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Skyping with Bill Foege during my Global Health 101 course a decade ago gave me the feeling that I assume people came away from old-time revivals with. He was forthright, passionate, and spoke with such moral clarity, it was infectious. The world is better for having him in it. Z"L

Wow. This is devastating. www.science.org/content/arti...

As someone with 25-year NIH funded lab, I endorse. Linking NIH and DHS/ICE funding in the same bill is blood money

As a someone with a 33 year NIH-funded lab whose grant is supposed to be reviewed this week, shut NIH down if that is what's needed to end ICE terrorism. Innocent lives are more important 🧪

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“Federal law requires these panels to review applications for all but the smallest grants before funding can be awarded, meaning that the ability of those institutes to issue new grants could soon be frozen.”

“[Investors] were provided a morbid ledger. On one side, the value of a policy and the dollar amount needed to buy it outright, on the other, the T-cell count of a person living with HIV/Aids and their life expectancy.”

"We can cheer for these bright spots, while still being realistic... We can’t pretend this is perfect, and we can’t ignore the real risks that could await us in 2026." @sciencewhizliz.bsky.social on the NIH funding bill. fromthescienceclass.substack.com/p/why-better...

Decolonizing global health today (in 2026) is about resisting authoritarianism, imperialism, and fascism, while fighting for democracy, equity & justice It was the same in the past - nothing has changed plus ça change!

The US is leaving some of the world’s oldest and most influential scientific networks involved in biodiversity research, climate science and conservation go.nature.com/4a48Ney

Immunoglobulin can also be administered up to 1 week after exposure, as this excellent chart shows. (2/2) doh.wa.gov/sites/defaul...

Given the current situation, it’s really important to know that a person can get the MMR vaccine for up to three days *after* exposure. This may help reduce the severity of the infection if not ward it off completely, but only for those in whom it’s not contraindicated. (1/2).

Is it tyranny and fascism, according to Republicans? Masks to prevent disease ✅ School vaccine requirements ✅ Masks to abduct people 🚫 Forced to show your papers 🚫

"A country does not lose measles elimination status by having imported cases of the disease. ... Elimination status is lost if, after an introduction, a country is unable to stop ongoing transmission of the virus and circulation continues for a year or longer."

NIH budget bill out today. It’s the result of heavy negotiations in Congress over past month+. 🧪 Big pic: NIH budget now is abt more than funding. It’s abt restraining the technical ways NIH is being broken by Proj 2025. And the restraints in the bill are tepid 🤷‍♂️ Also: watch ICE/DHS budget. 🧵1/

They are so brazen, they can't even pretend to deny it. “The study has been cancelled,” Africa CDC official Yap Boum said on Thursday...HHS pushed back strongly... “To be clear, the trial will proceed as planned,” the HHS assistant secretary for public affairs told us futurism.com/health-medic...

ICE’s actions tear families apart, intimidate communities, & undermine the conditions that make education, research, healthcare, & public trust possible. We’re calling on scientists to join the general anti-ICE strike in Minnesota on January 23rd.

here's my actual take: about a decade ago, a bunch of people who really didn't enjoy being scientists started popularizing this idea that science is a 9-5 job and you should treat it like any other job, and that respecting it or seeing it as craft or (god forbid) wanting to work extra hard was toxic

The CDC was truly a marvel – some of the brightest minds in our country, working tirelessly to keep our families & communities safe, so effectively that they were a global resource for recommendations & support in emergencies, all for a couple bucks of our taxes every year.

Chiming in here because we’re hiring a Research Technologist - Life Sciences (Advanced Professional) to design, implement, support, analyze, and report on rigorous research in molecular biology of symbiosis. Please consider and/or share with others. psu.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com/PSU_Staff/jo...

Really important for Science in the US Spread, and do!

There was no planned “intentional infection“ in the horrible, unethical, and thankfully canceled study of the Hep B vaccine in west Africa. It was quite bad enough, but I hope you enjoy the clicks you get off that misinformation post.

This is the best news I've heard recently. RFK Jr. can be defeated. He's not invulnerable. Keep up the pressure. Thank goodness African health officials were all over this vile, deadly study and stopped it in its tracks. Something for us to celebrate in our next podcast @joho.bsky.social!

A reminder as Congress finalizes NIH appropriations: the bill must limit multiyear funding (MYF), Vought's way of cutting the NIH budget without cutting the budget. MYF will devastate the research workforce. @safa-science.bsky.social wrote this in July. Still relevant: substack.com/@scienceandf...

The American Society for Virology (ASV) is dedicated to advancing knowledge of viruses and the diseases they cause. ASV does not support the scaling back of the childhood vaccine schedule recently announced by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. See our statement attached.

