SSPE has to be one of the cruelest conditions in existence.

Shaming only causes them to double down. You could try to share your concerns and let them know about the story if you're close to them and think they might listen.

Yes. Crying, that poor family.

How are health insurance companies responding to the ever-increasing number of unvaccinated children? At some point in the near future the number of kids (& adults!) hospitalized due to contracting measles (or other preventable diseases) is going to reach critical mass.
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SSPE has to be one of the cruelest conditions in existence.

My first session on the last day of #ESCMIDGlobal2026 is Bird flu is no longer just for birds: from strategic planning to public health readiness. The first speaker is Ben Cowling with What drives pandemic risk? Virus, population and policy influencing influenza H1N1 spread

Everyone needs to read Matthew's latest post, because this is what's in store for all of us at some point--being harmed by HCWs whose inadequate training & supervision are policy choices--unless we mobilize to reverse MAHA's cuts to Medicaid & Medicare

I did a deep dive on tetanus when I was in grad school, and holy hell, get vaccinated. Tetanus is terrifying. The thought of kids going through that agony is truly nightmarish.

Figure showing number of competitive grants mentioning women from 2015-2025. The number was rising until recently, with a precipitous drop in the last year.

At the end of 2024, the National Academies put out a report concluding the NIH has woefully underfunded women’s health research, and they suggested $15 B should be invested over the next 5 years.

Here’s what’s happened instead. Hard to study women’s health if you can’t say “women.”

wapo.st/4euUt1c

I've seen them advertised for "COVID vaccine detox". 🙃

That's awful. :(

They might have, as all received it as part of the treatment once they were hospitalized, but that was after symptoms developed. "All patients were hospitalized (mean duration =25 days; range =8–45 days), and all received TIG for treatment and an initial TTCV dose for prevention of future disease."

Notes from the Field: Tetanus in an Unvaccinated Child — Oregon, ... In 2017, a boy aged 6 years who had received no immunizations sustained a forehead laceration while playing outdoors on a farm; the wound was cleaned and sutured at home. Six days later, he had ...

Unsurprising if they're antivax they'd avoid other physician visits. Also tracks with Oregon case: "In 2017, a boy aged 6 years who had received no immunizations sustained a forehead laceration while playing outdoors on a farm; the wound was cleaned and sutured at home."

Somehow, O'Reilly returned.

my father, an old school doc who worked in the public health system in India, used to describe tetanus (which he saw in unvaccinated, often poor people in India without access to post exposure vaccines) as scary, and agonizing.

Report details tetanus in 4 unvaccinated US kids, including refusal of post-exposure prevention

Remember the unvaccinated boy who contracted tetanus in 2017, hospitalized for months at a cost of almost $1M? The boy who was a patient of (former) antivax doctor Paul Thomas?

He's not the only recent case. 4 kids, unvax'd, none received immunoglobulin when symptoms developed. Those poor kids.

Still susceptible. Vaccination is the only real protection.

I can't even imagine it. Knowing you had 2 tries to prevent it (vaccinating then TIG) and you failed both times. And tetanus is painful suffering--2 of the kids had to do rehabilitation after (I suppose physical therapy etc). All so easily preventable.

Report details tetanus in 4 unvaccinated US kids, including refusal of post-exposure prevention

Remember the unvaccinated boy who contracted tetanus in 2017, hospitalized for months at a cost of almost $1M? The boy who was a patient of (former) antivax doctor Paul Thomas?

He's not the only recent case. 4 kids, unvax'd, none received immunoglobulin when symptoms developed. Those poor kids.

Well now I am intrigued.

Here’s the director of the NIH explicitly espousing populism over expertise as the means of determining priorities for federally science funding by leaning into the stupidest possible examples: ivermectin as cancer therapy .

Kennedy's career pre-antivax advocacy was as an environmental attorney, focusing on mercury (his gateway to vaccines). Now he's abandoned that, allowing *actually harmful* mercury to pollute low- income areas, & using fake mercury fears to deny vaccines globally. Full 🧵👇

MIKE CHEN: THE PHOTONIC EFFECT at Books Inc. Palo Alto Join bestselling author Mike Chen at Books Inc. Palo Alto for a celebration of his new thrilling space adventure, The Photonic Effect!

