Still at ICAP @Columbia U for a little while. Write rare disease reports on the side. What I do but I’m interested in life & literature from A-Z, anthropology to zoology. As a grad student I wanted to combine cultural anthro w/ folklore studies.
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MUST READ | The health department plans to roll out lenacapavir, a twice-yearly HIV prevention injection in 2026. Yet, little progress has been made towards rolling out a two-monthly prevention injection, despite the four-year head start on lenacapavir. www.spotlightnsp.co.za/2025/09/02/t...
RFK Jr: “If you’ve ever compared an unvaccinated kid to a vaccinated kid… you see the bright eyes, the engagement, the social interactions, the curiosity. And you compare them to the child who even had one or two vaccines, and they’re completely different.“ This man is an existential threat.
#CDC directors going back to 1977 tell the truth about #RFKJr: he is endangering the health of every American. www.nytimes.com/2025/09/01/o...
"If it continues like this, the United States will not score as a democracy when we release [next year's] data," said Staffan Lindberg, head of the Varieties of Democracy project, run out of Sweden's University of Gothenburg. www.cbc.ca/news/world/t...
Good morning! MAGA/MAHA dude Jay Bhattacharya will forever be remembered as RFK Jr’s biggest champion (he campaigned for him/spoke at his rallies) & the NIH director who presided over the destruction of US health research—including childhood brain cancer research 🤬 www.nytimes.com/2025/08/28/w...
The diuretics aren’t working. Major water retention. They are practically rolling him out.
My favourite post of this cycle
Everyone in public health, healthcare and biomedical research has been screaming this for months. It’s time for RFK Jr to go. Everyone, please, please get on the phone to your members of Congress. Call them every day. This man is that dangerous.
"Her patient had signs of what could be a cancer or could be an unusual infection — diagnoses that would require completely different treatment. Ordinarily, she would confirm an infection after sending a sample to the CDC for testing ...the CDC no longer has the capacity to do that"
The title of @hiltzikm.bsky.social review of We Want Them Infected. Pandemic disinformation agents were elevated and look where we are now. www.latimes.com/business/sto...
I’m feeling sorry for the plants.
Dr. Daskalakis in a resignation letter you can read below: “The intentional eroding of trust in low-risk vaccines favoring natural infection and unproven remedies will bring us to a pre-vaccine era where only the strong will survive…Eugenics plays prominently in the rhetoric being generated…”
Enough is enough. The health of the country is in danger. Read our resignation letters: insidemedicine.substack.com/p/breaking-n...
It’s a field I got dragged into against my will because my friends were dying. My fear is that it’s going to take a similar disaster for people to wake up, or worse, there will be a slow grind of loss people become inured to, like mass shootings. We should fire off flares every good chance we get
I get that. I think it was probably their best opportunity to break through and try to draw attention to what is happening. And Demetre is really good at this. Maybe it will be the start of something. The public health field has been decimated, what’s left is hanging by a thread.
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."
It won’t fit in screen shots but linking here the full letter of resignation posted by one of the departing CDC officials, Dr. Demetre Daskalakis, who ran the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases and led efforts to fight COVID, monkeypox, and bird flu x.com/dr_demetre/s...
Debra & Demetre, etc., added to the critical mass. But I do hope it amounts to something. I’m not sure that it will get any attention in this news cycle. People won’t know what it means without someone explaining it to them. My only hope is that maybe they will be able now to speak more freely now.
we're about to see a lot of resignations if dr. houry is tendering hers. she's a cornerstone of the agency
She may have had some scruples left.
I suspect this is not good
This is your Democratic campaign message for 2026
They just died out as a tribe/branch on the line of people from out of northeast Asia who migrated down the Pacific coast. And they didn’t have alien X-files elongated skulls!!! And other people replaced them in that region of the world—which is the point of the article.
The whole elongated skulls thing—NOT in the journal articles
Misleading MSM news.This is just a line of Siberian hunter gatherers Y Q1 something, MtDNA D4 something, that died out, at least patrilineally/matrilineally. Their second cousins did fine. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
I have this fantasy that if he is sent to Uganda, that Zohran Mamdani will fly over, intercept him, and transport him to South Africa where he’ll receive a hero’s welcome and his family will be flown out and they will receive support to decide and act upon their next best steps.
