1. A #flu & #measles update. #CDC has been informed of 5 more kids who've died from flu this year, bringing the pediatric death total so far to 71. About 90% of them weren't vaccinated. Flu season isn't over & flu B — which is tough on kids — is surging. The death toll, sadly, will continue to rise.

“We need to make sure that our vaccine program is characterized by safety and transparency... The focus can’t be on what’s good for various political groups, medical groups, or the pharmaceutical industry.” ☝️No mention of preventing needless suffering and death www.nytimes.com/2026/02/06/h...

Contrary to pandemic era calls for public health to stay out of politics, we need to recognize that PH must be political to do its job. Great history lesson and guidance for the future from @craigspencer.bsky.social

This article really is excellent. Highly recommended for anyone confused about “shared clinical decision making” (and healthcare providers talking to parents and patients about vaccination)

I said this in response to something, but feel like it’s worth sharing more generally

This is a great opportunity! @britshmit.bsky.social is one of the smartest people I know, as well as being brave, kind and committed to making a better world - no matter how difficult that may be

📢 Hiring: Postdoctoral Fellow in LGBTQ Reproductive Health Disparities at Harvard Medical School 🌈🧬 Focus on rigorous epi methods + big data (longitudinal cohorts, EMR, claims) 📊 Ideal for epi/biostats folks who want rich cross-Harvard collaborations Details👇 Please boost + tag! 📣

We lost two important figures in public health on Saturday. One, a legend. The other just entering our consciousness by virtue of his killing. I could not help connecting them. I'm grateful to Dr. Anthony Fauci, Dr. Céline Gounder, Dr. Tom Frieden, and Dr. Craig Spencer for their quotes. 1/

@billhanage.bsky.social offers his perspective on the new U.S. childhood immunization schedule, which reduces the number of universally recommended vaccines from 17 to 11: “The bottom line is that if fewer people are protected, there will be more preventable illness, suffering, and death.“

I'm so sad to hear that Dr Bill Foege passed away yesterday He was a legend in global health and worked so hard to eradicate smallpox More importantly, he was kind, compassionate and understood the true mission of public health "The purpose of public health is to promote social justice" - Foege

"How did ordinary people succumb to such a poisonous ideology? At a time of rising xenophobia and division, that feels like an important question to address" giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/...

Modern English usage challenge: Define “appear to” as used in the @nytimes.com

“In 14 jurisdictions”, and counting

Strep/Enterococcal colleagues! Streptococcal Biology GRC/GRS are open for applications. Acceptances are underway and the meeting is on track to fill up. If you’re aiming for a short talk (lots of slots), registering early matters for full consideration. Share widely! www.grc.org/streptococca...

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).

Key line from @assoumou.bsky.social “If you don’t come into my ICU because you were vaccinated, that’s a win.”

During Covid, more Mass. residents got flu shots. But fewer are now choosing to get them even as a bad flu batters the state. For today’s @bostonglobe.com Starting Point, @billhanage.bsky.social and @assoumou.bsky.social helped me think through why that might be www.bostonglobe.com/2026/01/21/n...

An article today in @natmed.nature.com lays out a "New Vision" for NIAID, stating that following Covid "much of the American public lost trust in the NIAID, the National Institutes of Health (...), and in the greater scientific community" Let's have a look at what they cite in support of that 1/n

Imagine if the people pushing for a "broken windows" policing strategy were the same people throwing the rocks...

"We recognize that much of the American public lost trust in the NIAID, the National Institutes of Health (NIH; of which the NIAID is a part), and in the greater scientific community." Factually incorrect statement on trust in Nature Medicine via NIH Director + co. 🧵 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

This study has been canceled (for now). Instead, as @pauloffit.bsky.social suggested, “take the $1.6m and vaccinate as many children as you can at birth”. www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026...

To the extent that it is possible to make sense of them... hsph.harvard.edu/news/making-...

