Researcher, therapist, heavily caffeinated. Frequently described as a bit of a handful. đ¤ (She/her) đłď¸ââ§ď¸ jessk.org/blog
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So whoâs here to step in now that even a scientist handpicked by Trump had to step down because what was happening inside CDC was so reprehensible? Oh, a man with no scientific training whose foray into health policy was to suggest the free market regulate drug safety. fortune.com/2025/08/29/w...
But when modeling the long term effect, itâs incomprehensible. www.ox.ac.uk/news/2025-04...
This is when we were talking about just âpausingâ PEPFAR funds. Note projections here are for only 7 countriesâ not globally.
![new infections to reach about 103 thousand [95% UI: 81-126 thousand] under the Executive orderârealistic scenario, and about 81 thousand [95% UI: 64-98 thousand] under the Executive order-proportional scenario. Even under both Waiver scenarios, excess new infections reach 50 thousand [95% UI: 37-65 thousand] when PEPFAR is resumed after 8 weeks, and 35 thousand [95% UI: 19-50 thousand] when PEPFAR is resumed after 4 weeks (Appendix Table A3).](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:v4jfgpnpcxd2be2hekn5iocf/bafkreidp2njc6z74kha7nulxczqje22tp5kdhhoi6kxlwbdvyagrf46k4y@jpeg "Click to view full size")
Just the 90 day freeze on funds was staggering, with tens of thousands of excess deaths.
The number of children expected to die from policies that have already been enacted is unimaginable in isolation, even before factoring in the other concurrent and compounding threats from this new epidemiological landscape.
The evisceration of CDC is happening at the same time global disease prevention funding like PEPFAR dries up after being line-item deleted by the WH and DOGE. If we canât contain something we already eradicated and have no more global infrastructure, we have no defense left against another pandemic.
Even with the drastically reduced disease surveillance and deliberate undercount, official CDC sources are already reporting the highest number of measles cases in more than 30 years, after it was officially declared âeliminatedâ in the US in 2000. Also, school is about to start.
9 CDC Directors going back to 1977 speak out. What RFK Jr has done to our nationâs public health system "should alarm every American." It "is unlike anything we have ever seen at the agency, and unlike anything our country has ever experienced." www.nytimes.com/2025/09/01/o...
How can anyone look at this and believe this is a system capable of reform?
Completely unidentified men literally tear apart a crying family at the federal building in NYC. Unmarked, masked men shout orders and shove his family aside. The man with the only visible badge in the group picks up and throws a loved one while heâs cuffed.
Yeah Iâm I little baffled by the question
Positively vibrating in my seat until the show starts
Every time he does something new that will cause irreparable damage to humanity, I think about how every single medical and public health student has to do a postmortem on the Wakefield study in the first few months of school because itâs that important. RFK jr is going to need his own course.
Full resignation letter from Demetre C. Daskalakis, a CDC leader, does not hold back. "The recent shooting at CDC is not why I am resigning. My grandfather, who I am named after, stood up to fascist forces in Greece and lost his life doing so. I am resigning to make him and his legacy proud."
Barely? It acknowledges that DC crime is down but muddies the hell out of the water. It somehow includes counterfactual evidence in a way that suggests people want a boot to the neck archive.ph/JoX65
There are few things that give me hope that what is being dismantled in the US can be rebuilt, but the chance to build up beyond US borders is a net positive even while we lose. The more daylight between this administrationâs influence and the global public health infrastructure the better.
A Brazilian trans woman, in the US legally under asylum, has been taken and disappeared by ICE.
Pritzker: To the members of the press who are assembled here today and listening across the country, I am asking for your courage to tell it like it is. This is not a time to pretend here that there are two sides to this story.
this trans woman was taken into ICE custody tonight over a 3-year old weed charge. she faces torture in menâs detention centers or self-deportation and leaving behind everything she knows (if she can afford that option). please support if youâre able
So much of recent history can be explained by the popularization of this idea that empathy and compassion are somehow gateways to evil. When our species dies out and this planet becomes a lifeless rock, it will be this ideology that got us there.
