Every fall, for the last 13 years, I have worked with CDC and WHO colleagues on a report in MMWR to update the estimates of the global burden of measles disease and mortality. This year we were already planning to publish in WER because of restrictions on communication between WHO and CDC.

1/ Hey, do you need some #goodnews? I know I do. Between the noise and the chaos, it helps to stop and remember what progress actually looks like. Here are four public health wins to give you some good news for the week 👇

Why, in this incredible world of technological advancements, are published inline equations still blurry? 😵‍💫

#Vaccines save babies! And they do it so well when we allocate resources to achieve high vaccination rates instead of meh vaccination rates 💉

1/ Today and tomorrow, #ACIP —the external body that sets vaccine policy—is holding a special session. One item on the agenda is the highly anticipated vote for the Covid vaccine. We’re expecting VAERS data to be misused to suggest 25 pediatric deaths were caused by the vaccine. Here are the facts👇

I am pretty sure I had COVID-19 earlier this month, but I tested negative (by RDT) on days 1 & 3 of infection. How do you satisfy your academic curiosities about what pathogen has infected you without spending tons of $$ on diagnostic tests?

I see news outlets reporting on falling ‘fertility rates,’ and I find this terminology non-intuitive… and potentially problematic. Falling fertility rates tell us about reductions in women’s birth rates, not reductions in women’s fertility! Let me explain:

Reason #2,946 to keep funding science: color mix undoification 🤯

Sang Woo (Daniel) Park and I are excited to share a new preprint, "Susceptible host dynamics explain pathogen resilience to perturbations" [1/8] www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

I don’t see enough people talking about how hard it is to search for this emoji 💁‍♀️ WHAT AM I SUPPOSED TO SEARCH FOR PLEASE TELL ME

🧵1/N New study published in @jama.com on re-emergence of vaccine-eliminated infectious diseases under declining vaccination in the US. We model long-term risk and conditions for return to endemicity for measles, rubella, polio, & diphtheria. Collab w/ @Mathewkiang.com jamanetwork.com/journals/jam...

Interesting new pre-print on test-negative designs and implications for estimating correlates of protection: www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1...

New commentary on pandemic surveillance and the need to have it be repeatable/continuous for updating, out in @pnas.org with Freya Shearer of Uni Melbourne: www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

A glimmer of good news amidst the chaos! On Monday, I successfully defended my PhD focused on infectious disease modeling. And yes, my thesis title is an acronym for my last name. With gratitude to the incredible friends and mentors who got me here… Dr. Casey Middleton, reporting for duty 🫡🦠

The cycle of dissertation writing: 1. Don’t sleep well 2. Too busy for nap 3. Drink afternoon coffee 🔁 Repeat

Dad from Kentucky: “We finally started feeding our baby raw milk and he has grown like crazy!” Me: “Oh. Aren’t you worried about bird flu?” KY Dad: “Well I know the farmer and I’ve met his cows.” Me: “….” Someone hire this man with his 🪄 diagnostic capabilities. He can detect H5N1 just by sight!

I’m getting tired of saying “this is so fucked up!” everyday.

In September in Geneva we applauded a major milestone in the effort to eradicate measles and rubella viruses from the face of the earth. Today an unvaccinated child has died of measles in the country where the vaccine was developed. This is not greatness.

It’s Saturday afternoon. You get a work email from someone claiming to be an auditor, but they don’t sign the email. Who is this from? Is it legit? They ask you to describe what you accomplished last week. What do you do? You do what those security trainings taught you. *Report as phishing*

Last week, I had the honor of receiving 2nd place at CU Boulder's 3MT competition. This competition challenges grad students to distill their thesis down into a 3 minute talk for a general audience. My talk focused on how viral kinetics and probability theory inform testing policies... in < 3 mins ⏰

One of our supporters shared this with us—people are getting creative tonight!

Continuing the recruitment trend! Our lab has 2 (!) open postdoc positions🥳 We're looking for creative and curious scientists to lead new projects: one on deep-sea biological rhythms and another on the evolution of biological communication🐚🦗🦋🐙🦉 If you know someone who'd be a good fit, please share!

Back in 2023 I went to a workshop on “complex network contagion” that was mostly about simulations of disease spread and some real-world data analysis. Yesterday Ted Cruz declared it was a “questionable project promoting DEI or advancing neo-Marxist class warfare propaganda.”

We have come to the point where the world's largest international health organization is doing a $1b GoFundMe. This is unfortunately entirely legit. Until we can use our votes, our voices and our wallets are the tools we must rely on.

Last night I found out that the NSF math postdoctoral fellowship I applied for is being deleted because it does not comply with Trump’s executive orders on DEI in the federal government. I’m going to answer some FAQs and share some thoughts about this ordeal in this thread 1/n

We need to be giving this more attention - measles outbreaks are rough on patients, taxing on response, and indicative of larger public health vulnerabilities. Measles outbreak expands in West Texas around county with low vaccination rate | CNN

When everything is on fire, just visit coolors.co and get lost in the color schemes you may use in your next manuscript

While we’re banning apps, Microsoft Teams is right there.

TFW your citation rabbit hole lands you at one of the first examples of vaccine clinical trials 🤓 This trial gained approval for public use of a vaccine that was originally developed to protect troops against influenza A during WWII.

Women leave academia at higher rates than men at every career stage, and attrition is especially high among three groups: tenured faculty, women in non-STEM fields, and women employed at less prestigious institutions, a #ScienceAdvances analysis finds.

A thread🧵 on application systems for postdoc jobs in the UK (applies to my university, but I've seen others and they're similar). I have seen (too many times) good applicants who don't seem to understand how recruitment is done on our side - not their fault! it's a privilege! - so here's how

The number of cases of cervical cancer reported in Scotland among women given the HPV vaccine at 12-13 years of age is now zero. A remarkable achievement. www.bbc.com/news/article...

New preprint out with Ziyuan Zhang (master's student) and Chris Boyer www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1... showing through simulation that a variant of the test-negative design can estimate the protection associated with an exposure-proximal correlate of protection for immunity to symptomatic infection

Wondering if high schoolers still use Prezi for their class presentations 😵‍💫

🚨 The Colorado Index of Complex Networks (icon.colorado.edu) is reborn! ICON 2.0 indexes 699 distinct research-quality network data sets, classified into 6 domains (Social, Biological, Information, Economic, Technology, Transportation) and 53 subdomains /1 #networkscience

Guess it's time to bite the bullet leave 🐥er or whatever they call it these days