I’m sorry. I can’t let this Miller bullshit pass. After WWII “the West,” sometimes relatively quickly, sometimes not until the ‘70s, realized that the writing was on the wall: that they could spend vast sums in blood and treasure trying to defeat anti-colonial movements, and still lose.

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.

Happy New Year from Frederick, MD!

The whole thread is worth reading. Science is important. But representation is also important.

link without paywall: archive.ph/vXqVf#select...

1/ Last week, you probably heard about RFK Jr.'s sudden plan to move the U.S. childhood vaccine schedule to Denmark’s. He was supposed to have a press conference on Friday, but it was canceled for legal and political concerns. For now, that move is off the table, but this idea isn’t going away...👇

A study on 1.7 million people in Hong Kong shows superior hybrid immunity to Covid in people who got vaccinated before infection vs. people who got infected first. "Our findings are a direct rebuttal to arguments for natural immunity," the authors write. doi.org/10.1016/j.va...

1/ ACIP’s meeting last week was disgraceful, unprepared, & chaotic. They voted to roll back the universal #HepB birth dose despite no evidence of harm, and pushed an antibody test that doesn’t reliably guide decisions. This shift will have real consequences—with babies and families paying the price.

Justice Jackson to Solicitor General Sauer (just now, in Trump v. Slaughter arguments):

9/ The vaccine schedule is only one item on ACIP’s agenda this week. This breaks it all down👉 evicollective.org/2025-dec-acip-prebunk Love, @drhigginsmd.bsky.social Annicka Evans, PhD @sciencewhizliz.bsky.social @unbiasedscipod.bsky.social @enirenberg.bsky.social @ylepidemiologist.bsky.social

🦠What happens when you say you will only protect babies of infected moms, but you are bad at detecting infected moms❓ 🚫You miss a lot of babies who needed protection. This is exactly why in 1991 we went from only vaccinating babies of Hepatitis B positive moms to vaccinating all babies.

To be very clear, Kennedy's team is messing with a vaccine which has led to a 99 percent drop in the incidence of hepatitis B, which kills, early and painfully, 25 percent of the people who get it as children. lnk.thebulwark.com/3Xt957M

Look, I know that optimism isn't popular right now, but one way or another, by Trump breaking this system... he will strengthen it. There's a long road of reform ahead of us & the collaborators who enabled him to break democracy must be expelled for that reform to occur. But a reckoning IS coming.

Indeed!

we have PrEP because of these monkey studies. animal welfare in medical research is extremely strictly limited and regulated to ensure ethical use. there is no replacement for these animal models in biomedical research.

Thanks for all the supportive comments from folks in the chat - it means a lot. I want to address the comment from the anonymous HHS official. Is it “radically leftist” to believe NIH policies should not harm research participants? 1/2

🚨🚨 @jenna-m-norton.bsky.social is a force. Her voice carries power, truth, and courage—threats to the regime. The only thing authoritarians fear more than a voice they cannot control is a chorus. So let’s give them one: speak up, speak loudly, and don’t stop. Stand with Jenna. ✊🇺🇸

As they should.

They remove monuments memorializing Black soldiers who served the United States but restore monuments to traitors who fought against the United States? Disgusting.

When people celebrate the individual genius of folks in science, they should also mourn the collective loss of genius of folks who were actively discouraged or disadvantaged from a career in science because of the same person(s)

It’s time for us to reconnect with the radical, system-changing spirit that was once at the heart of our field. #publichealth #episky #medsky #activism www.thenation.com/article/acti...

Nick Carraway, Great Gatsby narrator: “They smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.”

Knickers

I do not believe Dems should fold. I believe if this works, he will keep doing it. If I believed folding would feed hungry people, I would at the very least strongly consider it. But he explicitly said he felt no obligation to honor any deal struck.

My reax to the big planned NIH shutdown firing news from @politico.com: The Project 2025 ppl didn’t do big (illegal) NIH firings because they know there would be public outcry. Keep speaking up!

