How can diagnostic tests for infection support public health – and what challenges do we need to overcome to maximize their potential? Kristin Nelson, Tyler Brown, and I have a new article out digging into this exciting, complex issue: www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

CMS Says States Won't Have to Report Childhood Vaccination Levels www.medpagetoday.com/pediatrics/v...

Why are virologists thinking and talking about this year's strain of influenza? We are dealing with a version of H3N2 that is unusual compared to what we might expect year on year. At the same time, it is not as unusual as, say, a novel pandemic strain, far from it.

And now NextStrain as well. Next up, will GISAID start charging open-source community tools to have access? That would completely shaft users who contributed to GISAID, where we never agreed to that and assumed GISAID would be good custodians of the data we contributed. They're not.

I'm workshopping my AI & Society course for next semester, and in particular what I've been calling the "conscientious objector" path through the class (though I've given it another name). Thoughts?

Ever read a paper & think, "wow 🤩 that was well written"? Learn how to write your own *wow* paper with @midas-network.bsky.social trainees on Thurs 9/25 @ noon ET. We'll hear from @jdrakephd.bsky.social on strategies for crafting & communicating a good story. 🔗 georgetown.zoom.us/meeting/regi...

Now out in NEJM. Kudos to @dhelekal.bsky.social and @tatumdmortimer.bsky.social : www.nejm.org/doi/10.1056/...

"Let it rip" is always a bad idea for containing epidemics. It's a REALLY bad idea for containing H5N1 in chickens. Besides the obvious biosafety issues, it has terrible ecological, economic, & food security consequences as well. Must-read in @science.org today 👇 www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

⚠️ New preprint ⚠️: Two new antibiotics are likely coming for gonorrhea 💊. How should we deploy them in the US to minimize drug resistance? @kroster.bsky.social @dhelekal.bsky.social Eva Rumpler @yhgrad.bsky.social [1/10] www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1...

Just few days left to apply to one of these postdoc positions in my infectious disease modelling Unit at @pasteur.fr in Paris!

Project 2025 said they’d be doing this and it’s here.

Who is excited about #EEID2025? Huge shout out to the organizers and helpers. If you see one of them, give them a wink, nod, high five, tip of the hat to show your appreciation!

I got the opportunity to speak with Science about my individual research fellowship being terminated. I was awarded the NSF GRFP before I chose Harvard for graduate school, but I still got cut. I study how we can improve treatments for a common antibiotic resistant bacteria, so this is sad to see

I appreciate the offers from other scientists to help Harvard (students, labs, etc) through this attack, but what would be most helpful is for you to use your position to contact your elected representatives and make it clear this fight isn't just Harvard, it will affect you, and their districts too

Calling medical journals "corrupt," Kennedy says gov't scientists may be barred from publishing in Lancet, NEJM, etc going forward. #NIH may establish its own journals, he said. Meanwhile #CDC 's Emerging Infectious Diseases journal is on the budget chopping block. www.statnews.com/2025/05/27/r...

Announcing the 2025 Investigators in the Pathogenesis of Infectious Disease www.bwfund.org/news/announc... #bwfpath

Brief victory celebration and NEW ASSIGNMENT More than 27,000 comments posted regarding Schedule F implementation! 1/n

New preprint. After years of increases, gonorrhea diagnosis rates dropped in the US in 2022 and 2023. While the news is promising, understanding WHY is key to sustaining progress. dash.harvard.edu/handle/1/427...

These are grant TO THE STUDENTS, not to the institution, so this is just straight-up punishing students for choosing the institution

Harvard today, your institution tomorrow. It's all part of the Project 2025 plan to destroy high education in America. All leading US universities depend on federal funding and tuition dollars from international students. They severely curtailed the former. Now they're eliminating the latter.

NSF GRFPs terminated for those in graduate school and already attending Harvard, too.

Please consider a comment today if you are in the US. See the advice (shared from an email I received) in the follow-up posts below this one. Tomorrow is the deadline. This is an important part of scientific freedom in this country.

An easily overlooked consequence of research funding cancellations: completed research these days requires hundreds to several thousand dollars to be published due to publication fees from journals. Without support for these fees many pieces of scientific work will be near invisible.

Important public service reporting from @statnews.com on how people are getting their NIH grants reinstated www.statnews.com/2025/05/19/r...

"I'm still in shock. I know that there have been political issues around Harvard in recent weeks, but antibiotic resistance isn't one of them." My conversation with Harvard microbiologist @baym.lol, one of many researchers there who just lost millions in fed. grants. www.wbur.org/news/2025/05...

