A very short guide to Bayesian reasoning www.bbc.com/videos/c78ee...

Lula should decline the invitation to join Trump's board of peace. Brazil always wanted to be a permanent member of the UN's Security Council. But this Trump's private version is surreal as most of the things the orange man does and says...

"If Brazilians submitted a shoe to the Oscar, everyone would vote for it, says the Sirât's director" Really? How many awards for best international feature film has Brazil won? Well, just one in six nominations... I hope we get a second one.

This is indeed the best meme song of 2025. I love it m.youtube.com/shorts/fa3U-...

Here in Brazil all graduate programs are evaluated by a government agency called CAPES, and the programs get grades up to 7 every 4 years. For reference, PhD programs usually start with 4 points. Programs with a 7 are usually internationally recognized by peers.

2026 resolutions: - starting running again (I had a knee injury just before the pandemic, then I stopped doing sports running and taekwondo) - camping / hiking (alone and/or with family). There are some great places near Rio, like the Parnaso - work less (I was this close to a burnout this year)

I have recently realised that I am not an intellectual person, some may call me a scientist which I am not sure if it is right. I am Brazilian civil servant (public health researcher) and a part time lecturer devoted to (Bayesian) stats mostly applied to infectious disease epidemiology.

No Rio de Janeiro temos um mês inteiro. 😅

I need this sort of holidays. Translating: - Stop thinking about work. - Sorry.

I was going to reject reviewing a manuscript. I entered the journal website and I thought I was accepting the cookies of the journal website but I was in fact accepting the revision 🤡

SARI (Severe acute respiratory illness) cases with influenza detection in Brazil. We had a clear outbreak associated with H1N1 and some states had a second outbreak associated with H3N2. This second "wave" different from the first one is completely out of season.

Yesterday, I gave a talk on the E-vigilancia ("e-surveilance") conference at the FGV (Getúlio Vargas Foundation). My talk was about how Google trends data could improve nowcasts and short term forecasts of dengue cases in Brazil. Marcelo (Fiocruz) and Flavio (FGV) were in the same session.

This is somehow scary. Everyone is aware that AI has been used during the writing of a manuscript, but as expected it will eventually be part of the revision process. So scientific publication is going through a big change, and I guess the impact of research will no longer be measured on papers.

The linkedin games for some reason stopped working on my mobile so I lost my sequences. Although it is only a couple of minutes per day,I haven't realised I was consistently wasting plenty of time with them. I'm glad I am free of them...

Since I've been working on statistical modelling of infectious diseases from the pandemic onwards I got involved in too many projects leading to several publications which seems nice but it is not! If I could go back in time I would definitely work less, half of it or less. I am exhausted now!

In this paper, we describe the southernmost dengue outbreak ever reported. The outbreak occurred on the city of Bahia Blanca, Argentina (~600km south of Buenos Aires). www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

NEW PAPER We developed a statistical model to forecast dengue cases for the next season using the history of cases only. We suggest using the posterior predictive to define epidemics bands. For instance, we could see how huge was 2024 dengue season in Brazil. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

📢 NEW PAPER! In response to 2024 dengue epidemic we built Dengue-tracker 🦟📈 to improve nowcasts in Brazil by combining surveillance data + Google Trends 🔗 diseasesurveillance.github.io/dengue-tracker 📄 doi.org/10.1371/jour... 🙌 With Guilherme Soares,Rafael Izbicki,Yang Xiao&@leosbastos.bsky.social

I usually don't like pictures of myself, but I like this one.

When Thomas Bayes meets John Snow. Presented in Vitória, capital of Espírito Santo state, at the 69th RBRAS meeting and 21st SEAGRO

The #JSM2025 is about to start, the JSM is by far the biggest stats conference I've attended. I went to Miami Beach and Boston, it was a great experience. But nowadays I prefer relatively smaller conferences and outside the US (my visa expired and I am not keen to pass through the application again)

In two weeks, I will be a keynote speaker in a national stats conference. I am quite happy about that but also very nervous. I will talk about Bayesian learning on infectious disease surveillance, so it is time to start preparing my talk (and finish it 10 minutes before the actual conference... 😅)

Can you imagine if last year the Brazilian visa were revoked from the NY judge and the jury members (and their families) after Trump being convicted of crimes? Super weird, isn't it? Well, it seems the opposite is OK for some... www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...

