism from New York University and an M.S. in Bioethics from Columbia University. She lives in New Jersey with her husband and two young sons. Follow her on Twitter @KiraPeikoff.
As the coronavirus tears across the globe, the world's anxiety is at a fever-pitch, and we're all craving information to stay on top of the crisis.
But turning to the Internet for credible updates isn't as simple as it sounds, since we have an invisible foe spreading as quickly as the virus itself: misinformation. From wild conspiracy theories to baseless rumors, an infodemic is in full swing.
For the latest official information, you should follow the CDC, WHO, and FDA, in addition to your local public health department. But it's also helpful to pay attention to the scientists, doctors, public health experts and journalists who are sharing their perspectives in real time as new developments unfold. Here's a handy guide to get you started:
VIROLOGY
Dr. Trevor Bedford/@trvrb: Scientist at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center studying viruses, evolution and immunity.
Dr. Benhur Lee/@VirusWhisperer: Professor of microbiology at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai
Dr. Angela Rasmussen/@angie_rasmussen: Virologist and associate research scientist at Columbia University
Dr. Florian Krammer/@florian_krammer: Professor of Microbiology at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai
EPIDEMIOLOGY:
Dr. Alice Sim/@alicesim: Infectious disease epidemiologist and consultant at the World Health Organization
Dr. Tara C. Smith/@aetiology: Infectious disease specialist and professor at Kent State University
Dr. Caitlin Rivers/@cmyeaton: Epidemiologist and assistant professor at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
Dr. Michael Mina/@michaelmina_lab: Physician and Assistant Professor of Epidemiology & Immunology at the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health
INFECTIOUS DISEASE:
Dr. Nahid Bhadelia/@BhadeliaMD: Infectious diseases physician and the medical director of Special Pathogens Unit at Boston University School of Medicine
Dr. Paul Sax/@PaulSaxMD: Clinical Director of the Division of Infectious Diseases at Brigham and Women's Hospital
Dr. Priya Sampathkumar/@PsampathkumarMD: Infectious Disease Specialist at the Mayo Clinic
Dr. Krutika Kuppalli/@KrutikaKuppalli: Medical doctor and Infectious Disease Specialist based in Palo Alto, CA
PANDEMIC PREP:
Dr. Syra Madad/@syramadad: Senior Director, System-wide Special Pathogens Program at New York City Health + Hospitals
Dr Sylvie Briand/@SCBriand: Director of Pandemic and Epidemic Diseases Department at the World Health Organization
Jeremy Konyndyk/@JeremyKonyndyk: Senior Policy Fellow at the Center for Global Development
Amesh Adalja/@AmeshAA: Senior Scholar at the Johns Hopkins University Center for Health Security
PUBLIC HEALTH:
Scott Becker/@scottjbecker: CEO of the Association of Public Health Laboratories
Dr. Scott Gottlieb/@ScottGottliebMD: Physician, former commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration
APHA Public Health Nursing/@APHAPHN: Public Health Nursing Section of the American Public Health Association
Dr. Tom Inglesby/@T_Inglesby: Director of the Johns Hopkins SPH Center for Health Security
Dr. Nancy Messonnier/@DrNancyM_CDC: Director of the Center for the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases (NCIRD)
Dr. Arthur Caplan/@ArthurCaplan: Professor of Bioethics at New York University Langone Medical Center
SCIENCE JOURNALISTS:
Laura Helmuth/@laurahelmuth: Incoming Editor in Chief of Scientific American
Helen Branswell/@HelenBranswell: Infectious disease and public health reporter at STAT
Sharon Begley/@sxbegle: Senior writer at STAT
Carolyn Johnson/@carolynyjohnson: Science reporter at the Washington Post
Amy Maxmen/@amymaxmen: Science writer and senior reporter at Nature
Laurie Garrett/@Laurie_Garrett: Pulitzer-prize winning science journalist, author of The Coming Plague, former senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations
Soumya Karlamangla/@skarlamangla: Health writer at the Los Angeles Times
André Picard/@picardonhealth: Health Columnist, The Globe and Mail
Caroline Chen/@CarolineYLChen: Healthcare reporter at ProPublica
Andrew Jacobs/@AndrewJacobsNYT: Science reporter at the New York Times
Meg Tirrell/@megtirrell: Biotech and pharma reporter for CNBC
Kira Peikoff was the editor-in-chief of Leaps.org from 2017 to 2021. As a journalist, her work has appeared in The New York Times, Newsweek, Nautilus, Popular Mechanics, The New York Academy of Sciences, and other outlets. She is also the author of four suspense novels that explore controversial issues arising from scientific innovation: Living Proof, No Time to Die, Die Again Tomorrow, and Mother Knows Best. Peikoff holds a B.A. in Journalism from New York University and an M.S. in Bioethics from Columbia University. She lives in New Jersey with her husband and two young sons. Follow her on Twitter @KiraPeikoff.
When doctors couldn’t stop her daughter’s seizures, this mom earned a PhD and found a treatment herself.
Twenty-eight years ago, Tracy Dixon-Salazaar woke to the sound of her daughter, two-year-old Savannah, in the midst of a medical emergency.
“I entered [Savannah’s room] to see her tiny little body jerking about violently in her bed,” Tracy said in an interview. “I thought she was choking.” When she and her husband frantically called 911, the paramedic told them it was likely that Savannah had had a seizure—a term neither Tracy nor her husband had ever heard before.
Over the next several years, Savannah’s seizures continued and worsened. By age five Savannah was having seizures dozens of times each day, and her parents noticed significant developmental delays. Savannah was unable to use the restroom and functioned more like a toddler than a five-year-old.
