Precisely so, I look forward to convening a Wed AM panel on "Confronting Covid's Wake." We will explore the link between COVID responses, anti-science, and misinformation… and how & why to support evidence-based inquiry to confront disease threats. virtual.oxfordabstracts.com/event/public...

Federal government and Utah leaders are having a meeting this week to discuss co-management of national parks in Utah, setting a dangerous precedent for national parks across the nation. Read more: www.thetravel.com/us-governmen...

A challenge in epidemic forecasting is that ML models overfit while mechanistic models miss changing transmission conditions. Our new JR Soc Interface paper tests whether physics-informed neural networks—which embed an epidemiological ODE system inside a neural net—can address this.

ID folks, come find me at the poster session tonight (2.041) or dm me if you’re looking for a postdoctoral position and want to hear more about our work/group. #Epidemics10

Brilliant and inspiring talk by Shweta Bansal @bansallab.bsky.social at #Epidemics10 on contact patterns at the interface of data, modelling and public health — and even across species!

Good news! The Ebola outbreak in DRC has been contained

@bansallab.bsky.social gives a tour de force of behavioral models and theory as a keynote at #epidemics10. How COVID-19 and animal behavior have helped improve our understanding of human behaviors and disease dynamics

We’ve just released Epistorm-Mix, a new open dataset on how people in the U.S. mix across ages and settings in the post-COVID era. 📊 Contact-level data + contact matrices Built for epidemic modeling & forecasting Fully open data & code 🔗 www.epistorm.org/data/epistor...

This is only a few hours from Flagstaff, check out our open postdoctoral position if you're interested in being this close to these magical places: careers.nau.edu/jobs/postdoc...

I for one am here for the 6 month predictions on measles cases that you can find on Kalshi. July 8th the average prediction was about 1.7k cases for the whole year and we are heading towards about 2k by my rough estimate. kalshi.com/markets/kxme...

Postdoc (Flagstaff or remote, USA) Lead the Fox Lab's outbreak forecasting efforts in collaboration with domestic and international public health partners. with @foxandtheflu.bsky.social at Northern Arizona University More details: http://iddjobs.org/jobs/2409

Just finished writing up a quick summary of our new publication on the lab website. We developed a new method we call "epimodulation" that fixes biases in forecasts with epidemiological principles. It was really fun to work on this one! thefoxlab.wordpress.com/2025/11/12/n...

In the NYT today, a discussion of how Canada will lose their measles elimination status. www.nytimes.com/2025/11/06/w... This was predictable and preventable, something Amy Winter and I discussed in our disease watch piece 4 months ago: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Multi-model approach to understand and predict past and future dengue epidemic dynamics royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/... Brilliant work by @cathalmills.bsky.social + many others

A new postdoc position just opened in our group at NAU! We are looking for someone to lead our current forecasting activities and the development of our next generation AI/ML models! Don't hesitate to reach out to me with any questions! careers.nau.edu/jobs/postdoc...

Check out our new paper @nejm.org. RSV, COVID-19 & Influenza vaccines continue to show consistent effectiveness & safety based on a review & synthesis of 500+ research studies👇! We worked hard to evaluate the evidence so you can be confident about getting vaccinated this fall!

1/5: Interested in basketball? Disease ecology? Epidemics? 5 years ago, the NBA embarked on a great experiment in infection control: "The NBA Bubble." In a new preprint led by Dr. Yun Tao + Dr. Nita Bharti, we examine it's underlying disease ecology principles. www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1...

Took some time to update the lab website with a couple new posts and lab news! Check it out to hear about some lab changes and recent fun things we've been up to! thefoxlab.wordpress.com

Just published! Our new work on a method to add epi info to any forecast model. We showed that it improved the performance of all forecast models we tested including ensembles. Now we hope to deploy it in real-time to see how well it works: www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

A new approach called “epimodulation” — developed by UT Austin researchers & collaborators — predicts epidemic peaks better than current models and could boost health care preparations in future outbreaks. #Epidemiology #PublicHealth @texas-ib.bsky.social cns.utexas.edu/news/researc...

Why has H5N1 not been as deadly as we were expecting so far? Really liked this summary of the evidence and possible explanations by @jdrakephd.bsky.social www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Today my @nytimes.com colleagues and I are launching a new series called Lost Science. We interview US scientists who can no longer discover something new about our world, thanks to this year‘s cuts. Here is my first interview with a scientist who studied bees and fires. Gift link: nyti.ms/3IWXbiE

What is the impact of the HHS decision to no longer recommend COVID-19 vaccination during pregnancy? In our new research letter in @jamapediatrics.com, we provide estimates on the number of infant hospitalizations under different vaccine scenarios here. @mathewkiang.com, @peterhotezmdphd.bsky.social

Was excited to see an explanation for spaghetti models for hurricane forecasts. We use these for infectious disease forecasting too! weather.com/science/weat...