This country is so deeply sick
According to this, if he pleads guilty theyâll send him to Costa Rica, otherwise theyâll ship him to Uganda as a criminal regardless. But if he pleads guilty, they control the narrative, and reading CRâs letter, could still imprison him first as part of a sentence? He has 22 more hours to decide.
ICE had actually been a party to the Costa Rica plan originally as a means of appeasing the court, and only once he was released did they reveal they had no intention to follow through with that plan and were sending him to Uganda instead.
From the same filing, the government of Costa Rica has offered to take him in as a refugee. The US chose Uganda instead because theyâll participate in making an example out of him.
Itâs important to say that this is common practice. This is the hunger games sh*t immigrants in this country are subjected to every single day like a perpetual reenactment of the fugitive slave act.
This is what they sent his attorney. After all he has been through, theyâre ordering him to bring *himself* to submit to being sent 8,000 miles away to Uganda. If he doesnât, theyâll declare him on the run and hunt him for sport as a fugitive anyway. The filing: marylandmatters.org/wp-content/u...
For the nine hundredth time, this shit would dry up fairly fast if the thinkpiece industrial complex leaned in a fraction as hard crying censorship now as they did every time someone suggested maybe we shouldnât name public parks after long-dead confederate war criminals.
UPDATE: Fox News reports that ICE told Kilmar Abrego Garcia they are going to deport him to Uganda on Monday.
Put another way: in an era where ChatGPT appears to be facilitating psychotic breaks, what could possibly happen when a machine starts classifying a whole group of people as antithetical to godliness?
Now enough people have regurgitated the claim that these two concepts are at odds with one another and a functional apposition has been integrated into how it reports information moving forward.
There is nothing about being respectful that is inherently at odds with âreligious freedom.â If anything, the ability to dictate oneâs own pronouns is a freedom from othersâ imposition.
There is a liminal space where opinion transforms into fact just before something becomes a âcontroversyâ because someone says it is one. The reality is that public opinion started to change against us when they started claiming it was. The claim preceded the result.
This second bullet point in a USA Today article illustrates a big problem with LLM summariesâ namely they cannot distinguish between claims and facts. This is the software equivalent of when Trump says âmany are sayingâ. It allows writers to rhetorically distance themselves from their own opinions.
âWhat if I just donât know it?â
Oh thatâs legit
I canât possibly be the only person who has a genuine pause now and then before clicking this, right?
Oh look, the same exact accusations they made against the AAP with regards to trans youth. Almost like it's the same exact playbook to attack best practice medicine.
Why do you even bother with writing this? Itâs obviously false, the rule explicitly states that this is not true, and it trivializes necessary healthcare as if itâs just about getting off
I suspect someone will sue, but Iâm not 100% sure who would have standing other than federal employees affected by this. Unfortunately, I think itâs a mistake to believe the courts will rule in our favor, as all evidence says to the contrary. An initial injunction is possible, but higher courts? No.
1. find a way to convince cisgender people to care
Her administration literally made coverage mandatory
They donât want to milk peoples fears, they want to eradicate us. Fear isnât driving this, hate is.
Federal coverage was required starting in 2024 under Biden in accordance with section 1557 of the ACA. The adminâs interpretation used the Bostock ruling to support its conclusion. It feels likely the admin wants to use this as a vehicle to go after Bostock. www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/...
Just to give people a sense of speed, only months ago bills attempting to do this just for minors were still being introduced. Those bills, such as S.1774, havenât even been put to a vote yet. That one is still in committee.
It does however order that in addition to traditional therapy, âfaith based counselingâ be covered as a âtreatmentâ for gender dysphoria.
Federal employee health plans barred from covering gender affirming care âregardless of ageâ www.opm.gov/healthcare-i...