Doctors were mystified: Tracy and her husband had no family history of seizures, and there was no event—such as an injury or infection—that could have caused them. Doctors were also confused as to why Savannah’s seizures were happening so frequently despite trying different seizure medications.
Doctors eventually diagnosed Savannah with Lennox-Gaustaut Syndrome, or LGS, an epilepsy disorder with no cure and a poor prognosis. People with LGS are often resistant to several kinds of anti-seizure medications, and often suffer from developmental delays and behavioral problems. People with LGS also have a higher chance of injury as well as a higher chance of sudden unexpected death (SUDEP) due to the frequent seizures. In about 70 percent of cases, LGS has an identifiable cause such as a brain injury or genetic syndrome. In about 30 percent of cases, however, the cause is unknown.
Watching her daughter struggle through repeated seizures was devastating to Tracy and the rest of the family.
“This disease, it comes into your life. It’s uninvited. It’s unannounced and it takes over every aspect of your daily life,” said Tracy in an interview with Today.com. “Plus it’s attacking the thing that is most precious to you—your kid.”
Desperate to find some answers, Tracy began combing the medical literature for information about epilepsy and LGS. She enrolled in college courses to better understand the papers she was reading.
“Ironically, I thought I needed to go to college to take English classes to understand these papers—but soon learned it wasn’t English classes I needed, It was science,” Tracy said. When she took her first college science course, Tracy says, she “fell in love with the subject.”
Tracy was now a caregiver to Savannah, who continued to have hundreds of seizures a month, as well as a full-time student, studying late into the night and while her kids were at school, using classwork as “an outlet for the pain.”
“I couldn’t help my daughter,” Tracy said. “Studying was something I could do.”
Twelve years later, Tracy had earned a PhD in neurobiology.
After her post-doctoral training, Tracy started working at a lab that explored the genetics of epilepsy. Savannah’s doctors hadn’t found a genetic cause for her seizures, so Tracy decided to sequence her genome again to check for other abnormalities—and what she found was life-changing.
Tracy discovered that Savannah had a calcium channel mutation, meaning that too much calcium was passing through Savannah’s neural pathways, leading to seizures. The information made sense to Tracy: Anti-seizure medications often leech calcium from a person’s bones. When doctors had prescribed Savannah calcium supplements in the past to counteract these effects, her seizures had gotten worse every time she took the medication. Tracy took her discovery to Savannah’s doctor, who agreed to prescribe her a calcium blocker.
The change in Savannah was almost immediate.
Within two weeks, Savannah’s seizures had decreased by 95 percent. Once on a daily seven-drug regimen, she was soon weaned to just four, and then three. Amazingly, Tracy started to notice changes in Savannah’s personality and development, too.
“She just exploded in her personality and her talking and her walking and her potty training and oh my gosh she is just so sassy,” Tracy said in an interview.
Since starting the calcium blocker eleven years ago, Savannah has continued to make enormous strides. Though still unable to read or write, Savannah enjoys puzzles and social media. She’s “obsessed” with boys, says Tracy. And while Tracy suspects she’ll never be able to live independently, she and her daughter can now share more “normal” moments—something she never anticipated at the start of Savannah’s journey with LGS. While preparing for an event, Savannah helped Tracy get ready.
“We picked out a dress and it was the first time in our lives that we did something normal as a mother and a daughter,” she said. “It was pretty cool.”
A sleek, four-foot tall white robot glides across a cafe storefront in Tokyo’s Nihonbashi district, holding a two-tiered serving tray full of tea sandwiches and pastries. The cafe’s patrons smile and say thanks as they take the tray—but it’s not the robot they’re thanking. Instead, the patrons are talking to the person controlling the robot—a restaurant employee who operates the avatar from the comfort of their home.
It’s a typical scene at DAWN, short for Diverse Avatar Working Network—a cafe that launched in Tokyo six years ago as an experimental pop-up and quickly became an overnight success. Today, the cafe is a permanent fixture in Nihonbashi, staffing roughly 60 remote workers who control the robots remotely and communicate to customers via a built-in microphone.
More than just a creative idea, however, DAWN is being hailed as a life-changing opportunity. The workers who control the robots remotely (known as “pilots”) all have disabilities that limit their ability to move around freely and travel outside their homes. Worldwide, an estimated 16 percent of the global population lives with a significant disability—and according to the World Health Organization, these disabilities give rise to other problems, such as exclusion from education, unemployment, and poverty.
These are all problems that Kentaro Yoshifuji, founder and CEO of Ory Laboratory, which supplies the robot servers at DAWN, is looking to correct. Yoshifuji, who was bedridden for several years in high school due to an undisclosed health problem, launched the company to help enable people who are house-bound or bedridden to more fully participate in society, as well as end the loneliness, isolation, and feelings of worthlessness that can sometimes go hand-in-hand with being disabled.
“It’s heartbreaking to think that [people with disabilities] feel they are a burden to society, or that they fear their families suffer by caring for them,” said Yoshifuji in an interview in 2020. “We are dedicating ourselves to providing workable, technology-based solutions. That is our purpose.”
Shota Kuwahara, a DAWN employee with muscular dystrophy. Ory Labs, Inc.
Wanting to connect with others and feel useful is a common sentiment that’s shared by the workers at DAWN. Marianne, a mother of two who lives near Mt. Fuji, Japan, is functionally disabled due to chronic pain and fatigue. Working at DAWN has allowed Marianne to provide for her family as well as help alleviate her loneliness and grief.Shota, Kuwahara, a DAWN employee with muscular dystrophy, agrees. "There are many difficulties in my daily life, but I believe my life has a purpose and is not being wasted," he says. "Being useful, able to help other people, even feeling needed by others, is so motivational."