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Ben Cooper

@bugwonk.bsky.social

1.7K followers 470 following 32 posts

Professor of infectious disease epidemiology at Centre for Global Health Research, Oxford. 🤓🧀☕️🚴🏼🦠💉💊

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Ben Cooper @bugwonk.bsky.social · May 1

Many hospitals in LMICs lack access to microbiology services. @cherrylim128.bsky.social et al asked if such services are a good use of limited resources. The answer: emphatically yes. Such services are likely to improve patient outcomes & reduce overall costs. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Cost-effectiveness of maintaining an active hospital microbiology laboratory service in Timor-Leste

Maintaining an active hospital microbiology laboratory allows definitive antibiotic treatment for bacterial infections to be given in a timely manner.…

www.sciencedirect.com

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Reposted by Ben Cooper

brecht ingelbeen @ingelbeen.bsky.social · Jun 23

Open position for an ID modeler @itmantwerp.bsky.social on community-level + healthcare transmission of resistant #AMR bacteria in LRS, working with Clinical Research Unit Nanoro, @esthervk.bsky.social, @bugwonk.bsky.social, KEMRI-wellcome Kilifi, myself,... #IDSky #EpiSky
www.itg.be/en/jobs-and-...

Epidemiologist

Epidemiologist for modelling AMR transmission in LMICMore than 500 staff members at the Institute of Tropical Medicine (ITM) contribute e...

www.itg.be

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Ben Cooper @bugwonk.bsky.social · Jun 14

Congratulations to Sai Thein Than Tun @tropicalmedicine.ox.ac.uk ‬for passing his PhD viva & overcoming some formidable obstacles in the process. Sai’s work on malaria elimination is a great example of simple models supporting clear thinking about complex processes
link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Screenshot from viva for DPhil candidate Sai Thein Than Tun with examiners Ben Cooper and Jennifer Flegg. All are smiling as Sai has just passed his viva with minor corrections and the examiners were hugely impressed at the quality of the work .

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Ben Cooper @bugwonk.bsky.social · May 1

Cost-effectiveness of maintaining an active hospital microbiology laboratory service in Timor-Leste

Maintaining an active hospital microbiology laboratory allows definitive antibiotic treatment for bacterial infections to be given in a timely manner.…

www.sciencedirect.com

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Ben Cooper @bugwonk.bsky.social · Apr 6

A final feeling. While walking by the Thames in Abingdon last Sunday evening Joe heard drums in the distance & led me to this fallen dismembered tree, the site of an amazing one performer free festival and, despite all the amputations, a moment of pure contemplation & sensory delight.

Ben Cooper @bugwonk.bsky.social · Apr 6

@laylamoran.bsky.social as our local MP & chair of the HSCC it would be great if you could help promote Joe’s fundraising for this brilliant local charity, highlight the lack of out of school support for some of those who need it most & read John’s brilliant book www.theguardian.com/books/2025/m...

Maybe I’m Amazed by John Harris review – with a little help from John, Paul, George and Ringo

The Guardian journalist’s tender account of how music became a bridge between him and his autistic son, James, is full of wit and wisdom

www.theguardian.com

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Ben Cooper @bugwonk.bsky.social · Apr 6

Joe has been attending Yellow Submarine 1 day/wk in holidays since 2019. He loves it, but last December Oxfordshire County Council told us they would no longer support YS to work with children needing 1-1 support, so kids like Joe who need to be active and outside currently have nowhere to go.

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Ben Cooper @bugwonk.bsky.social · Apr 6

but since Joe doesn’t believe in lying back & saying how bad his luck is he’ll be running his first 10k in July to support amazing local charity, Yellow Submarine www.yellowsubmarine.org.uk. Please sponsor him if you can bit.ly/3G24aF9 repost if you can’t & visit their awesome Oxford cafe.

board full of text explaining all the amazing things Oxfordshire charity Yellow Submarine does to support young people and adults with learning disabilities and autism to lead full lives

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Ben Cooper @bugwonk.bsky.social · Apr 6

he’s been listening on his headphones to Hard Times Come Again No More from Yo-Yo Ma’s Appalachian Journey www.youtube.com/watch?v=by3d.... The hardest part of all is how little support kids like Joe get: no breakfast clubs, no music lessons, and now no holiday clubs …

Hard Times Come Again No More

YouTube video by Yo-Yo Ma - Topic

www.youtube.com

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Ben Cooper @bugwonk.bsky.social · Apr 6

I particularly welcomed the book’s pushback against Daniel Levitin’s claims about which DSM categories do/don’t respond emotionally to music. Joe, who has an ASD diagnosis should he care to use it, often suddenly bursts into tears and tells me “I feel sad”. Every single time it has the same cause:

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Ben Cooper @bugwonk.bsky.social · Apr 6

…from using Eddy Grant’s Police on My Back (Sandinista! version obvs) as a teaching aid, to amazement at the intensity of Joe’s musical engagement and the exuberance of his musical creativity, to the great leaps forward enabled by modern ABA.

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Ben Cooper @bugwonk.bsky.social · Apr 6

What an incredible piece of music. Joe was transported. I was also transported by John’s book, a paean to the power of music to shape our lives and bring us together across neurological divides. It is deeply moving, particularly so for me because of the congruences with our family’s experiences…

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Ben Cooper @bugwonk.bsky.social · Apr 6

Kudos to 16yo son, Joe, who has a learning disability due to #ADNP syndrome, for completing his 50th #parkrun last week in Abingdon. Inspired by @johnharris1969.bsky.social ’s new book Maybe I'm Amazed www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/serie... Joe’s post-run chill-out was spent drumming to Kraftwerk’s Autobahn.