The Federal Reserve Board of Governors has been around for 111 years. In that time it has had more than 100 members (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal...). No president has ever fired (or claimed to have fired) one before.
If Trump supporters actually found mortgage fraud to be disqualifying for high public office, they would not be Trump supporters.
The journal article that inspired the story. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
It's Minnesota State Fair time! It's time for Minnesotan folk art! Here, for example, is Saturn Devouring His Corn, in the seed art category!
So misleading. They make it sound like there’s no explanation for them other than maybe aliens (ok, I’m exaggerating) when in fact they likely descended from Siberian hunter-gatherers and didn’t pass on their Y- or mtDNA to present day people—that we know of. You have to read the journal article.
I’ve found Shanon Blake who I’m sure will be one of RFK’s next appointments. Who needs vaccines or pharmaceuticals when you can just channel the infections away?
I’m amazed some actual Ice agents haven’t been shot for that very reason. It is bound to happen.
I greatly enjoy these little jaunts through art history. I have a book on Goya’s darker subjects. I particularly love Colossus.
US RSV immunizations cut infant hospitalizations ~30–40% last season. Yet ACIP member Dr. Malone and Dr. Shir-Raz published a piece claiming CDC "manipulated data analyses" and hid deaths to get these therapies approved. Their claims fall apart under scrutiny. 🧵
sigh
And arbitrary and capricious. I have stories.
I missed this story Wednesday. Among those terminated? About 100 people who worked in violence prevention. Affected projects included work to prevent rape, child abuse and teen dating violence. The laid-off staff included people who have helped other countries to track violence against children.
"Here legally, engaged in a sanctioned process to determine their eligibility for asylum, they have committed no crime. They are arrested anyway, and the lives they’ve risked to come to the United States are thrown into chaos."
Well, if you were wondering exactly which parts of history the Trump regime is going to purge from the Smithsonian museums, they've helpfully listed it out. It's exactly as fascistic as you've feared. www.whitehouse.gov/articles/202...
James Dobson is dead, was a monster: defector.com/james-dobson...
“Are you sure this thing is loaded?” he said, looking down into the barrel…
Outsiders. I blew my setup.
Verily I have blogged it slate.com/news-and-pol...
Amen.
Such a shame he died today, the world would be better if that piece of shit had died decades ago.
Point taken
Oh, he can never be president!
Northern Alsace, c4100 BC: A local shop for local people. Outsider went in the pit. Piecemeal. Be careful, Florida (and ICE) are taking notes.
Yikes. Still, makes me think of Royston Valley for some reason.
I want it to follow me around and be protective but not servile.
“Politics” is a euphemism for democracy and freedom .
With glass everywhere and no enhanced security.
New updates to “HIV Prevention R&D at Risk”! This slide deck covers the latest cuts and policy attacks on HIV prevention research from January to mid-August 2025. Ck it to learn how countries are responding. avac.org/research-development-at-risk #SaveHIVFunding #ResearchMatters
Good read on activist doctor in South Africa
FFS
US Non-profits Vow to Fight on After Court Rules They Can’t Challenge #Trump Aid Freeze The Trump administration has closed #USAID, slashed the budget of #PEPFAR, and withdrawn from the @whowpro.bsky.social. ✍️ @kerrycullinan.bsky.social @publiccitizen.bsky.social @avac.org
It sounds conspiratorial to suggest that Vladimir Putin told Donald Trump behind closed doors to launch an assault on mail-in voting in elections administered by the states, and Trump immediately set about mobilizing federal power to do it… but that is literally Trump’s account of what happened.
Am I allowed to post this stock image? Anyway, RIP.
There is no pro-crime caucus. Trump has masked guards parading around some of the fanciest neighborhoods in dc. This has nothing to do with stopping crime.
Cannot stand what is happening, but the original sin was in 2014, when we didn’t respect our obligations. It’s not the first time we’ve broken our word either.
He certainly doesn’t give a damn but the aggression against Ukraine should have been responded to long before this. I hate to say it, but the failure was earlier. We made a commitment to protect them that we didn’t honor in 2014. We can’t be relied on for anything.
You give him too much credit. He’s just a bad apple.
Damn, look at those guns. My depression is pushing me in the opposite direction. But I guess I’m working as much as possible before all the public health work is strangled off.