![1 of 2 FEHB Program Carrier Letter All FEHB and PSHB Carriers FEHB & PSHB ĺş U.S. Office of Personnel Management Healthcare and Insurance Letter Number 2025-01b Date: August 15, 2025 Fee-for-service [9] Experience-rated HMO [9] Community-rated HMO [10] Subject: Chemical and Surgical Sex-Trait Modification Services for Plan Year 2026 Proposals This Carrier Letter serves as a second Addendum to Carrier Letter 2025-01, and supplemental guidance to Carrier Letter 2025-05. The guidance outlined below supersedes any previous Carrier Letter with conflicting information. For Plan Year 2026, chemical and surgical modification of an individual's sex traits through medical interventions (to include](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:v4jfgpnpcxd2be2hekn5iocf/bafkreicrsx2fy5crg5uknlq5o4wvnztdvlh6dgzuv4qnazh25qmgrhyzca@jpeg "Click to view full size")
No worries! Itâs all so confusing, and to your point, legality isnât exactly a constraint for this admin! This just happens to be one place where there is technically a process for it
He resigned from his state AG position and is being appointed. That would make it legal.
The new co-deputy director of the FBI, everyone
Missouri AG Andrew Bailey, one of the most aggressive anti-abortion AGs in the country, has been named FBI co-deputy director. Quite possibly the worst abortion-related news weâve seen from the Trump administration yet.
Just gonna dodge the question?
This is a garbage take
Itâs not just Twitter but yeah, itâs fucking horrendous.
They believe the protesters are all âpaidâ as usual, but one interesting note is how suddenly the right is now also acknowledging how aware they are of the racial makeup of DC, and therefore arguing the fact that some protests are disproportionately white means they must be paid and this is proof.
Another is focused on the definition of âinsurrectionâ that now apparently justifies this response, which elides the fact that no one is setting fire to anything or invading government buildings but instead are sometimes sleeping on benches because theyâre homeless.
I think these are real people. I think the truth is so elusive in this country and the news media, such that most people live in isolated microclimates of reality that they canât cope with counterfactual data at all.
The second seems to be that Trump protecting police, because DC is the âmost dangerous city in the USâ and that this isa template to move on to other cities in order of dangerousness. DC is not even in the top 30 major cities in terms of crime, most are republican cities in deep red states.
The first explanation seems to be that thereâs some sort of special type of crime in DC run by cartels that can only be put down by overwhelming force, and that real DC residents are secretly begging for the army to release them like hostages.
Reading comments about the DC occupation on other platforms is instructive as hell as the right tries to hand wave away using the military and the full force of the federal law enforcement apparatus on ordinary US citizens just going about their lives. This is thermonuclear cognitive dissonance.
Yup, this isnât empathy. Empathy isnât a strategy. This on the other hand is how a sociopath thinks.
The explosion of anti-trans legislation was a coordinated campaign, and understanding this is critical to debunking the idea that this was some sort of organic rejection of trans rights. No it wasnât. This was hundreds of millions of dollars of effort to use us as a wedge with fascism as the goal.
15 years ago, it was not uncommon for bipartisan legislation to be put forward in red states in order to add gender identity as a protected class for state anti-discrimination protections re: employment, housing & public accommodations. "The past is a foreign country" legiscan.com/SD/bill/HB11...
This from @lizsaila.bsky.social is one of the most important projects Iâve ever seen. Looking at the data you can visualize the various intersecting strategies as various groups disseminate legislation templates. With a complicit news media, they manufactured the political will for where we are now.
How did this become normalized? Because immediately after theyâve succeeded in destroying some kidâs life comes a wave of âwhoâs to know whatâs right?â think pieces to encourage even more of this so that when lawmakers and even the fucking president join in, everyone just shrugs it off.
Entire communities are viciously attacking trans children in the most public and humiliating ways and yet the scandal is always framed as some poor kid had the temerity to want to be treated like a human being.
Right????
As long as I live I will never understand teaching your kids to hate like this.
First it was bathrooms. Then sports. Now classrooms. The school in question bent over backwards to accommodate the parents of other children, going as far as making the class optional but that still wasnât enough. My heart breaks for the girl at the center of this. Imagine how isolating it must be.
I think youâre adding a lot of meaning and context to what I said that isnât there
Thank you so much for doing this and for having the integrity to clarify the record. This guardian article is bullshit
Itâs crucial to the anti-trans narrative that when people like Sacha speak out in defense of trans lives, it be immediately explained away as the result of âintimidation.â It is inconceivable to âgender criticalâ voices that our fellow LGBTQ+ community members actually love and care about us.
