Firstgen in Yale Center for Infection & Immunity using imaging technologies to study pain in long COVID and similar syndromes. https://xitter.gq/t.co/Dhf7B783IT
JP➡️TX➡️PI➡️OH➡️CT➡️FL➡️WA➡️CT
Joined October 2012
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Christopher A. Baker retweeted
Congratulations to Jessica Cardin, PhD, @jess_cardin on being named the inaugural Gordon M. Shepherd Professor of Neuroscience. The new endowed chair honors Shepherd, a pioneer in brain circuitry who spent more than 50 years at Yale. giving.yale.edu/your-impact/…
ALT Headshot of Jess Cardin, PhD
Christopher A. Baker retweeted
Grateful to @NPR for the chance to talk about how stress and infections like COVID can stir dormant viruses in our bodies, and what that may mean for our immune system. Still much to learn, and I’m thankful to my team and colleagues for their work 🎧 npr.org/2026/10/23/nx-s1-598…
Christopher A. Baker retweeted
🦔The Blue Cross Blue Shield Association says insurers paid out nearly $1 billion more than usual from AI-assisted hospital documentation in 2024-2025. Hospitals use AI to scan records and find secondary diagnoses that human reviewers missed. More diagnoses means higher reimbursements. But treatment levels haven't gone up.
BCBSA's SVP of data science said AI is "identifying more billable conditions, not sicker patients." Insurers now deploy their own AI to deny those same claims. Patients pay for both through higher premiums.
My Take
This might be the most American healthcare story I've ever read. Hospitals bought AI to find more things to bill for. Insurers bought AI to deny those bills. The technology cost money on each end and the tab went straight to patients through higher premiums. A billion dollars moved and no one got any healthier. The only thing that changed was the size of the invoices.
Two sides of a trillion-dollar industry found a new tool to fight over the same pool of money and the person in the hospital bed pays for all of it. Premiums go up, denials go up, and the AI vendors collect from everyone. If you want to know who AI works for, stop reading the press releases and look at where the money goes. In healthcare it went straight into the billing department.
Hedgie🤗
Christopher A. Baker retweeted
Ten years ago Tami, Roy, and I released a movie we made of antibiotic resistance evolving in real time. I thought maybe a couple thousand people tops would see it.
I couldn't have imagined millions of views, and it being taught across levels worldwide
So @conTAMInatedsci, Roy Kishony and I made a movie of evolution in action:
youtube.com/watch?v=plVk4NVI…
Christopher A. Baker retweeted
Exciting opportunity at Yale 📢 We are seeking a Medical Director for the Yale New Haven Hospital Multi-Specialty Long COVID Care Center. Pls spread the word!
Interested candidates should contact @LisaSandersMD.
#LongCOVID #Medicine #InternalMedicine #PostAcuteInfectionSyndrome
Christopher A. Baker retweeted
Yet another myth collapses and joins Ethidium Bromide. Next one will be "having dedicated RNA bench and pipettes"
journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128…
Christopher A. Baker retweeted
Just leaving this for all the leakers who said the furin cleavage site could have never gotten into SARS-CoV-2 spike unless a “gain of function” virologist put it there.
Turns out nature is still the ultimate GOF virologist
Christopher A. Baker retweeted
Dendritic translation and neuroproteasome-mediated degradation of endogenous tau revealed by STARFISH: nature.com/articles/s41593-0…
Christopher A. Baker retweeted
Social media posts containing misinformation evoke more moral outrage than posts with trustworthy information, and that outrage facilitates the spread of misinformation, according to a 2024 study in Science.
The researchers also found that people are more likely to share outrage-evoking misinformation without reading it first.
Learn more: scim.ag/4ezFm6t #SocialMediaDay
Christopher A. Baker retweeted
I know I sound like a broken record, but I'm so tired of this bullshit. The cell is nothing like this. The dimensions are all wrong -- a typical protein molecule is 3-5 nm, so ~5000 times smaller linearly than a typical 20 um eukaryotic cell, and one part in 100 billionth the volume. There's far too much empty space, the cytosol is packed with molecules. The collective wavelike motion is pure fantasy -- stochasticity dominates at the molecular level.
I suspect scientists put together these animations to show to the layman how much we know, but to me it just points out how much we DON'T know, and doesn't even begin to convey the true complexity.
Scientists have created one of the most detailed 3D reconstructions of a human cell (eukaryotic cell) ever produced.