Mike Johnson doesn't know sh*t

Wow. In a review of Fauci's autobiography, Bhattacharya stepped forwards as a defender of notorious 1990s HIV denier Peter Duesberg, whose pseudoscience led to hundreds of thousands of avoidable AIDS deaths in South Africa. Of course every caring scientist denounced Duesderg, but for JB that's mean.

It would be hard to find a better metaphor for what he’s doing to the United States. That House is ours, not his.

Yesterday’s food drive raised 800 lbs of food for our local food bank!! Civil servants are still serving, even when we’re fired and furloughed.

In social movement studies, we talk about how marches and protests expand the threshold of acceptable risk so that people take more and bigger social risks IN PUBLIC, EN MASSE. This is extremely important for the bourgeois white folks holding signs and building social rapport.

The scene,and energy, from Frederick, MD.

Just finished reading "So Very Small" by @tomlevenson.bsky.social . Why was there such a lag between the discovery of microbes and the development of germ theory? It's in the book.🙂 Good description of how science and public health work, and the various important people, and personalities, involved.

The Anti-Deficiency Act. Something in my wheelhouse.

This is a powerful account from a PhD student whose fellowship was terminated by NIH because it was part of a "diversity" program without any other considerations or understanding of what the program or the students were actually doing. undark.org/2025/10/09/o... 1/2

A priest led 1000 Catholics in a Eucharistic Procession from St. Eulalia Church to Broadview - monstrance in hand - to give Holy Communion to detainees. DHS denied them even though prisoners, by law, can't be denied religious rights. Christian Nationalism is phony baloney straight-up evil!

So many times we hear that we should run the federal government like a business. It seems like this group of businesspeople now in charge are acting more like vulture capitalists that loot businesses for personal gain. 1/3

For our #democracy, my wife Tanya @breadfarmer.bsky.social shot this quick video today of people in Portland doing routine shopping at Costco in our ‘war ravaged’ city. #DemocracyMatters #DemocracyInAction #DemocracyNow #PortlandStrong #DonaldTrumpisatotalloser

Proud of my colleagues for speaking out! There is so much power when people come together. Trump knows that, and that’s why everything he does aims to divide us. But we see through that and are growing stronger together! www.npr.org/2025/10/10/n...

Chicago priest Father Michael Pfleger: "The state of emergency is in AMERICA, not Chicago. It's birthed from this president and his admin's reign of terror." ( ht: @mikenellis.bsky.social )

I feel like a broken record, but I have to keep saying it over and over again: a farmer bailout won’t do much of anything because the market is gone. There will be no incentive to plant next year. The bailout will help payoff farmer debt to the banks. That’s all.

You've probably heard how a high percentage of #Nobel laureates are immigrants. The US in particular has benefited from the influx of bright minds. @jennaahart.bsky.social ran the data for this century's Nobel prizewinners — and shows more than 30% immigrated. 🧪 www.nature.com/articles/d41...

"...including while she was praying with her eyes closed and hands lifted, wearing a clerical collar and stole." religionnews.com/2025/10/07/i...

Excellent article. Advances in science and public health have led to longevity and quality of life improvements. Despite this, science and public health, especially science and public health government agencies, are under attack.

Over the weekend ICE abducted an NIH contractor when he showed up to a courthouse for his green card hearing. He is documented. His wife is a citizen. He is also member of the skeleton crew of animal care staff that works through a shutdown, to ensure the health and wellbeing of research animals.

Folks, if ICE shot a pastor in the head with a pepper ball on camera, what do you think they do to people behind closed doors?

I would add that the plan to get approval for three monovalent shots would be a Potemkin trial. A clinical trial would be unethical and not feasible, but would satisfy the Emperor and his court by adding doubt to the safety and efficacy of vaccines.

open.substack.com/pub/pauloffi... In the midst of a measles epidemic that killed 3 people, RFK Jr. reminds us that vaccines don't save lives.

I wrote a thing about how this split the MMR up into monovalents is bullshit that Andrew Wakefield cooked up. It will be used to strip access to the MMR. The MAHA movement continues to destroy public health. open.substack.com/pub/rasmusse...

This is an important essay about the attacks on efforts to diversify the scientific workforce, and the capitulation by universities to anti-diversity efforts.