In a new preprint, we combine modeling with school-level vaccine data to contextualize the risk of 'breakthrough infections' and impacts on the ongoing US measles outbreak. #idsky #episky www.medrxiv.org/content/10.6...

🧪 💉 Bill Foege is an absolute #PublicHealth legend And furious to the end about the destruction of US public health “Kennedy’s words can be as lethal as the smallpox virus,” he wrote… “I had no idea I would be this angry at the age of 89.” Ht @boghuma.bsky.social www.nytimes.com/2026/01/24/u...

Our latest study in @jama.com on trends in county-level vaccine exemptions, demonstrating geographic pockets of high vaccine exemptions and high susceptibility to vaccine-preventable diseases. Great collab with @nbcnews.com colleagues and our Stanford team. jamanetwork.com/journals/jam...

*New paper in Nature Health* Why did the 2022 mpox outbreak in Paris decline so abruptly? rdcu.be/eZ24H

Dont miss the ESPIDAM summer program in June 2026 in Stockholm, covering many key concepts for ID modelling: stochastic models, AI for ID control, nowcasting and forecasting, phylodynamics, data analysis, network models, within-host models, health economics www.statistics.su.se/english/divi...

Here's something I hadn't heard about the planned then cancelled then re-planned unethical Hep B trials: Bill Ackman is funding half the cost, who knew! www.rollingstone.com/politics/pol...

Nice to see the new NIAID vision laid out in a paywalled journal article. Since NIH funds contributed to it I am looking forward to reading the open access version soon... www.nature.com/articles/s41...

A few updates on the deeply unethical study to probe "non-specific" effects of the birth dose HepB vaccine in Guinea-Bissau by Danish investigators. 1️⃣ The study was canceled as per AfricaCDC - HHS disputes this. 2️⃣ Full protocol was leaked and it's bad. Quick 🧵 www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026...

This is some great forensics. Good reminder that it is extremely difficult to know how many people are infected at any given moment in the absence of serology data.

Advance your research and expand your network at SFI's 2026 CSSS program with lectures, application-focused seminars, and team projects. Participants gain experience in transdisciplinary collaboration and explore real-world questions through complexity science. Apply by Feb 4, 2026 santafe.edu/csss

First day of my forecasting class at NAU. This is the first course I fully prepped (mostly) from scratch and I tried to have fun with it. ✅ Students are making flu forecasts. ✅ There’s a class leaderboard and competition. ✅ Plaque to commemorate annual winners.

Check out our new print that combines dense sequencing and phylodynamics to uncover a bunch of 😎 things about an understudied virus. - Doesn't evolve for 10 months a year ✅ - Uses some mossies for maintenance, others for spread ✅ - Established in Northeast for ~300 years ✅

We are still accepting applications for the postdoctoral scholar position here at NAU in my lab (with remote optional). Please reach out if you have any questions or would like more information: careers.nau.edu/jobs/postdoc...

Two more fully funded PhDs in real-time infectious disease modelling & forecasting — developing methods for operational use by @ukhsa.bsky.social and others in outbreak response. UK home students, starting April or September 2026. www.lshtm.ac.uk/study/fees-a...

Symposium & workshop on inequalities in infectious disease dynamics at LSHTM in April 2026. We aim to will bring together leading researchers and practitioners to share ideas, discuss recent advances, and reflect on future directions. Details & application: iddconf.org/lshtm-sympos... Closing 21 Jan

I'm glad someone did the work to lay this concept out so nicely! Predicting the size of an influenza season is not as easy as seeing a new variant and extrapolating trends. This may be a bad flu season, but it's way too soon to tell! christinapagel.substack.com/p/is-it-real...

Become a colleague in my department! Applications close in four days, December 15.

UF Biology is searching for an Asst Prof in Evolution, Ecology of Infectious Disease - spread the word! @ufresearch.bsky.social @ufgeog.bsky.social @sse-evolution.bsky.social explore.jobs.ufl.edu/en-us/job/53...

Most of the Fox lab got to experience ~7000ft of elevation change going from #Epidemics10 in San Diego to Flagstaff, AZ for a writing retreat. Here we are on our celebratory visit to the Grand Canyon afterwards!

Considering going to the International Symposium on Forecasting (isf.forecasters.org/overview/abo...) in Montreal this summer - has anyone been before or have recommendations of whether it's useful/informative for disease forecasters?

The MIDAS Trainee Executive Committee is recruiting new members for 2026! 🤓 This is a great opportunity for grad students & postdocs in infectious disease modeling to gain experience organizing events & connect with peers. Applications are due by 9am ET on 1/1/2026, link in flyer & alt text.

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 🤞