This thread 👇
Bulwark/Jonathan Cohn The Most Damaging RFK Jr. Decision Yet He’s Making America Great Again—for lethal pathogens by @citizencohn.bsky.social bit.ly/4fFdHQp
Exactly. But even in Ohio, still don’t think National Guards should be used for policing. Where they might prove useful? Providing security at the CDC, which could have been a bloodbath, but nothing has been done or said about it.
Ohio, that’s what really creeps me out. There is no national disaster in DC. What about the CDC getting shot up. What added security are they getting?
Old pic of the day. Sedona always thought he should be in the driver’s seat.
I guess flesh tones set it off. But there are two. Did you continue on to T. That one’s really ridiculous.
Happy Saturday!
First glimpses of Padua from April this year
I’m really glad I followed that list of archeologists. It has leavened out my timeline of mostly doomscrolling
This point isnt being made enough. Last week’s attack on the #CDC could have been a slaughter. www.statnews.com/2025/08/15/c...
Old pic of the day: my baba Sedona was a snow loving creature.
MIT Technology Review: Why US federal health agencies are abandoning mRNA vaccines / 👉https://bit.ly/4oE6mom They’re turning their backs on a technology thought to have saved millions of lives—with the potential to save many more.
Africa’s #Mpox Response: Better Diagnostics One Year into Emergency “With limited resources, there is a critical need to be more efficient, working as one team, with one plan, budget, and monitoring framework" - Prof. Yap Boum #AfricaCDC ✍️ @kerrycullinan.bsky.social @whowpro.bsky.social
It is ok to try to counter Texas gerrymandering w/ your own state’s gerrymandering in 2026. The democratic states are more populous. Since that could stifle his agenda, he’d be forced to make a more obvious power grab at a time things won’t be going well for people. Last chance for people to rise up
Not even Grey Poupon?
Good thing Americans only eat highly processed petroleum products.
“What you should not do is cut the trees down proactively, which is what people did in the face of the chestnut blight in the first half of the 20th Century. If there was resistance within the population, it’s gone—you don’t know. Any potential for identifying the genetics of resistance are erased”
I may retreat into it.
I would presume Mars gnomes are skittish, and quickly conceal any signs of habitation when these alien mechanical wagons comes along. But Uncle Eagleburb was quite toasted on fermented Echus Chasma sundew berry juice, and lost his hat in all the kerfuffle as his tribe took cover underground.
Maybe one old and one recent pic each day. Oregon District , Dayton, Ohio.
Ah, Ghost. I just bing searched it.
Thanks so much. I don’t get your other references to V and such (I’m geriatric: Boomer/cusp X) but I’m sure they’re apt.
I love this
I just realised my all-time favourite comic strip is also my headcanon of V trying to be best bros with Copia (V would ask "Can you put more vampires in your songs?" probably, but would definitely also draw the Ghost hot air balloon from RHRN with "BROS" written on the side) #thebandghost
And look around, you’ll see lots of your friends…
This is great Gregg.
Each day, or there abouts
To help lighten my timeline I’m going to try to post a picture each. This one goes back over a decade, to the beginning of photos on this phone. Somewhere in Connecticut.
This was labeled as adult content. Lol.
This is really reporting 'inside' the response to the devastating Mpox outbreak in Sierra Leone. Critical reading, as we are facing a future in which we will increasingly be confronted with emerging diseases, even preventable ones. www.telegraph.co.uk/global-healt...
Definitely, though this does reframe that debate from a few years back where one freelance science writer who shall not be named said that it was primarily being spread by hard circuit boy sex that he wasn’t getting & that others, particularly trans, didn’t need vaccination.
Mars gnomes. Obviously. apple.news/ADusHWl2eQQe...
Researchers discover evidence for West African ancestry in Anglo Saxon England, revealing the diverse, cosmopolitan nature of early medieval Britain 🏺 #Archaeology Read the original research articles in Antiquity 🆓 doi.org/10.15184/aqy... doi.org/10.15184/aqy...
I came across this story earlier and thought, oh how interesting. I’d love to know their stories. I’d love to know their grandparents stories. Timeline cleanse And then I see some racial purity idiots are trying to say it’s all DEI. Sheesh.
#TeamBirds
