What I Read This Week...
The CDC brings COVID precautions in-line with other respiratory diseases, scientists make a breakthrough in Alzheimer's testing, and the debate over remote work has turned ugly
Caught My Eye…
The CDC released new guidelines on Friday which bring COVID precautions in-line with those of other respiratory viruses like the flu. This includes staying home until a day has passed with no fever and symptoms begin to improve. While COVID deaths and hospitalizations are still higher than the flu, the gap has narrowed since the early days of the pandemic, and the disease is no longer considered an emergency.
Scientists have recently discovered that a blood test can detect silent damage from Alzheimer’s with surprising accuracy. The development stems from a recent discovery that people with Alzheimer’s have clumps of abnormal proteins growing in their brains for ~15-20 years before their diagnosis. The blood test allows doctors to discover abnormal levels of these proteins much earlier, but it’s not yet clear what they can do with that information to slow or reverse the disease.
The debate over working remotely has turned ugly as companies call employees back to the office and workers resist the loss of a popular perk. Two thirds of the U.S. thinks that the subject has become unnecessarily politicized, and 74% believe that employees need to stop complaining about having to go back in office. Meanwhile, most people see companies as out of touch for focusing so heavily on “back to office” protocols.
Other Reading…
AI Chip Startup Groq Forms New Business Unit, Acquires Definitive Intelligence (TechCrunch)
Elon Musk Sues OpenAI for Abandoning its Mission to Benefit Humanity (The Verge)
Texas Has Never Seen a Fire This Big. Here Is What We Know (NY Times)
Why We Don’t Trust Each Other Anymore (Epsilon Theory)
Here Come the AI Worms (WIRED)
Racial Turnout Gap Has Widened With a Weakened Voting Rights Act, Study Finds (NY Times)
Scoop: Migrant Backlog to Hit 8 Million Under Biden by October, Data Reveal (Axios)
Smart move on not having any HR and DEI at your companies. Can you pass this TDS diagnosis on to J-Cal? If he gets over his occasional relapses, the all in pod will achieve herd immunity ;)
https://yuribezmenov.substack.com/p/trump-derangement-syndrome-diagnosis-dsm-v
Scientists at Washington University in St Louis have a company called C2N that is FDA approved for the Alzheimer biomarker blood tests. Learn more https://c2n.com/