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bquilty.bsky.social
Billy Quilty
@bquilty.bsky.social
1.3K followers 1.8K following 70 posts
Infectious disease epidemiologist and modeller based at Charité Berlin, LSHTM (honorary), WHO Pandemic Hub (consultant) | PhD LSHTM | MSc ImperialCollege | Twitter: @BQuilty
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bquilty.bsky.social
Billy Quilty @bquilty.bsky.social · Nov 28
Very happy to share our new study out today in the New England Journal of Medicine, showing fewer PCV doses are non-inferior to standard schedules in maintaining control of vaccine-type carriage in Vietnam. This could make vacc programmes much more affordable for LMICs.

www.nejm.org/doi/full/10....
Effect of a Reduced PCV10 Dose Schedule on Pneumococcal Carriage in Vietnam | NEJM
After pneumococcal disease and colonization have been controlled through vaccination campaigns, a reduced pneumococcal conjugate vaccine (PCV) schedule may be sufficient to sustain that control at ...
www.nejm.org
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bquilty.bsky.social
Billy Quilty @bquilty.bsky.social · Aug 6
Wow.

www.reddit.com/r/singularit...
From the singularity community on Reddit: Genie 3 turns Veo 3 generated drone shot into an interactive world you can take control mid-flight
Explore this post and more from the singularity community
www.reddit.com
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bquilty.bsky.social
Billy Quilty @bquilty.bsky.social · Jul 7
I'm taking part in this webinar on Friday to discuss my experience in #SciComm as an ECR during the Covid-19 pandemic - should be a really interesting conversation! Sign up below:
researcheracad.bsky.social
Elsevier Researcher Academy @researcheracad.bsky.social · Jun 26
On July 11th at 12pm UTC, join @researcheracad.bsky.social and @senseaboutsci.bsky.social for a webinar addressing how early career researchers can respond to opposition, misrepresentation, and harassment.

Register now: http://spkl.io/63321A6PJV

#AcademicSky #PhDSky #SciComm
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bquilty.bsky.social
Billy Quilty @bquilty.bsky.social · Jun 3
For better or worse (and there's lots of arguments for both) the genie is out of the bottle - it's here to stay, and that means we should be trying to maximise it's usefulness to society, and at the same time, trying to minimise harms. This is just wishing it away.
‘Nobody wants a robot to read them a story!’ The creatives and academics rejecting AI – at work and at home
Is artificial intelligence coming for everyone’s jobs? Not if this lot have anything to do with it
www.theguardian.com
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bquilty.bsky.social
Billy Quilty @bquilty.bsky.social · Jun 2
While the Inquiry's focus on improving quarantine adherence is important (summary: www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/...), it's a shame it overlooks DCT - one of the few pandemic policies validated through modelling + RCTs and then rolled out to reduce societal impacts while controlling transmission.
The Covid Inquiry Podcast - 49. ‘I wasn’t the decision maker’ - BBC Sounds
The Inquiry hears from the lead of the test and trace unit
www.bbc.co.uk
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bquilty.bsky.social
Billy Quilty @bquilty.bsky.social · Jun 2
Great to see @christophraser.bsky.social discuss daily contact testing as a way of reducing quarantine burden at the UK Covid Inquiry. However, it is disappointing this is the only mention of this policy in the entire 12 days of the Test, Trace, and Isolate Module.
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bquilty.bsky.social
Billy Quilty @bquilty.bsky.social · May 5
Now to make the most mid latte art of all time 🤩
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bquilty.bsky.social
Billy Quilty @bquilty.bsky.social · Apr 2
Just a few days left to apply for a PhD integrating behavioural data in infectious disease modelling using AI at Charité Berlin with me and Prof Stefan Flasche.

Deadline 6th April!
iddjobs.org
IDDjobs @iddjobs.org · Mar 7
PhD position (Berlin, Germany)
AI-Driven Integration of Behavioural Data for Disease Modelling
with @BQuilty , Stefan Flasche
at Charité
More details: http://iddjobs.org/jobs/2285
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bquilty.bsky.social
Billy Quilty @bquilty.bsky.social · Mar 28
In Britain, we pride ourselves on authenticity, tradition, and cultural heritage.

*sips pint of Madri*
alphaville.ft.com
FT Alphaville @alphaville.ft.com · Mar 28
Asking the big questions:

on.ft.com/3FInNSx
What does TGJones mean?
[FREE TO READ] That old, familial feeling
on.ft.com
bquilty.bsky.social
Billy Quilty @bquilty.bsky.social · Mar 24
I'm mainly talking about when it's already at the point where it's pandemic, so high R and high N, lots of cases, widely distributed.