Joe running in a parkrun event in a field next to the Thames in Abingdon

Joe lost in music while listening to Kraftwerk's Autobahn and drumming on a small Kenyan drum. In the background is John Harris's book Maybe I'm amazed next to lava lamp

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Reposted by Ben Cooper

Infectious Diseases Data Observatory (IDDO) @iddonews.bsky.social · Mar 17

Track news reports of #SubstandardMedicines and #FalsifiedMedicine in your country. View our Medicine Quality Monitoring Globe, which filters by key words, time-periods, locations, and language. #medswecantrust
@tropicalmedicine.ox.ac.uk @wellcometrust.bsky.social @moru-mip.bsky.social

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Ben Cooper @bugwonk.bsky.social · Mar 16

This is Joe at a glampsite in Hay-on-Wye last summer. My cousin, an in-demand bohemian luthier and (naturally) resting actor who lives in Frome (www.linkedin.com/in/laurence-...) calls him a lumber drummer 🤩

Joe, a 16 year old neurodivergent boy, deeply lost in music, plays a drum set assembled from from roughly cut lumber in front of a tree covered with ivy in a style that combines the instinctual energy of Moe Tucker, legendary drummer from the Velvet Underground, with the distinctive hi-hat style of Topper Headon, legendary drummer from The Clash.

Ben Cooper @bugwonk.bsky.social · Mar 16

As a recovering Velvets & Clash obsessive, Hay & Frome fanboy, dad to a neurodivergent 16yo musicophile & having been through the whole dehumanising ASD diagnosis thing (🤮) this resonates on SO many levels. For Joe, since he was about 5 yrs old, this has been THE song www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z680...

Smells Like Teen Spirit - The Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain

YouTube video by UkuleleOrchestra

www.youtube.com

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Ben Cooper @bugwonk.bsky.social · Mar 16

Thanks to Oraya Srimokla & cherrylim128.bsky.social for making the pictured Shiny App at such short notice (based on this paper www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1...). Also to other Oxford faculty Gisela Robles Aguilar and @missotuko.bsky.social & to IHME colleagues who we shared the teaching with.

Rachel Otuko (@missotuko.bsky.social), on the left of the picture, an Oxford DPhil student and teacher on the workshop explains a graph plotted on the laptop screen to a student from the Africa CDC attending the workshop. The room is filled with other students who are deep in thought while staring at computer screens which are running the same R Shiny Application.

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Ben Cooper @bugwonk.bsky.social · Mar 16

Just back from teaching on a 4 day policy-focused AMR workshop in Nairobi hosted by the brilliant cema-africa.uonbi.ac.ke (with generous funding from @wellcometrust.bsky.social). Great to meet so many inspiring people from throughout Africa working to reduce the number of lives lost to #AMR.

students on short course point at laptop screens which is running an R Shiny web application about cost-effectiveness of maintaining a microbiological diagnostic lab which is based on this paper https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.05.14.24307355v1

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Reposted by Ben Cooper

Centre for Tropical Medicine and Global Health @tropicalmedicine.ox.ac.uk · Mar 4

#ResearchHighlight from Mo Yin @moru-mip.bsky.social

Cost-effectiveness of a short-course #antibiotic treatment strategy for the treatment of ventilator-associated #pneumonia: an economic analysis of the #REGARDVAP trial

Read more 👉 www.ndm.ac/tropmed.res-hi
👉 www.thelancet.com/journals/lan...

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Reposted by Ben Cooper

Infectious Diseases Data Observatory (IDDO) @iddonews.bsky.social · Feb 21

Are you researching #InfectiousDiseases #EmergingInfections #malaria or #NTDs? The datasets we host harmonise tens of thousands of individual patient data, enabling researchers to answer new questions from existing data. Learn more www.iddo.org/data-sh... #BeatNTDs

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Ben Cooper @bugwonk.bsky.social · Feb 4

Love it! I wish more schools would get this. My 16yo son, Joe, who has HVDAS, ASD etc, also fears hand dryers but is transported by nature & music to an extent I didn’t even see in my dad who devoted half his life to the guitar www.theguardian.com/theguardian/... We need to get out to the mountains.

Ben Cooper @bugwonk.bsky.social · Feb 2

Blackadder definitely a good start
Cunk on Britain on the iplayer (my 11 year old’s favourite) is hard to beat www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b...)
David Olusoga (my wife’s favourite when she was cramming for her test last year) is also consistently great www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p...

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Reposted by Ben Cooper

Jonathan Ryder, MD @jonathanrydermd.bsky.social · Jan 30

Systematic review of antibiotic durations in @jac-amr.bsky.social

n=315 RCTs

85% demonstrated equivalence or non-inferiority of shorter therapy

Only 7% in ICU, 14% in LMIC, and 15% low risk of bias

academic.oup.com/jacamr/artic...

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Ben Cooper @bugwonk.bsky.social · Jan 9

Agree with Tom. I'm getting on pretty well with one of these www.brooksengland.com/en_uk/c15-ca...

C15 Carved, cambium saddle with hole - Brooks England

The Cambium C15 Carved is designed for pressure relief and is suitable for everything from bikepacking to bike touring, gravel, road and urban cycling and is ready for all rides, all weathers.

www.brooksengland.com

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Ben Cooper @bugwonk.bsky.social · Dec 15

I know this is pedantic, but surely that's #TreeByTrike
This is #TreeByBike :

Christmas tree being carried on the basket of a green Elephant Bike (a reconditioned posties bike)

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Ben Cooper @bugwonk.bsky.social · Dec 11

Hoorah! Congratulations again!