Christopher Cox
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cwhe.bsky.social
Christopher Cox
@cwhe.bsky.social
1.4K followers 110 following 46 posts
Writer and editor, NYTM and NYM. Signal: christophercox.01
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cwhe.bsky.social
Wrote this about bird flu preparedness back in February.

nymag.com/intelligence...
Highlighted text reads: The Biden administration also invested $766 million in the development of mRNA vaccines for pandemic flu. “If the strain changes,” O’Connell said, “we would want to stay ahead of what’s currently circulating, and mRNA lets you do that a little easier.” Highlighted text reads: It turns out that not interfering with the vaccine-approval process is another one of those norms that, like not renaming the Gulf of Mexico, we have scant ability to enforce.
May 29, 2025 at 11:14 AM
cwhe.bsky.social
The Daily Dhow
A dhow sailing on the open ocean.
May 10, 2025 at 1:53 PM
cwhe.bsky.social
Uh oh
March 23, 2025 at 2:31 AM
cwhe.bsky.social
Hi, good question! The fact that it hasn’t yet suggests no, but pigs do have the right receptors for h5n1 to infect them, so it might just be a matter of time. Here’s a relevant bit from the story.
Screenshot of the article with this text: The virus won't replicate into a desert indefinitely. In Worobey and Nelson's paper, they write, somewhat cryptically, "The continued absence of H5N1 in U.S. swine is highly fortunate." I asked Worobey to explain what that meant. Pigs, he said, "have both receptor types throughout their respiratory tract and therefore could conceivably be a much, much better place for the evolution of something that could become successful."
March 21, 2025 at 12:47 PM
cwhe.bsky.social
David Macaulay did the illustrations for this story. As someone who grew up reading The Way Things Work, this was a special thrill.
Illustration of the respiratory tract of a man breathing in flu virus, the virus mutating, and the man coughing out mutated virus.
March 10, 2025 at 3:38 PM
cwhe.bsky.social
I wrote about bird flu and Robert Kennedy.

nymag.com/intelligence...
A screen shot of a paragraph from the story with the text: “During the first Trump administration, when Alex Azar had Kennedy’s job, he said, “The secretary of HHS has a shocking amount of power by the stroke of a pen.” We may be about to find out how true that statement is. Offit thinks it’s likely that Kennedy will either eliminate committees like his — cutting off one path for dissent — or fill them with like-minded people. He could hold up the approval of new vaccines and refer existing ones for additional study. There may be few checks on his ability to do so. “In a normal world, you would have people at the FDA and CDC who would say, ‘No, sorry, that’s not going to happen,’” Offit said. “But we don’t live in that world. We live in a world full of sycophants who are just there to rubber stamp whatever it is they’re told to do.” It turns out that not interfering with the vaccine-approval process is another one of those norms that, like not renaming the Gulf of Mexico, we have scant ability to enforce.”
March 10, 2025 at 11:59 AM
cwhe.bsky.social
S.E. Hinton: I have had many strange things happen in my life.

New York Times: Thank you, no follow-up question.
Q: How do you organize your books? A: I have a beautiful library, organized by subjects: History (early to late), Author Biographies, Exploring, Women's Studies, Journalism, Entertainment, English Fiction, American Fiction and Children's Books. The Paranormal books are organized by Ghosts and Hauntings, Reincarnation, Coincidences, Strange but True. Q: Why so many books on the paranormal? A: I have had many strange things happen in my life. Q: Describe your ideal reading experience (when, where, what, how). A: Any time, on the sofa, with good lighting, my cat and a small glass of wine.
December 14, 2024 at 4:15 PM
cwhe.bsky.social
In his By the Book interview this week, Billy Collins says he began copying other primates and peeling bananas from the bottom. I tried this for a while, and I have to say, the chimps are wrong on this one.
Question: What’s the most interesting thing you learned from a book recently? Answer: From a book on primates, I recently learned that chimps, monkeys and gorillas all peel bananas from the opposite end from us and use the stem as a handle. I even wrote a poem about how I made the switch.
December 1, 2024 at 7:27 PM
cwhe.bsky.social
Screenshot of an interview with James Schuyler from the Fall 2024 issue of The Paris Review.
October 6, 2024 at 7:36 PM
cwhe.bsky.social
This passage from Charles Duhigg’s OpenAI piece in the New Yorker is striking. Compare to Tesla, where engineers wanted to name their self-driving AI Copilot but Musk overruled them.
December 1, 2023 at 3:43 PM
cwhe.bsky.social
November 21, 2023 at 12:55 PM