No university will pay $100k for an H-1B visa. These visas are primarily used for postdocs, and nobody can justify paying an extra $100k for that type of position. That's an entire additional year of postdoc funding. 1/2

The Legionnaire's Disease cluster in Central Harlem has now grown to 58 cases. 21 hospitalized. Tragically there has been a 2nd death. If you live or work in zip codes 10027, 10030, 10035, 10037 or 10039 and you develop flu-like symptoms, contact a health care provider immediately.

From Senator @murray.senate.gov: the Senate's proposed NIH budget would reject 40% cuts, increase funding by $400M. "We're not going to give up the fight against cancer, Alzheimer's or rare diseases." Message to scientists: "we support you. We need you to stay here & keep this research going."

“The Legionnaires' disease cluster is in Central Harlem. According to NYC Health, the following zip codes are affected: 10027 10030 10035 10037 10039 People who live or work around these ZIP codes and develop flu-like symptoms should see a health care provider right away, the agency said.”

Wow! I’m actually surprised we haven’t seen more of this unfortunately… hoping federal funding stabilizes soon 🤞

I announced it at SISMID so now to make it official. In August the Fox lab will be moving to NAU in Flagstaff AZ. I am so sad to leave all my wonderful UGA colleagues, but am excited to settle permanently in the Southwest near these mountains and the desert.

Been thinking about this preprint a lot the past couple of weeks: arxiv.org/abs/2506.07825 It says that for an outbreak you cannot estimate a transmission rate, initial susceptibility pool, and reporting rate together. This makes sense intuitively but it’s nice to have the proof

Enjoyed wildflower season in the mountains this weekend and now I’m on my way to teach Simulation-based inference of epidemiological dynamics at SISMID! See y’all in Atlanta soon!

This is so cool to play with!

Great way to stay in touch with all of the amazing infectious disease modeling work happening these days:

"The money the government sends to Harvard is not a subsidy to advance the university's mission. It's a payment for the role Harvard plays in advancing the research mission of the U.S." "This is larger than any individual grant. What we are losing is a future." www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

Thank you to Adam for summarizing all of these thoughts so succinctly! Go give this a read to learn about what we knew and now know about controlling pandemics

The proposed sell-off of federal lands in the Senate budget bill includes a LOT of Joshua tree habitat—the trees grow in some of the largest areas of undeveloped land in the lower 48 states The place where eastern and western Joshua trees hybridize, north of Creech AFB, is included buff.ly/5GlLXMA

NEW from @chelseacirruzzo.bsky.social: The Trump administration has reversed the firings of hundreds of staffers at the CDC, including those who work in divisions that handle cruise ship safety, STI prevention, and global health. 🩺 www.statnews.com/2025/06/11/h...

In our new piece about measles Amy Winter and I tried to balance some optimism with the worrisome trends in US policies. The news has only become worse since we wrote it though: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Losing the US contribution to GAVI is predicted to lead to 1.2 million additional preventable child deaths globally. From our new piece about measles: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Excellent commentary on measles resurgence in the Americas by Drs. Amy Winter and Spencer Fox

My colleague and I wrote a short piece about the current measles situation in the americas and globally, and how US policies might impact future risks: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

An update from the team on the uncertain future of our program and the impact of NSF budget cuts. Please share and reach out 🦠

The mega-bill includes a significant endowment tax on private universities

Competition between transmission lineages mediated by human mobility shapes seasonal influenza epidemics in the US www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Harvard Chan scientists participate in a rigorous application process for federal grants to conduct their vital health research. The government has now terminated nearly every single one of those grants.

Glad to see this out!! It’s been bafflingly difficult to convince people that assuming mosquito transmission of Oropouche is a sloppy prior directly contradicted by all available evidence 🥲 and that, in turn, it’s a serious problem that we know so little about Culicoides paraensis distribution…

Sharing our new study out in PLoS Comput Biol. We developed a behavior-driven epidemic model to generate neighborhood-level COVID-19 forecasts across NYC. We used mobile foot traffic data to measure how and where people mix and forecast local spread. Read here: doi.org/10.1371/jour...

Very happy to share this review of Proof in The New York Times! www.nytimes.com/2025/04/30/b...

This is so sad! EID is a home for such important work that often doesn’t fit elsewhere and while I wish it could be preserved, some other journal should step up to fill this niche.