12 former @fda.gov commissioners from both parties just went on the record in @nejm.org calling Vinay Prasad’s vaccine framework a threat to public health. They bring more than 3 decades of leadership at the agency, and it is hard to think of a more forceful warning. 🧵 www.nejm.org/doi/full/10....

3/ W/o intervention, ~85% of infants born to infected mothers become infected, 90% of whom develop chronic HBV (vs <5% of adults). 1 in 4 children with HBV die prematurely from cirrhosis or liver cancer Annual treatment for chronic HBV = $25-$325k Prevention is key www.cdc.gov/acip/downloa...

4/ The birth dose is recommended w/in 24 hours because early initiation is critically important. Palau: infants vaccinated > 3 days after birth had a 6.7% infection rate. Those vaccinated w/in 3 days had 0.6%. Micronesia: 2.6% vs 0. The birth dose alone reduces transmission by ~75%.

In advance of this week’s ACIP meeting this new preprint modeling the impact of delaying HepB vaccines merits a close read: www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1...

Running an agency like he ran his twitter account

One would think that a communication of this magnitude would have been vetted and maybe spell-checked. This reads as a self-indulgent and vindictive missive by a man who couldn't stand up to the level of criticism that most researchers receive from their own colleagues on a daily basis.

We're hiring for tenure-track faculty! Please apply if you have interests in immune responses to microbes and/or cancer, immune regulation, microbial infections (bacteria, viruses, parasites, fungi), the microbiota, and/or interests that span these disciplines. arizona.csod.com/ux/ats/caree...

😕

For the first time in my career, I can’t tell people to trust what the CDC website says. And that is an incredibly sad and devastating place for this country to be.

Proud to share our work now out in Cell. We hope what we learned about IgA immune responses to rotavirus can be translated into better vaccines. Congratulations Dr. Kei Haniuda, an amazing PDF. TY @uoftmedicine.bsky.social for covering. temertymedicine.utoronto.ca/news

Looking forward to this see you there Deepta!

🧪 Meeting will be in Keystone, CO March 16-20. Come for the skiing and the science! #bcells #antibodies #immunosky #immunology www.keystonesymposia.org/conferences/...

I’m co-organizing a Keystone conference on B cells and plasma cells with Kim Good-Jacobson and Taras Kreslavsky! Deadlines for abstracts and scholarships is Nov 13. Great lineup of basic, translational, and industry speakers. Please repost! www.keystonesymposia.org/conferences/...

The UofA is hiring for a Principal Scientist in cancer immunology! This isn’t a typical academic position—we're looking for a scientist with a great idea but needs time/resources to translate and commercialize. Please repost and apply if interested! arizona.csod.com/ux/ats/caree...

In our latest vaccine immunology study we tested whether it is possible to simultaneously prime multiple classes of broadly neutralizing antibodies (bnAbs) against HIV using a combination of germline-targeting (GT) immunogens. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... @scienceimmuno.bsky.social @lji.org

I love this story 😊

Proud of the IDS, ashamed of my alma mater www.nytimes.com/2025/10/17/b...

Asthma is a chronic disease characterized by acute, intermittent, recurrent episodes of airway inflammation. A decade of work developing the tools, techniques and collaborations needed to figure out how CD4+ T cells in the lungs propagate disease can be found here: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

This captures much of the frustration of today.

But will put in a good word for my BootLander proposal to beat the heathens to the manifest destiny moondust. Piece is me ventriloquizing a savage comment made by a retired NASA official about moon plan, natch. 7/7 have a good weekend, folks www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-...

Winner of mRNA Nobel Prize says ACIP member’s claim that Covid vaccines persist is “absolutely impossible” In Q&A, Drew Weissman says vast literature shows Covid shots are safe, refutes claims from Retsef Levi www.statnews.com/2025/09/20/d...

Wanna know how to tell whoever is running the CDC has no clue what they're talking about? It's "correlate of protection," not "correlative protection." h/t @malar0ne.bsky.social In another era, this would be extremely embarrassing.

Ladies and gentlemen, the meritocracy

Dr. Jake Scott asks why ACIP is asking about the MMRV when there's NO new data to report. "We've known about the seizure risk since 2005 and have been transparently discussing it with parents for nearly 20 years. Highlighting it again seems designed to amplify fear rather than improve safety."

If you read 1 thing today, please make it this: my so-talented colleague @ericboodman.bsky.social explains why babies in the US are vaccinated at birth against hep B — and what the human costs of changing that policy would be. www.statnews.com/2025/09/11/n...

This 🧵 is long so please bear with me. It is compiles evidence in a historical timeline on how effective #COVIDVaccines are. When a pandemic ends we quickly and easily forget the tools that got us out of it. So here is my labour day gift to you prompted by this headline.

In a post on Truth Social, the president suggested that the CDC was being “ripped apart” over a question that was answered long ago — whether Covid vaccines work. (Gift article) www.nytimes.com/2025/09/02/h...

