Our lab's paper describing the North American H5N1 epizootic is out now in Nature! So thrilled to have this out, and congratulations to @lambod50.bsky.social for all the fantastic work on this: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Today (Tuesday), I'm presenting a poster on a flexible graph database pipeline for data integration, with a small teaser on a completed subsampling tool for phylogenetics, if you want to chat about that instead!

Come visit my poster (#84) about wastewater surveillance, cryptic transmission, and epidemic dynamics today from 5:15-7pm! @eeid2025.bsky.social #EEID2025

Russia has abducted thousands of Ukrainian children, plunging families into every parent's worst nightmare. Now, Trump funding cuts threaten to close a Yale center that helps identify these children and bring them home. Please consider donating to help continue this work: sph.yale.edu/give-hrl

Welp, there it is. RFK Jr. has removed all 17 members that comprise CDC’s vaccine advisory committee and will make new appointments. I said on PBS News Hour in February that this was a red line for me. www.hhs.gov/press-room/h...

Across the government, the Trump administration is scrambling to rehire many federal employees dismissed under DOGE’s staff-slashing initiatives after wiping out entire offices, in some cases imperiling key services such as weather forecasting and the drug approval process.

Please read and share.

🚨 In a stunningly short-sighted move, HHS just canceled its contract with Moderna to test mRNA vaccines for #H5N1 and other pandemic threats. When the next big outbreak hits, what’s the plan—bleach again? This will come back to bite us. Hard. #BirdFlu #PublicHealth #PandemicPreparedness

Science is an economic driver in Hamilton, Mont., thanks to Rocky Mountain Laboratories, a federal research lab. Now, layoffs and funding cuts are having an impact in this town far from Washington.

Any university that thinks this won't be their fate eventually is detached from reality. We work together or we fail apart.

The comment period for this ends in 3 DAYS. Please leave a comment telling them EVERYONE should be able to get covid boosters. www.regulations.gov/commenton/FD...

Do not treat this as fait accompli. We are winning in courts and public opinion. Nominees are being withdrawn. Congress is shook. Musk is leaving. Organize. Call. Appeal. Sue. Keep the pressure on your bosses. Do the same for trans and immigrant rights, public health, and more. Solidarity forever.

In the summer of 2020, Hispanics in Texas were half of all COVID-19 deaths. Now they are less than 25% of COVID-19 deaths. An important deep dive into how Hispanic Texans got vaccinated in record numbers and reduced COVID deaths. www.texastribune.org/2025/05/01/t...

NIH is ending billions of dollars in foreign subawards, jeopardizing thousands of projects on infectious diseases, cancer and more. Unless foreign researchers secure funding directly from NIH by October — a tall order for any researcher — clinical trials abroad and other research will shut down.

Union of Athens Scientists meeting THIS THURSDAY! RT 🗣️🗣️🗣️

So this is very bad. The government does not have the staff to keep its networks & data secure or functional. As a result, the HHS won’t be able to protect sensitive data or carry out its work. Imagine the US without research, emergency response, prevention, regulating medicines, health insurance…

BREAKING: On Friday, the federal government issued new demands of Harvard University. The university's lawyers just responded: back off.

This is DEFINITELY the right time to join and support your union. (Also it's ALWAYS the right time).

One by one until someone stands up

Hey, @fetterman.senate.gov, I'm a PA voter, and I desperately do not want to see this happen.

Drug-resistant gonorrhea, a form of the widespread sexually transmitted infection, is considered an urgent health threat worldwide. The US has just lost its ability to detect it. www.nytimes.com/2025/04/04/h...

We’re back. 🔥🔥 Come join us on the @aaup.bsky.social’s National Day of Action at Little Kings from 6-8pm. Let’s get in good trouble. If you're in Athens, please boost🗣️🗣️🗣️

These are the divisions eliminated in CDC. Apparently the man who claims he’s going to address chronic conditions does not want smoking or miner’s health addressed, or lead poisoning, to name just a few. Because he’s not really trying to address chronic illness. He just wants to remove vaccines.