This groundbreaking model, often termed a "Cellular Landscape Cross-Section Through a Eukaryotic Cell," combines data from X-ray tomography, nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR), and cryo-electron microscopy to map molecular structures in extreme detail.
Christopher A. Baker retweeted
Excited to share our study by @keylas3 et al. on pathological autoantibodies in people with Long COVID. We asked whether IgG in patients with Long COVID bind to human tissues/antigens and cause pathologies when transferred into mice. With @PutrinoLab
doi.org/10.1016/j.cell.2026.…
Christopher A. Baker retweeted
Is there an association between human herpesviruses (HHVs) reactivation and Long COVID? We analyzed HHV DNA shedding in saliva and found that HHV-6 correlates with Long COVID severity. Claire Laxton, @S_Tabachnikova, Lily Cooke, Kexin Wang et al.
medrxiv.org/content/10.64898… (1/)
Christopher A. Baker retweeted
Today in @Nature, we report MouseMapper: foundation-model AI to map disease perturbations across the entire mouse body cell-by-cell.
In obesity, it revealed body-wide inflammation & unexpected facial nerve damage. 🧵👇🔉
nature.com/articles/s41586-0… led by @Dorie00 & @yingchen733
Christopher A. Baker retweeted
In fact, many critics of "let er rip" DID anticipate the scale & impact of #LongCOVID.
Google Scholar notes many studies already in 2020. We drafted the scenario planning (policy calculus) figure in 2020 for a COVlD grant that built the organizational footing for PMC.
ALT Google Scholar: 21,700 search results in 2020 alone.
ALT A figure first drafted in 2020 describing potential pandemic scenarios, each describing possible implications related to Long COVlD
Reminder: Long COVID's disability & suffering will be the pandemic's most devastating long-term global legacy. Neither GBD supporters nor critics anticipated its scale or included it in their policy calculus -and “let er rip” strategies prioritizing widespread exposure clearly worsen the toll. Millions affected, with real costs in lives and productivity (on top of 20 million direct deaths globally, which we should never forget or minimize). nature.com/articles/s43856-0…
Christopher A. Baker retweeted
A major theme of PolyBio’s 2026 Spring Symposium: developing and validating Long COVID biomarkers to enable smarter clinical trials, stratified by patient subtype. Here are 6 key presenters that will discuss a promising biomarker platform on May 22. From novel platforms like extracellular vesicles & BARA, to microfluidics capture of persistent SARS-CoV-2, there’s a large body of new IACI research to explore.
Full symposium schedule (Friday May 22, 11 am-5 pm ET / 3-9 pm UTC): polybio.org/2026-spring-symp…
Christopher A. Baker retweeted
hallucinated references will land you a 1-year ban from arxiv now. wow
Christopher A. Baker retweeted
Excited to announce our results from the first ever survey on GLP-1s for Long COVID and ME!
Patient outcomes showed two extremes: while 53% improved, 28% experienced worsening, some long after their last dose.
Full analysis here and in the tweets below:
lcmedata.org/treatments/glp1…
Christopher A. Baker retweeted
This website visualizes social media as a room with 100 people in it
3 people are producing most of the toxic content
Most people assume 43 are producing toxic content, because these 3 are hyperactive
Engagement-based ranking amplifies the 3 provocative, high-reaction users.
The other 97 quiet voices disappear or self-censor.
And the loud minority thinks it's the majority: the more someone posts, the more they believe the public agrees with them!
thenoisyroom.com/
Christopher A. Baker retweeted
BREAKING: First sequencing of the Hantavirus from the outbreak.
-99% identical to a June 2018 case from a patient in Argentina
-10.4 SNV/year mutation rate
- The Andes genome is about 12 kb across three RNA segments. At 10⁻⁴ to 10⁻³ substitutions/site/year, that translates very roughly to 1-12 SNV per year
-Completely in line with a natural spillover in Argentina from the rodent host in 2018 and now in 2026
Source: virological.org/t/complete-s…
Christopher A. Baker retweeted
GLP-1 overdoses have been skyrocketing, with poison centers seeing a nearly 1500% increase in calls related to overdose or side effects of injectable weight-loss drugs since 2019, according to US National Poison Data Center.
Experts suggest that the use of compounded drugs has exacerbated the overdose problem. However, increased utilization of GLP-1s and lack of patient education are also among the contributing factors. mdsc.pe/42GKVcg