Yesterday the president demanded that evidence about Covid vaccines be shown to the public. Today @apoorvanyt.bsky.social & I run through some of the studies made public over the past 4+ years that show that the vaccines work. Gift link: nyti.ms/46k17Tq

Kulldorff calls for the establishment of a CDC work group examining whether or not children today get too many vaccines and cumulative harms of that. This is explicitly anti-vaccine propaganda and senseless. When new vaccines are evaluated in prelicensure clinical trials, you do not...

I had serious doubts about CDC Director Monarez’s willingness to stand up against RFK Jr.’s personal mission to destroy public health in America—I’m glad that I was wrong. If there are any adults left in the White House: we cannot let RFK Jr. burn what's left of CDC. FIRE HIM.

“I am unable to serve in an environment that treats CDC as a tool to generate policies and materials that do not reflect scientific reality and are designed to hurt rather than to improve the public’s health.” That’s from the resignation of CDC’s Demetre Daskalakis @drdemetre.bsky.social (on X) 🧪

These letters of resignation from CDC officials are VERY MUCH worth your time. PLEASE READ AND PROPAGATE.

““Don’t just say this is about thoughts and prayers right now. These kids were literally praying.” Live Updates: Suspect Identified in Minneapolis School Shooting That Killed 2 Children and Injured 14 www.nytimes.com/live/2025/08...

What drives me nuts about this is that there really wouldn’t have been any political cost for Cassidy, Collins, Murkowski to vote no. RFK Jr is only there transactionally for his support during the campaign. If he weren’t confirmed, pretty sure Trump would’ve just shrugged and said oh well.

Vought, Rufo, and Bhattacharya do not want what the American people overwhelmingly want.

Also important this week: A trustworthy guide to childhood vaccine schedules, from actual pediatricians (many of whom saw these diseases before they could be vaccinated against). * pin it & share it * Ps: no, pediatricians are not pharma shills, don’t @ me www.healthychildren.org/English/safe...

We mostly rely on Bayesian guesswork to predict how long antibodies will be produced for new vaccines/infections. Here, we find that some of the key programs are set *really* early. We hope early signatures can be used to predict and engineer durable vaccine immunity. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

RFK Jr’s “evidence” doesn’t support ending mRNA vaccine development. It makes the case for expanding it. Thanks to @thekibosch.bsky.social @statnews.com www.statnews.com/2025/08/13/r...

NIH scientists say that mRNA vaccines have saved untold thousands of lives. A heroin addled nepo baby whose brain was partially eaten by a worm says mRNA vaccines are worthless and even dangerous. For busy medical patients, it can be hard to know who to trust.

If RFK Jr approach to develop a vaccine against all viruses involves sequentially exposing himself to each of these viruses and letting his amazing body develop a vaccine the natural way, then I highly endorse this approach. I would start with something easy like Nipah or Hendra virus

This is such bullshit. Just pure composted dung.

UCLA might I suggest “My offer is this: nothing” www.nytimes.com/2025/08/08/u...

In my small corner of biology, I’m constantly reassured by how frequently we confirm main findings. And then when differences do show up, they very rarely end up being fraud, but instead tell us something important about differences in experimental design.

I don’t have a problem with someone evaluating my science abilities if I have the ability to examine theirs. Let’s do televised qualifying exams for all the political appointees who will be evaluating science grants and proposals. Let’s start with directors of institutes and cabinet secretaries.

As a longtime public health reporter covering the rise of anti-vaccine groups, I have seen them use personal stories to raise doubts about vaccines. Today I saw immunization advocates push back by highlighting the stories of the toll of vaccine-preventable illness. A thread:

JUST IN: HHS shuts down BARDA mRNA vaccine program Scrapping the fastest platform we have is a reckless move rooted in a fundamental misunderstanding of vaccinology. No respiratory vaccine blocks all infections. mRNA vaccines have saved millions of lives. www.hhs.gov/press-room/h...

To say that "the data show these vaccines fail" in regards to the mRNA plaform is unforgivable. For those of you that don't remember - this is the data from a SINGLE dose. In December 2020. So good I cried in grateful tears.

UPDATE: Our living database now includes 1,267 controlled vaccine trials - 501 with inert (mostly saline) placebos - involving 9.36 million participants. And MANY more studies to add. Grateful to the incredible team making it possible. 🙏

The annoying spam texts destroying the Democratic brand: $678M raised through those spam tactics $282M to one consulting firm: Mothership Strategies. $11M to actual campaigns (1.6%) The party isn’t just treating donors like marks—it’s being fleeced itself yet continues to back Mothership.

Flagship papers, from the TOP guidelines and the science utopia series to the retracted work by Protzko have consistently overstated what the evidence supports for the breadth of problems in science and espoused a suite of elements as necessary (or even sufficient) elements of credible science.