"That’s why herd immunity is so important. If there hadn’t been an outbreak when Renae was a baby, I don’t think she would have contracted it. She was eligible for the vaccine just seven months later, and I gave it to her, but it was too late."
ADAI webinar: Results from the 2025 Syringe Services Program Health Survey. April 29, 2026, 1-2pm PT. Caleb Banta-Green and Alison Newman (UW ADAI) and Katie Strozyk (Thurston County Public health & social services department)
In 2025, we surveyed 1,694 ppl who visited WA syringe services programs to get safer drug use supplies and other services. They shared info about their substance use, health behaviors, & treatment needs.
Join us on April 29 to find out what we learned! Register: washington.zoom.us/webinar/regi...
This Is Just To Say
I have turned off
the AI features
that were in
the update
and which
you were probably
hoping
to monetize
Fuck you
they were stupid
so unnecessary
and so annoying
The task of de-Trumpification of science and public health will take a generation and a "Marshall Plan" to rebuild. Without a bold, expansive vision to guide us, there is no coming back. Small-bore, poll-tested versions of the future will not help us. www.thenation.com/article/soci...
Gov. Bill Lee signed a resolution defining family as a man, a woman, and their children, a move critics say targets LGBTQ+ households.
I am a gay dad and this is FUCKED UP
CNN @CNN • 3h President Donald Trump will participate in a public Bible reading this week as the administration continues to integrate religion, particularly Christianity, into official business. cnn.it/4vLlaFI TRUMP TO READ BIBLE VERSE FROM OVAL OFFICE AFTER FEUD WITH POPE AND DELETED AI IMAGE
Dear CNN, we do separate religion from our government. And as a major outlet, your job is to remind everyone exactly on that.
It’s hard to express how important Iris was to ACT UP’s scientific development. She was the catalyst who started it all. Iris Long, Scientific Mentor to AIDS Activists, Dies at 92 www.nytimes.com/2026/04/17/h...
What Will Bring the Next Generation of Global Health Students Hope?
First essay @sciencepolitics.bsky.social is about how concerned students are about the state of the world, and what we can do, to keep their (& our) hopes alive
🙏 @emendenhall.bsky.social
sciencepolitics.org/2026/04/17/w...
A reminder: many health care providers (like my psych clinic) give out Narcan *for free,* no questions. I got one for my car & a spare.
You don’t need to be trained on Narcan to administer it (you can watch a YouTube video!), worst case is that you never use it. Or rather, that’s the best case.
My latest op-ed in @statnews.com is out today. I wrote it in response to the LCME removing explicit language requiring medical schools to teach about structural barriers that shape patients’ health. This isn’t ideology. It’s clinically competent care.
www.statnews.com/2026/04/15/l...
This is why Russ Vought defunded USAID, attacked NEA and NIH, caused CPB to commit suicide, is defund the Dep’t of Eduction, is trying to kill the CFPB, has attacked NIH and NSF, tried to kill the IMLS, closed the Kennedy Center and just yesterday took over the Presidio to turn it back to a prison.
Kennedy canceled $500 million in mRNA research and announced no new mRNA projects will ever be initiated—killing the technology that produced the fastest vaccine rollout in human history.
The whole MAHA ethos -- the attitude that the key to health is better individual choices -- runs counter to any public health perspective that centers broad social collective approaches, which includes vaccines and structural changes. They're just incompatible mindsets.
CDC has published a new charter for the federal vaccine advisory committee, detailing changes that would allow Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to reclaim his changes to national vaccine policy, skirting a federal ruling last month blocking them.
Gift link: www.nytimes.com/2026/04/09/h...
When we take back power, I do not want unity or healing, I want revenge.
I also don't want a lecture on "but that's just like Trump, he wanted revenge." He was wrong, we are right. It's different. Get a moral compass.
Revenge or sit down. Call it "justice" if you must, it's that too.
CDC delays publishing report showing covid vaccine benefits The acting CDC director cited concerns with the methodology, but the design has long been used to test vaccine effectiveness.
"The acting director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has delayed publication of a CDC report showing the covid-19 vaccine cut the likelihood of emergency department visits and hospitalizations for healthy adults last winter by about half." Gift link: wapo.st/4ccudpF
2) Being apolitical IS political. Staying out of politics doesn’t keep you “above the fray” but instead endorses the status quo. (Which right now, is bad for both science and democracy.)
MAHA = MAGA, & opposition towards vaccination, fluoride, & abortion rights is at the core
I always roll my eyes when I hear someone say "MAHA just wants us to eat healthier & to get rid of food dyes!" as this is a preposterous, gaslighting statement ("how dare you accuse MAHA of being anti-vaxx!")
And there is a modest strike fund (quite close to its goal!) to support striking @propublicaguild.org workers. If you have the capacity to donate www.gofundme.com/f/support-pr... (h/t @ethanmarcotte.com)
So much same! Taught lecture on innate immunity, had office hourse helping student choose Masters program, attend a (fantastic) faculty candidate research talk.
It all feels ridiculously optimistic and surreal.
Just turn around and walk into the sea vibes are strong today
In our latest, Dean Spade @deanspade.bsky.social returns to discuss the necessity and radical possibility of mutual aid in this moment and the new second edition of Dean’s 2020 book, Mutual Aid: Building Solidarity During This Crisis (and the Next)
www.patreon.com/posts/154941...
The reporting on OpenAI and Sam Altman I've been working on for the past year and a half, for @newyorker.com, with Andrew Marantz: www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...
Slaughtering our golden goose: massive budget cuts for US science proposed again by Trump administration www.nature.com/articles/d41...
..."The notions that difference is a threat, that there exists a golden past that can be returned to, that capitalism and inequality are eternal, all depend on lies."
Writing about sociology in tonight's newsletter and needed this 🔥
www.insidehighered.com/opinion/view...
Our team at Duke has spent almost a decade studying the transition of middle income countries (MICs) out of aid
Transition is of course the goal for all MICs—but we’ve studied what happens when aid donors cut aid suddenly without proper planning
SUDDEN cuts cause disease resurgence & mass death 👇
this regime would rather break the NSF than share it
one of the things I treasure most about writing is it is one of the vanishingly few remaining pursuits that involves sitting quietly with your own thoughts—something the entire tech industry has mobilized to ensure we never do again