New preprint featuring CCDD authors Léa Cavalli, @bradfordptaylor.bsky.social, Beau Schaeffer, and @billhanage.bsky.social: SARS-CoV-2 Intra-host Variation Shows Evidence of Transmission and Convergent Evolution in a University Surveillance Cohort. Read it at bit.ly/4pLO4BO

Can't pass ACA extensions but don't worry. We're going to probe whether Lyme disease is a US bioweapon instead.

💾 Prokka 1.15.6 is released! This is the last major release of Prokka. But don't be sad, because @oschwengers.bsky.social already has an excellent replacement called Bakta you can migrate to. #bioinformatics #microbiology #genomics github.com/tseemann/pro...

And from what I’ve seen the inquiry has focused on early 2020. I’d also like to know more about decision making in November/december 2020 when the devastating alpha variant (B.1.1.7) emerged. Because that was a failed opportunity to implement the costly lessons from the spring

I’m curious about where this “too early” advice came from, and the evidence base for it www.theguardian.com/uk-news/live...

ICYMI: Last night @jeremyfaust.bsky.social revealed that Drs. Makary and Prasad of the FDA have lied to all of us with their claims that COVID19 vaccines “killed 10 children”. The scientists that did the work found that there were ZERO deaths that they could be certain were caused by the vaccines.

Vaccines cause adults

Given recent evidence free pronouncements from FDA it’s interesting to see this *evidence* for the effectiveness of Covid vaccines at preventing visits to the emergency room or urgent care *in children* Especially the 76% effectiveness in the 9mo-4yrs age group www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes...

A student just shared this with me and it is AWESOME hadley.github.io/genzplyr/

Yes. 💯 times yes www.statnews.com/2025/12/10/a...

New publication from CCDD’s Léa Cavalli, @billhanage.bsky.social, & collaborators: bit.ly/4rF0Rr3

This is fascinating. Note the large variance around terms like “likely” or “probable” and their antonyms

Photographer Martin Parr just passed. If you don't know his work, the Guardian has a really nice introduction here. h/t @wvschaik.bsky.social

Imagine you're overseeing the termination of clinical trials, the destruction of people's livelihoods, the dismantling of scientific research in the US, and you're complaining that Twitter didn't give you a blue check 4 years ago.

This is the fringiest of fringe theories and complete and utter nonsense. Lyme has been around a lot longer than there have been labs, and makary should have the common sense to do the tiniest amt of fact checking (if he actually believes this). It’s like a violation of both oath and conscience.

Friends, Yesterday and today, I watched many hours of the CDC’s meeting of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP). It was painful. But we learned a lot. That bad news is that our kids are going to pay the price for RFK jr’s views. insidemedicine.substack.com/p/analysis-o...

This is astonishing. All AI bar one shot. www.nowness.com/series/nowne...

ICE raided a James Beard award winning restaurant & because the chef/owner was prepared, left emptyhanded:

The health of Americans is at risk as those in power abandon evidence and process, and elevate anecdote and rhetoric in their place. Excellent article (if sad to read) www.statnews.com/2025/12/03/a...

Essential reading if you care about the health of scientific inquiry in the US www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

Can you guess which of these quotes are about COVID, and which about the 1918 influenza pandemic? Answers here: kucharski.substack.com/p/how-will-h...

Predicting headlines tomorrow about how #Arsenal have lost their set piece mojo

More from the UK on Baroness Hallett’s report. And yes it was obvious what was coming

Superb take on the UK govt’s pandemic response and what it signifies for politics in an emergency. It chimes with a lot of my own recollections and knowledge of expert discussions at the time. But I did not realise @rory-stewart.bsky.social had been such an advocate for a more sensible policy

After Canada now the US is on course to lose measles elimination status. The TX outbreak that started in jan this year has spread to AZ and UT with evidence of multiple transmission chains, some of which have not been chased down so there may well be more. www.nytimes.com/2025/11/17/h...

This, from @maciekboni.bsky.social, is a sobering reminder of just how bad things were five years ago. But it’s also five years since we got the trial results which signposted a way out of the nightmare. Warp speed was a huge success and we should not forget maciekboni.substack.com/p/covids-lea...

I never bothered reading The Tipping Point because my BS detector was off the chart. Sounds like that was the right choice