“U.S. has fallen to a new low, ranking only 29th of the 182 countries rated with a score of 64… ‘where 0 means highly corrupt & 100 means very clean.’ The CPI is the most widely used corruption ranking in the world, measuring how corrupt each country’s public sector” www.forbes.com/sites/duncan...

This is troubling for multiple reasons, but one big one is companies won’t want to invest in R&D and clinical trials if they don’t think they can get a fair regulatory review—which is at the end of a long and extremely expensive process. www.nytimes.com/2026/02/10/h...

Marty Makary is an anti-science crank.

ICE had the worst of the worst after all. Not in custody, but on payroll.

Our FDA has been hijacked by RFKJ & co. This is outrageous. “Moderna’s vaccine uses the same mRNA technology as its Covid shot. In a release Tuesday, Moderna said the FDA did not identify any safety or efficacy concerns with the vaccine” @jackiantonovich.bsky.social

An exclusive interview with one of Bad Bunny's bushes. "I absolutely stand behind everything that he stands for. . . he’s so full of love. I just think that’s so important. It was really magical to see that come to life and see his impact.” www.seattletimes.com/entertainmen...

No lies detected

Coffee linked to slower brain ageing in study of 130,000 people www.nature.com/articles/d41...

The HPV vaccine has prevented more cancer than any medical intervention in history after tobacco control. It's been studied in 70+ randomized trials. Now a reconstituted ACIP wants to reexamine whether it works. My new piece in @cidrap.bsky.social breaks it down. www.cidrap.umn.edu/human-papill...

Yeah, this country is in a death spiral.

Almost all of the scientists were previously at US institutions go.nature.com/4qMlrUR

An email to Director Bhattacharya this morning. 1/3

The National Cancer Institute, the federal research agency charged with leading the war against the nation’s second-largest killer, is studying ivermectin as a potential cancer treatment, according to its top official. New from me @kffhealthnews.org kffhealthnews.org/news/article...

Sign me up for AI-accelerated head and neck surgery!

RFK continues to be horrible. open.substack.com/pub/pauloffi...

The worst people in the world doing evil and stupid things.

The Supreme Court’s 2026 Term—Public Health in Jeopardy url: jamanetwork.com/journals/jam...

Chat bots give the wrong medical advice more than half the time. www.nytimes.com/2026/02/09/w...

In @nytopinion.nytimes.com “It often felt as though there were two different shows unfolding — one for America and one for América,” Petra R. Rivera-Rideau and Vanessa Díaz write.

My weekly update. Some good(ish) news. The pace of NIH grantmaking appears to be picking up. 1/4

the public health response to this has to be “close the camps and free them all” and nothing less

I'm going to do a thread of all the references and context behind Bad Bunny's performance and what it means for Puerto Ricans to see this on the biggest stage. The opening title screen is a street mural in Puerto Rico that comes to life with footballs as coconuts. Follow along!

Kennedy calls supplements suppressed when they’re nearly completely unregulated. Now, through the MAHA coalition, he’s about to open the door for his supplements-selling friends to make a killing by forcing insurance companies to pay for them. derekberes.substack.com/p/here-comes...

This is part of a pattern that is impeachable: Trump cuts previously appropriated Congressional funds, but only to states led by Democrats (California, Colorado, Illinois and Minnesota).

News from @thehill.com: Trump administration orders CDC to claw back $602M from blue states The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) ordered CDC to rescind over $602 million in funding along with $943 million by the Transportation Department from Colorado, Illinois, California & Minnesota.

America is ailing because its citizens are losing the ability to take collective action on behalf of the common good.

Stefanie Fernández writes, "A lot of violent realities for our communities continue outside. The Super Bowl will never televise the revolution. But this year, Benito reminded so many of us of the love, the community and the absolute joy that we create together every day in spite of everything else."

It also points out how the cultural ignorance of much of our pundit & MSM class fails. 135 million Americans watched an important & controversial cultural event & many journalists are 1)ill-equipped to explain its significance or 2) too arrogant to know that would need assistance in unpacking it.

Wrote about Bad Bunny and how after more than a century under U.S. rule, after attempts to erase our national identity, after the man-made crises and natural disasters that have befallen our people, in the face of every challenge, seguimos aquí. We’re still here. www.thecut.com/article/bad-...

> @cnn.com

This is a powerful message from Freeman Hrabowski. 🧵 1/12

12/12

"The most notorious mascot remains the loathed 'Izzy' from the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, a blue face with protruding arms and legs, and lightning bolts for eyebrows. Bob Costas called it 'a genetic experiment gone horribly, ghastly wrong.' A skating, skiing, smiling stoat seems normal."

The reality is America is a huge multicultural multilingual country, not a white ethnostate, and venomous white supremacist MAGA crybabies lose it whenever that reality becomes unignorable. We should always seek to increase, not decrease, their discomfort. www.the-reframe.com/hating-the-g...

Bad Bunny did something Trump can NEVER do...name all the countries in the Americas

The Onion: “Oh, what a crock-load of mierda—¿qué?—¿qué está pasando? ” said local 43-year-old Randy Hance, who in a scene that was currently unfolding in millions of households across the nation jumped out of his seat and clutched at his throat”

Let's dispel with the fiction that the NFL doesn't know what it's doing.

• A doc sued for prescribing a debunked autism therapy • A man who says vaccines are “poisoning children” • A woman boosting autism "treatments" using stem cells from rabbits This is not a QAnon conference line-up, it is the people now guiding US autism research www.wired.com/story/rfk-jr...

What can you do with a history degree?

My quote of the day Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio

Trump: “Nobody understands a word this guy is saying." Bad Bunny delivered a message in English: “God bless America.” He held a football imprinted with the English words “Together, We Are America”-- and said in Spanish, “We’re still here.”

This was Puerto Rico's moment, a spotlight on a collective son who quit bagging groceries a decade ago and became the world's most streamed artist on Spotify last year.

You could think of Bad Bunny’s triumphant Super Bowl set as a tribute to the power and capaciousness of American popular music—or as a pointed critique of it. newyorkermag.visitlink.me/2s4iCg

People of DC, more than two weeks into being totally iced in, now get news of measles spread—brought in by Right to Life marchers. Looking for people exposed on the Metro, at DCA, at Children's Hospital, on Amtrak. Gee, thanks, RFKJr et al. dchealth.dc.gov/release/heal...

There is only one real takeaway from Super Bowl LX, and you’re not going to like it. slate.trib.al/bKZ7SQq

Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl halftime show was a blast, writes @skornhaber.bsky.social—“a precisely detailed, relentlessly stimulating medley rooted in the good-old-fashioned pleasure principle”:

The Seattle Seahawks have won the franchise's second Super Bowl, and defense was the driving force behind this championship. n.pr/4kmCATr

Unidos somos América.