Please follow my twitter account @jsm2334 for more recent commentaries and threads on COVID-19 topics

Covid-19 Data Science
Finding the signal in the noise of Covid-19
Reporting and balanced evaluation of research results, data sets, applications and models, and commentaries related to Covid-19 and its underlying virus, SARS-Cov-2

Newborns are born with SARS-CoV-2 antibodies transferred in utero from their mothers
A University of Pennsylvania-Children's Hospital of Philadelphia research team with which I collaborate just published a paper in JAMA...

It is critical for Biden's team to preserve the HHS hospitalization data
Here is an article in The Atlantic penned by Alexis Madrugal, a cofounder of Covidtracking.com, discussing the database tracking local...

A few words from article on potential vaccine efficacy for new variants
Here is a AP news article reporting on a new paper presenting results investigating how the mutations underlying some of the recently...

Norwegian nursing home deaths after vaccination are in line with what is expected by random chance
The occurrence of nursing home deaths after SARS-CoV-2 vaccination has created quite a stir, causing Norway to reconsider whether to...

Refuting Peter Doshi's claims doubting "trustworthiness & meaningfulness" of COVID vaccine results
Peter Doshi has written a piece in the opinion section for the British Medical Journal (BMJ), for which he is an associate editor,...

Some statistical perspective on anecdotal claims of vaccine-induced complications
On social media, it was inevitable that we would start to see anecdotal reports of serious medical conditions experienced after taking a...

How alarmed should we be about this new UK variant? Evaluation of the quantitative evidence.
Given this article is somewhat long and involved, I first summarize its key points: A new SARS-CoV-2 variant has emerged and taken over...

New Nature Communications paper suggests robust neutralizing antibodies after COVID-19 recovery
A paper just published in Nature Communications yesterday measured neutralizing antibody levels in 195 individuals with PCR confirmed...

End of December vaccine update from Derek Lowe
Derek Lowe writes a column in Science Translational Medicine each week that I have found to be informative and readable, and this week...

Why I think Fauci's claims of vaccination proportion for achieving herd immunity are too pessimistic
Dr Fauci is one of the national leaders in the pandemic, but occasionally he says things that I have really disagreed with. One of these...

Some important (and perhaps under-discussed) considerations for vaccine distribution priority
Summary of key points: We will soon have 2 approved vaccines providing enough doses for >40% of the nation, but given there is no...

Full vaccine results in, Pfizer/BioNTech stellar, but AstraZeneca/Oxford mixed & require more study
Today we received full data from both the Pfizer/BioNTech Phase 3 vaccine study and the Astrazeneca/Oxford vaccine trials that were...

Final Results from Moderna vaccine trial are stellar!
Moderna just announced the final efficacy results from its Phase 3 study for the SARS-CoV-2 vaccine are complete, and they are...

Some serious questions about the AstraZeneca vaccine trial results.
(Note: I have updated this post on 11/24 based on additional relevant trial information, but the conclusion from the original blog post...

USA Today Article describing new mRNA technology and how it could revolutionize medicine
This article in USA Today discusses the new mRNA vaccine technology underlying the Moderna and BioNTech/Pfizer vaccines with my Penn...

Nice article explaining what is special about mRNA vaccines and discussing vaccine efforts
The Atlantic published an informative article discussing the mRNA vaccines developed by BioNTech/Pfizer and Moderna and what makes them...

Debunking anti-vaccine conspiracy theories
I can't emphasize enough how positive these vaccine trial results are from the Moderna and BioNTech/Pfizer mRNA vaccines, showing much...

Light at the end of the pandemic tunnel? Moderna vaccine 94.5% efficacy, prevented severe disease!
Last week, as I highlighted in my blog post, BioNTech/Pfizer released the interim analysis of their phase 3 study results for their...

Great article explaining COVID-19 vaccine efficacy
Biostatistician Natalie Dean and Epidemiologist Marc Lipsitch, key international experts in vaccine studies, just published an article in...



