To celebrate, join @annaleen.bsky.social and I at @booksinc.bsky.social Palo Alto. We'll talk fake space science, interspecies longing, Star Trek/Mass Effect influences, and why indie/punk rock will endure for 500 years. RSVP and preorder signed books here! www.eventbrite.com/e/mike-chen-...

Publishers Weekly: Chen (A Quantum Love Story) shows off his worldbuilding chops in this ingenious 24th-century space opera. Humanity is now in contact with multiple intelligent extraterrestrial life-forms, including the Lumersians, whose bodies are comprised of “planes of pink light” and who have shared their knowledge of photonic energy to help humans harness that volatile power source. Starship Horizon captain Demora Kim was among the first to encounter the Lumersians, and developed a close relationship with one photonic being, whom she nicknamed Chuck and considers a hero. The novel opens with Kim’s exit interview, a part of her forced retirement from the Galactic Cluster Fleet as a result of a decision to disobey orders. The plot then flashes back to explain what happened before the “incident at Base Theta Seven,” including Kim’s struggles to make a photonic engine functional at the request of her superiors, who hope to use it as a weapon in an ongoing war. Chen takes impressive care presenting nonhuman characters, showcasing their often baffled perspectives on humanity. These skillful character portraits make it easy to get sucked into their far-future plight. Readers are sure to be hooked.

Chen (A Quantum Love Story) writes a classic space opera with an original cast of characters who have been to hell and back together—or more specifically, have spent 10 years in a gravity well created by photonic beings called Lumersians, who exist just outside the third dimension and don’t understand the consequences of their experiment. That is, until one of them falls in love with Demi, the captain of the Horizon. Now returned to cluster space, the crew must grapple with a galactic civil war, what it means to join one side or another, and the ethics of pushing today’s problems onto tomorrow’s generation. The story leaves readers questioning who is right, who is wrong, and what we owe one another across species and dimensions, as the crew races back to the gravity well that already consumed so much of their lives to save the Lumersians—and themselves.VERDICT A superb sci-fi story about 21st-century issues set in a futuristic space environment, featuring flawed but lovable characters doing their best with whatever challenges the galaxy presents. Ideal for fans of Claudia Gray and Timothy Zahn.

Did you know that THE PHOTONIC EFFECT launches on Tuesday with TWO starred reviews?

"Chen shows off his worldbuilding chops in this ingenious 24th-century space opera." Publishers Weekly

"A superb sci-fi story about 21st-century issues set in a futuristic space environment" Library Journal

Where U.S. science has been hit hardest after Trump’s first year The Trump administration has slashed the number of grants from the National Institutes of Health, with far fewer focused on women, cancer and mental health.

Those of us doing research related to women’s health have been hit particularly hard by the govt’s sabotage of the NIH. I spoke to WaPo for this piece, as painful as it was to discuss the reality my lab is facing. www.washingtonpost.com/science/2026...

I'm not joking when I say mRNA technology is more important than "AI" and it's a tragedy we're throwing billions into one while our government is aggressively defunding the other.

RFK Jr came to Sacramento twice to debate me and oppose my school vaccination legislation. He even incited his extremist followers to physically assault me, but I did not back down. Beat RFK Jr both times.
Running for Congress to beat him again in Washington. #DrPanForCongress #CA06 #publichealth

Kennedy's career pre-antivax advocacy was as an environmental attorney, focusing on mercury (his gateway to vaccines). Now he's abandoned that, allowing *actually harmful* mercury to pollute low- income areas, & using fake mercury fears to deny vaccines globally. Full 🧵👇

We had one like that in Iowa. We called him Stumpy. He was around for quite some time.

Federal judge unloads on ‘unserious’ RFK Jr., says anti-trans policy showed his ‘cruelty’ Judge Mustafa T. Kasubhai vacated the “Kennedy Declaration,” finding it unlawfully attempted to override medical standards and restrict care for transgender youth.

Breaking: HHS’s ban on gender-affirming care is struck down. Rarely have I read a ruling this sharply worded.

“This case is one of a long list of examples of how a leader’s wanton disregard for the rule of law causes very real harm to very real people.”

www.advocate.com/politics/nat...