It isnât exclusively to the idea of Americans being unique, but that America is. And if you believe that, you interpret the same events differently depending on where they happen.
the thing about incarcerated trans people is that virtually no one will stand up for them & thatâs fucking horrific because i literally cannot think of a worse place to be a trans person in america than prison. if youâre cis you should read this. trans people, keep on scrolling; you already know.
Deleted my entire meta account, Facebook instagram threads etc, I miss none of it
This guy been on Gavinâs garbage podcast yet?
Itâs astonishing. And honestly I donât think I appreciated how fucked it was until I tried to explain it to someone in Havana
I find it physically painful to try and watch something in this format now, canât understand how I made it through the xfiles every week with so many fucking ads
I have, in multiple countries, tried to explain our system of âinsuranceâ to people whoâve never spent a significant amount of time in the US and every time it ended eventually with the other person saying âno I literally do not understand this, how are you not in a constant state of revolt?â
Thatâs a COPAY?
over 2 months ago, i went to the ER with severe throbbing lower back pain i was afraid was my aorta dissecting (thankfully, it wasn't). just got hit with a $500 bill because that's the copay for an ER trip that doesn't result in being admitted. this system ain't it.
Minnesota teen says server forced her to prove her gender in restaurant bathroom The 18-year-old high school student alleged the server would not let her exit the Buffalo Wild Wings restroom until she unzipped her hoodie and showed she had breasts. For @nbcnews.com: www.nbcnews.com/feature/nbc-...
This is precisely it. It is a worldview predicated on the idea that sexual violence is an inevitable and natural component of masculinity, not something boys are recruited into by misogynyâ and that all of society needs to be structured around accommodating this immutable fact.
âWilson told the AP he believes the 19th Amendment granting women the right to vote âwas a bad idea.ââ
The man overseeing the rigid enforcement of puritanical gender norms at the DoD has regressive views on women? Shocked I am. Excellent reporting on Hegsethâs church network and their vision for society: apnews.com/article/pete...
DC is FORTY-ONE PERCENT Black. Do you understand?
To recap: there have been mass shootings across the country over the past few weeks including an Army base and the CDC, and a synagogue was burned to the ground in NJ. None of this happened in DC.
BBC International Editor Jeremy Bowen has confirmed that the entire Al Jazeera team in Gaza City has been killed.
Humans do a lot of wonderful and amazing things but omg are we also capable of such pointless evil even in the most basic matters
Youâre welcome đ¤
This so much
I also hope people take a moment to think what this means for unhoused people who also have no regular access to clean water. Sanitation isnât just about being clean, itâs about the most basic things we need to live. Laws of exclusion, against anyone, decimate human health.
Young people in places that donât offer safe bathroom access regularly try to hold all day or stop going to school at all. And âjust using the nurseâs bathroomâ or whatever half solutions schools offer risks outing students. Ostracized and humiliated, many just disappear from public life altogether.
People with no options who try relieving themselves elsewhere can find themselves on a sex offender registry, and trying to use the bathroom discretely at a facility that doesnât explicitly offer bathrooms to the public can be charged with trespassing.
If somehow you donât get beaten for being in the wrong stall or because your haircut makes someone âuncomfortableâ a process still starts when we restrict access to bathrooms and what started as humiliating is now significantly damaging your health.
All of the above can lead to chronic pain, which can concentrate or refer to other parts of the body. Many of these things are excruciating, and pain management can be extra taxing on the organs that flush waste, principally your liver and kidneys. Which need to move waste to stay healthy.
But remember: people who canât regularly safely void also canât do the most essential thing for any of these problems, which is to drink tons of water and flush your system. Which is only possible if you can access a bathroom. This is even worse if you canât access healthcare safely or regularly.
Urinary tract infections similarly cause the area to become inflamed, they can lead to fever, and untreated can be dangerous. A UTI can lead to a kidney infection if bacteria travel up the ureters from the bladder. Untreated kidney infections are quite dangerous.
On a longer timeline, your kidneys start to produce stones as sediment builds up, causing intense pain. Damage to kidneys aside, kidney stones can lead to blockages and tear up the ureters. Producing one stone can start a process though, and one can become multiple.