Again, odd Bhattacharya - um, better things to do? – so concerned with me. The grifter "we were censored!" whine = disingenuous political ranting. Reality: studies (including our own work) shows their narrative DOMINANT in media, on socials, politically Now? MAGA = censorship machine. The irony.

Thanks Jeff for giving me the opportunity to post one of my favorite papers ever from one of my favorite epidemiology professors ever

This is so incredibly heart-breaking. To Jay Bhattacharya and Matthew Memoli at NIH--you have betrayed the entire scientific community. Deeply committed staff are leaving in droves--because you are destroying the institution. Shame on you. www.statnews.com/2026/01/10/n...

New #coronavirus #postacute lung pathogenesis paper from my friend Dr. John Powers is up at @asm.org JVI. journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/... Confusing as to why this link shows a rotund blue bird. #PASC #SARSCoV2 #Omicron #LoveVirology #JVI #ASM #virology

It's really real 😭😭😭 Huge thanks to Wrapper's Delight ( @wrapplab.bsky.social ) and T-Pain ( @timothysheahan.bsky.social ) for everything. Working on this together was the best part of 2025!

The district court injunction that prevented NIH from capping indirects at 15% was upheld today on appeal! www.reuters.com/world/trump-...

Another reason for the changes, given by a "senior official" is that we don't have good enough information to accurately quantify vaccine risks. This is a lie. One that HHS head RFK Jr. says often. www.aap.org/en/news-room...

In <1 year, anti-science policies have unraveled decades of progress. I’d love to see the “gold standard science” behind decisions made without clinicians, patients, public health or ACIP. This will lead to suffering & death—the true toll won’t be known for years after those responsible are gone

Over 40 years ago, when I was starting to study immunology in grad school, I read where Lewis Thomas called vaccines high-tech medicine because a simple shot could tune the immune system to fight that one illness. This attack on vaccinations will not be the last one by this crew.

It’s official: RFK Jr has officially reduced recommended childhood vaccines from 17 to 11, removing universal vaccine recommendations for RSV, hepatitis A, hepatitis B, dengue and two types of bacterial meningitis. This reckless contravention of science is going to kill people.

Yep! On a larger scale, convincing Dems that “you do you” on Covid was reasonable public health is how we got here—Biden dismantled a lot of people’s fucks about public health that year, and now people who cared in 2020/2021 have much less fight and understanding how Covid denial and antivax link up

The Guardian view on mRNA vaccines: they are the future – with or without Donald Trump bit.ly/4jt5qB8

"Magical thinking has no place in public health. Every scientist and health care provider has a duty to speak up against these misguided policies and positions". "... getting up and walking more" is 👍. As a pandemic preparedness strategy, however, a wee bit lacking. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

As we close out the no good, horrible, very bad year that was 2025, we honor the NIH staff and extramural scientists who have stood up against the lawlessness of the current regime. So many people, some known, others faceless, care about the health of All Of Us.

So here’s to making 2026 a better year. For science. For our country. For the American people. We have the momentum. The resistance is growing. Let’s make 2026 the year we turned the tide.

Congrats to all of us survivors 🙄😂

So @jeneeninterlandi.bsky.social is on the @nytimes.com editorial board. She has been a voice of reason for many years at the paper (as have many of their health/science reporters) on infectious diseases. This is a great piece from her to close out 2025. www.nytimes.com/2025/12/30/o...

I wrote about this claim forever ago when he made it on Joe Rogan's show:

In a weird historical note, not only did 1918 flu start from a zoonotic event (likely in Kansas and def not in a lab), the flu also killed Friedrich Trump, DJT’s grandfather, who unlike most people had insurance, the payouts of which went into real estate investments in NYC.

Vaccine liability and shared clinical decision making The article highlights concerns about vaccine liability and shared decision-making, emphasizing potential risks if vaccines are moved to shared decision-making status. Professor Dorit Rubinstein Reiss argues that this could reduce liability…

There is not a facepalm big enough for RFK Jr claiming the 1918 flu was a lab leak. We didnt even know the flu virus existed in 1918. It was not in a lab! 🤦🏼‍♀️🤦🏼‍♀️🤦🏼‍♀️ Good thread tho

The Great Pandemic Rewrite minimized COVID, made it a lab leak, and attacked interventions. Now it is squarely focused on the vaccine— and the math doesn’t hold up. John Ioannidis has an order of magnitude problem. #CDC #vaccines 🧪 #episky #medsky open.substack.com/pub/drbobmor...

This will not be contained as a US problem, that's not how infectious diseases work.