This is a disgrace to every American and a bullet to the heart of the culture of research, science, and innovation that has made the US a world-leader in disease, treatment, and prevention. Journalists: now is the time publicize your Signal handles (again).

Five ambulances, a fire truck and a UN vehicle were struck one by one. The bodies of the first responders were then ditched in a mass grave. A war crime. Without anything close to the appropriate level of global outrage.

Getting rid of Trump won't solve the problem that the entire Republican Party has gone fully, murderously fascist.

Again, I am appalled that the Trump Administration is doing this in the name of Jews, and I am begging leading Jewish leaders in this country to speak out against this fascism done under our name.

Sure, let's cut funding to (checks notes) screwworm surveillance and HPAI testing

In 2020, 77 Nobel Laureates wrote a letter to object to the termination of *one* coronavirus research grant. "The decision sets a dangerous precedent," they wrote, as it offered no "justifiable rationale" for "revoking a grant that was awarded based upon scientific merit." Sure as hell did.

You can't simply switch science back on after this. It took decades and decades of investment to get US science to where it is. It takes a heck of a lot less time to burn it all to the ground. That's lost research, technology and people! You can't get that back.

More than $1 billion snatched from our health and future, with every termination letter spewing lies and hate. www.medpagetoday.com/infectiousdi... #NIH

This is cool. The Guardian recreated a searchable climate future risk tool (wildfire, extreme heat, drought, hurricane, and coastal flood) for the US that was developed by FEMA but deleted by the Trump administration’s ‘climate’ purge.

I would have loved to see Penn State be a leader here. I will be happy enough if they are a follower.

The hits just keep coming! This in the same week as the cuts to state public health agencies. www.washingtonpost.com/health/2025/...

In 2014 I was sent by an NGO to work on a vaccine program reconstruction plan in Northern Syria because an autocrat had decimated a highly effective program, putting millions of children at risk, both in Syria and neighboring countries through the refugee diaspora.

Get ready for more censorship, less dissent, less intellectual freedom, less funding for research in all areas, more prematurely ended careers, less biosafety, less health security, less preparedness, fewer vaccines, fewer jobs, & more dead people. thehill.com/policy/healt...

The absolute brutality of this move is stunning. This will kill. Kill lots of people. Trump/Musk/Vought/Rubio are sociopaths who think nothing of pushing millions of people into the maw of death. www.nytimes.com/2025/02/27/h...

This horrific story has been confirmed to me by a colleague at the same institute as this scientist. The US is not a safe place to run an academic conference. @theguardian.com have an English language version of this story: www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025... 🔭🧪

You wouldn't know from reading this New York Times story about Trump punishing the University of Pennsylvania for trans athletes that there are no trans athletes on women's teams at the University of Pennsylvania because the New York Times didn't find that detail worth including

Action alert! There are efforts under way to gut the CDC office of HIV Prevention. Please contact your representatives to stop it before it starts. A call script is in the link below.

This is about destroying the #NIH. Even before the new NIH director takes his post, the higher ups in the #Trump administration are taking steps to dismantle biomedical research in the US as we know it, with the scientific, human and economic costs to be devastating.

This is a chilling attack on our democratic system. Students often lead movements against authoritarians, and a large proportion of students here are international.

Check out some really cool work on canine influenza that was just published! Awesome collaborative team and looking forward to learning more about this very understudied pathogen!

I've been maintaining a job board at www.genomicepi.com/jobs for a couple of years. I started this with several goals in mind

Just in time for the holidays, our lab has just submitted our first lab led paper www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...! We use phylodynamics to reconstruct how H5N1 got to North America and spread so rapidly. Full thread coming post holidays, but for now, super proud of @lambod50.bsky.social

This podcast makes me SO happy. It's everything I love about public health and helped motivate me to apply to infectious disease PhD programs back in 2019!