Clay Jones (@clayjones.bsky.social)

A New Beginning Hi folks, it's been a while! I've been busy. You've been busy. We've all been pretty busy. Let's catch up! The last time I wrote a blog post was in 2014. Since then, a lot has happened… In the world, uh, well, COVID-19--that's a big one! I think anyone reading this lived through that in some way or another.[1] I'll have more to say for sure in future posts about what that experience was like for me (and for us all) and what we might be able to learn from it—with regard to current infectious disease events like Hantavirus and Ebola, and with regard to the broader concern of simply being humans. In my personal life, my children are older, with one about to leave for college this coming fall. That’ll be a hoot, definitely going to be some tears…and maybe some blog posts! In my professional life, I left Stony Brook Medicine in 2021 and started a position at Albany Med in pediatric infectious diseases and am now in the division chief role there. You can read an updated version of my bio in the About page on this site. This new leadership role has given me plenty to think about and write about. And in the United States, it seems like public health is in free fall. Following a rise in distrust during and after the COVID-19 pandemic, we now have an administration that, regardless of how you voted, I think we can all agree is making a lot of cuts: defunding NIH research, defunding the [CDC and public health], defunding international medical cooperation and aid, and the list goes on. Whether you agree with those cuts on a personal political level or not is not really important[2]. But what is important is that the medical and scientific community nearly unanimously agree that these policy changes will make us less safe from outbreaks and diseases at home and abroad. So while I wait for Americans to get sicker and my workload to go up, meanwhile, it’s already not a great time to be a pediatric infectious disease doctor. Pediatricians are not trusted right now (shall we talk about vaccines and Vitamin K?) and neither are infectious disease specialists (see COVID distrust above). So being both? As my kids would say, it’s lowkey not great rn. But you focus on doing what’s right, and what you know the science backs up. And sometimes you get to be a punching bag. It’s not right, but it’s the job right now. And really it’s the job as it’s always been. Because, while I said a lot had happened…and it has…things are worse only by degree; they are not worse by kind. In 2026, as in 2014, the medical field is still contending with fear about injections, people using a computer to look things up, and conflicts over science vs religion & tradition among many other issues. And so, now, as then, in addition to focusing on doing what’s best for my patients, along with a healthy dose of escapism, I figured shouting into the void via this blog might be of some use. Talk to you all again soon. --- * For those who didn’t, well, hello to my toddler readers! Look at you being all precocious! Or hello to my ghost readers. Spooky! ↩︎ * Okay, I lied. It’s profoundly important. The fact that Americans either don’t understand the impact of the loss of public health infrastructure, or do understand but don’t care, is a symptom of the larger problem of media bubbles and an uninformed electorate—which will in turn lead to inability of both people and government to fulfill either side of the social contract both as regards public health specifically as well as the larger public good in every way. But I digress. ↩︎ https://infectious-ideas.org/blogging/a-new-beginning/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=bluesky