Trump will soon add new tariffs for all countries to guarantee global security like Italian mafia or Brazilian militia does on their territories (you can name your "favourite" group/organisation/gang/whatever that charges others to guarantee their security)

I am quite surprised and impressed by Chelsea's result at the final against PSG. But the match I am interested in today is from another blue jersey team at the Brasileirão 🦊😅😬 Cruzeiro X Grêmio

Many thanks @leosbastos.bsky.social and everyone at Fiocruz for the warm welcome! I really enjoyed hearing about all the exciting work happening here and visiting the beautiful Rio de Janeiro! 💚💛💙 #rstats #GISchat #diseasesurveillance

It is a bit frustrating knowing that the 2028 ISBA World meeting will be in the US (Milwaukee). Nothing against the venue itself, but to have to pass through the annoying Visa process a Brazilian has to do. It may be convenient for most Bayesians, but it is not for me.

We had a very special visitor today, @paulamoraga.bsky.social gave us a great lecturer on Spatial data science in R. Thanks Paula!

The manuscript "Duration of COVID-19 symptoms in children: a longitudinal study in a Rio de Janeiro favela, Brazil" was recently accepted in the BMJ Open. I am one of the authors and, once published, it will be my 100th peer reviewed paper. A meaningless academic milestone, a cool number though.

Europeans: we don't really care about the FIFA world club... Dude, my team is not even there and I am watching the games even supporting some clubs (the weaker ones which maybe are no longer the Brazilian ones...)

As well as interesting data, nice piece of data viz to have outlier line stretch beyond y axis…

The Fiocruz main campus is at Av. Brasil. I feel sad to see it called "avenue of Death" but it is true... 😥 www.theguardian.com/world/2025/m...

Save the dates and come to Rio to talk about Data Science in Public Heath, epidemiological surveillance and the impacts of the climate change. fiocruz.tghn.org/news/e-surve...

Today (25/5) is Fiocruz 125th year anniversary, instead of the iconic castle picture (which turns out I have no one in my phone) I post a picture of the cell from the Life's museum which is part of the Fiocruz campus in Manguinhos and I place I often take my kids to play around there.

Our (@leosbastos.bsky.social‬ and I) comment about dengue risk is highlighted in the cover and the cover itself!!! Link to our comment: www.thelancet.com/journals/lan...

It is kind of interesting that the new Pope's name in English is Leo. In Portuguese, the Pope's name is "Papa Leão" (which I would firstly translate to Pope Lion, but that sounds very odd and made me Google it).

Dengue in the city of São Paulo, Brazil. Compared to last year, this year doesn't look that bad. But...

I love the Fibonacci sequence here.

I find it amazing whenever I see a western person speaking Chinese, Japanese or Korean. It is quite something. It seems less impressive the other way round (it shouldn't though it is huge effort) because I am used to seeing a lot of Japanese descendents speaking Portuguese here in Brazil.

Quick update on notification delay correction (nowcast) of measles cases in the US after the new update from the CDC website. The number of cases are still going up.

I gave this interview (in Portuguese) talking about dengue data in Brazil, nowcasting, infodengue, etc. Thanks for the opportunity and I hope it helps other people willing to play around with dengue data in Brazil.

Since the CDC was updating the time series of number of reported measles cases in their website I decided to try out the delay-correction because the big drop in the time series is just reporting delaying. (It is a well-know problem in epidemiological surveillance)

Rafa is a great collaborator, super clever and funny.

On the verge: outbreak risk after two years of record-breaking dengue epidemics in Brazil - The Lancet Regional Health – Americas www.thelancet.com/journals/lan...

1. For the past thirty years I've had the best job in the world. 
I've had the opportunity to follow my curiosity; explore the workings of nature and society; mentor students and junior colleagues in the same process; and teach generations of students about it all.

#Australia🇦🇺: #JapaneseEncephalitis #virus detected in #Brisbane for the first time, triggering health warnings 🦟 www.abc.net.au/news/2025-03...

I am worried about the increase of measles cases in the US and obviously how/when this could spread here in Brazil. An imported case could lead to an outbreak since vaccine hesitation here may have reduced the coverage that used to be very high.

I would love to watch I'm still here, the only "movies" I am able to watch are related to Paw patrol, Pepa and if I am on a very lucky day a Disney movie...😂😅😭

I would like to express my gratitude to Dr @nisiatrindadelima.bsky.social on her great work as the first woman to be the Ministry of Health in Brazil. Unfortunately after two years, she was asked by the president to leave the office.