8 Comments

Very glad to have an update from you on Covid. I appreciate your input a lot. Thank you.

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No worries, am happy to keep an eye on it all still!

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Twitter is such a ball ache isn’t it (and I don’t even have balls). When Musk took over I thought it was too central to really collapse, but I’m beginning to think I was wrong; I find myself using it less and less, because it’s just less interesting, useful and funny with every passing day. Good luck with the new term.

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Yeah, it's just gradually getting worse I think. But I feel like the big tipping point lately was the "paying cash to blue ticks who gain high numbers of Tweet views" - it's clear that it creates a big financial incentive to be loud, aggressive and wrong, and to double-down on that to get piled on for clicks by people who've never heard of you. In lots of ways, it feels like the direct opposite of the Substack model, where the only way to get paid is by creating and curating quality content that regular viewers appreciate.

And thanks, I'm looking forward to it!

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Thanks for the update and like you I'm pleased that the current trend and predictions for BA.2.86 looks optimistic in its likely outcome. I fully understand the pressures of teaching a large class. In retirement I can reflect back on the annual pressure of having to organise and teach a practical class in Immunology to over 400 2nd year students on the combined Medical, Veterinary and Natural Sciences IB courses whilst at the same time lecturing to approximately 50 3rd year students on the part II Immunology course. This was compressed into a short period in October and November and during that time I had little spare time to devote to research or other activities. Then May would arrive and it would be time to examine all those same students! Both exhausting, but also rewarding at the same time!

You're really not missing much on Twitter, it seems to get worse in terms of good to bad content ratio each week.

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Thanks! Yes, I can sympathise with all that. In some ways I miss the shorter Cambridge terms (we're on 12 week teaching blocks, albeit with a reading week now for the first years), but it does make it all very compressed like you say!

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Glad to find your updates here, thank you 👍😊

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No worries, will get back to the other place if I can, but not sure how that works!

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