With nearly all of Harvard Chan School’s direct federal grants terminated, we are relying on philanthropy to power our research and support our educational programs. Every gift, regardless of size, advances our vision of health, dignity, and justice for every human. Support our work: hsph.me/whygive

Grants are not gifts; they are work for hire —> gov sets research priorities —> puts out RFP —> everyone around the country competes —> work is awarded —> deliverables and reporting requirements

Abdication of an innovation economy, US 2025 edition.

On a day when all research grants at Harvard were terminated, and in a context where Congress seems to broadly accept the notion that destroying science and health research in the US is fine, it’s worth noting that this is not what the public wants.

All 4 of my NIH research grants are terminated. These were grants on MDR-TB treatment & strategies for supporting adolescents living w/ HIV. This is a massive waste of resources. I am heartbroken for my Harvard team, my partners in Peru, the next generation of scientists & our country. Shame.

The amazing group of faculty that I lead on our research core lost six NIH grants today, all in global health. Thousands of hours of work lost as well as funding for our foreign collaborators in LMICs.

RFK Jr. said multiple times during his house and senate hearings today that no scientists have been fired from federal agencies. Our reporting has shown that hundreds, if not thousands, of scientists have been let go from NIH/CDC/FDA

Devastating NIH cuts to infectious disease research, eviscerating our nation’s capacity to fight emerging infections and pandemic threats. From @sanders.senate.gov report out yesterday www.sanders.senate.gov/wp-content/u...

Yesterday, the NIH R35 “Outstanding Investigator” grant to fund scientists in my lab studying antibiotic resistance was terminated for reasons not related to the content of the science, or any actions taken by me or members of my lab

Happy birthday to founder of modern nursing, social reformer, statistician, data visualization innovator and writer Florence Nightingale (1820 – 1910)!⁠ 🧪🐡👩🏼‍🔬🧮 #histsci Nightingale earned the nickname “The Lady with the Lamp” during the Crimean War, from a phrase used by The Times, describing her 🧵

1. After getting some further insight into changes at NSF (thanks to those who reached out), I deleted a previous post where I tried to make sense of Cheatham's memo as reported in the Science story below.

PSA: Seasonality = there is a predictable temporal pattern to the occurrence of crests and troughs in the incidence of the infectious disease Seasonality ≠ the infectious disease occurs exclusively at a particular time of year and is otherwise absent from circulation at appreciable levels

Today we’re releasing Epydemix (www.epydemix.org), a Python package for flexible, modular, and data-driven epidemic modeling. Designed for researchers, students, and public health professionals. 🧵👇

Things are going from bad to worse at NSF; www.science.org/content/arti...

With NIH director Jayanta Bhattacharya dismissing my reporting as "false" and "spreading rumors" hours before releasing a policy that confirmed said "rumors," I feel compelled to respond. Here's an inside look into how this story was reported. It was a weird one. 🧵 www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Scientists in Beijing built a 10¢ test that detects Covid in under 1 minute—faster, cheaper & more sensitive than PCR or CRISPR. No machines, no enzymes, no labs. Just flip a test tube and read the result, similar to a pregnancy test but faster & more sensitive. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

As others have commented, this requirement has ethical problems. It would unethical to use a placebo as a control if an effective vaccine exists.

I received a surprising and disturbing request from NIH on Friday. They wrote to cancel a subaward to Hong Kong on one of my grants. (This was disturbing but not surprising.) They also ordered us not to interact with our collaborators in Hong Kong on any work under the award:

Watching this five years and a month ago, isolating in our small apartment, was one of the most profoundly moving and memorable moments of my adult life. May we continue to spread the contagion of hope. Lux perpetua luceat ei www.youtube.com/watch?v=pXhx...

NIH grant applications often run to well over 100 pages, and if awarded there is a contract to receive funding so researchers can deliver the science in the grant proposal. It’s not ‘entitlement’ to want that agreement to be honoured.

NOAA just announced a long list of datasets that are going away🧪⚒️🌊: www.nesdis.noaa.gov/about/docume... Download what you need asap and send comments to: [email protected]

Fortune’s lab, supported by the NIH until this week’s stop-work orders, aims to find ways to prevent and treat TB. Fortune says that the funding recently lost was the “infrastructure required to do research ethically, safely, and financially responsibly.“

I'm turning final corner on book in works for 4 years about scientific efforts to prevent future pandemics. Knopf plans to publish in October and now has teaser up. Deeply grateful to @sloanfoundation.bsky.social and many others for the support! www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/690752...

BREAKING: Trump admin attempts to shut down research on AI tools for cancer (control the frame. let's f'ing go.)