I think for containment at source it's a different question, I think there's more reason to throw the book at it there to stop it becoming a pandemic.
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bquilty.bsky.social
Billy Quilty @bquilty.bsky.social · Mar 24
I think the West could have done all those things and had a better experience (I think a comprehensive rapid testing approach could allow us to avoid lockdowns) but I don't think global eradication was or is feasible for something like Covid.
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bquilty.bsky.social
Billy Quilty @bquilty.bsky.social · Mar 24
But to test efficacy/effectiveness of vaccines, you need to have cases somewhere. So the success of countries like Australia/NZ owes a lot to other countries like the having big epidemics which allowed for vaccine trials. A very tricky issue (potentially solvable with human challenge studies - TBD)
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bquilty.bsky.social
Billy Quilty @bquilty.bsky.social · Mar 24
Like I think the below is rather simplistic, as the success of NPIs in large part is determined by timely development and rollout of PIs. Hard lockdown early isn't going to be effective if you haven't rolled out good vaccines by the time you loosen it - look at experience of Australia/NZ vs China.
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bquilty.bsky.social
Billy Quilty @bquilty.bsky.social · Mar 24
My two pence on lockdowns/NPIs is that for high R resp. pathogens we should really talk about effectiveness in terms of capacity to delay, rather than prevent. So the question is then: what reduces R but also carries lowest societal costs so it can be maintained until we get vaccines/antivirals out?
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adamjkucharski.bsky.social
Adam Kucharski @adamjkucharski.bsky.social · Mar 17
Do we worry too much about misinformation? I've got a piece in today's Guardian about aliens, vaccines and social media - and the dual risks of believing falsehoods and ignoring truth: www.theguardian.com/books/2025/m...
The big idea: do we worry too much about misinformation?
Seeing falsehoods everywhere is as damaging as believing too much. Our focus should be on helping people interpret information better
www.theguardian.com
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Reposted by Billy Quilty
simonwillison.net
Simon Willison @simonwillison.net · Mar 11
Here's the table of contents for my lengthy new piece on how I use LLMs to help me write code simonwillison.net/2025/Mar/11/...
If someone tells you that coding with LLMs is easy they are (probably unintentionally) misleading you. They may well have stumbled on to patterns that work, but those patterns do not come naturally to everyone. I’ve been getting great results out of LLMs for code for over two years now. Here’s my attempt at transferring some of that experience and intution to you. Set reasonable expectations Account for training cut-off dates Context is king Ask them for options Tell them exactly what to do You have to test what it writes! Remember it’s a conversation Use tools that can run the code for you Vibe-coding is a great way to learn A detailed example Be ready for the human to take over The biggest advantage is speed of development LLMs amplify existing expertise Bonus: answering questions about codebases
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bquilty.bsky.social
Billy Quilty @bquilty.bsky.social · Mar 12
Of course its already a thing: knowyourmeme.com/memes/accide...

Article: www.theguardian.com/business/202...
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bquilty.bsky.social
Billy Quilty @bquilty.bsky.social · Mar 12
This photo in @theguardian.com looks like a screenshot from an isometric strategy video game:
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bquilty.bsky.social
Billy Quilty @bquilty.bsky.social · Mar 7
Interested in pursing a PhD in infectious disease dynamics, artificial intelligence, and behavioural science?

Come and join myself and Professor Stefan Flasche at the Charité Center for Global Health in Berlin:

karriere.charite.de/en/job-vacan...
karriere.charite.de
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Reposted by Billy Quilty
adamjkucharski.bsky.social
Adam Kucharski @adamjkucharski.bsky.social · Feb 25
When an epidemic hits, how long does it take to get going with common epidemic analysis tasks?

A couple of weeks ago, we asked representatives from over a dozen UK organisations and universities who work actively on epidemic analysis and modelling how long the below tasks would take them....

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bquilty.bsky.social
Billy Quilty @bquilty.bsky.social · Feb 24
Though interesting that Neukölln - which was in the West - has gone to Die Linke, for the first time ever
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bquilty.bsky.social
Billy Quilty @bquilty.bsky.social · Feb 24
What wall?
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bquilty.bsky.social
Billy Quilty @bquilty.bsky.social · Feb 23
Can't vote but #FUKAFD and #FUKNZS! #BTW2025
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alexvespi.bsky.social
Alessandro Vespignani @alexvespi.bsky.social · Feb 12
Wastewater from airplane toilets?
We introduce a global Aircraft-Based Wastewater Surveillance Network (WWSN) for pandemic monitoring in Nature Medicine 🔗 doi.org/10.1038/s415...

Aircraft-based wastewater surveillance allows for real-time, non-invasive monitoring of global pathogen spread
Short 🧵
Pandemic monitoring with global aircraft-based wastewater surveillance networks - Nature Medicine
By simulating the implementation of airport-based wastewater surveillance sites at the global level, a modeling study shows how this early warning system would perform in identifying sources of pandem...
doi.org
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hern.bsky.social
Alex Hern @hern.bsky.social · Jan 27
The success of and belated market response to DeepSeek doesn’t really prove many AI-skeptic takes right. This is evidence of powerful generative AI being easier and cheaper to make and run than anyone expected so soon.
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bquilty.bsky.social
Billy Quilty @bquilty.bsky.social · Jan 22
Gotta be that guy and say it's the proportion of people within those that said they wouldn't want to go to the moon, so it's a smaller fraction of the overall population (0.23*0.48 = ~11%)
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