Latest Video
Latest Blog Posts

Threads, please don’t censor COVID
This week, Threads finally launched its long-awaited search function. You can finally search the platform for your favorite topic… unless that topic is COVID or vaccines.

Dear NIH, please fund health communication research
The NIH was going to invest $150 million into improving health communication to the public — a desperately needed investment after the communication failures of the pandemic. Now, likely due to political pressure, that funding has been cancelled.

What’s going on with COVID right now?
A quick summer update — COVID levels are starting trend back up again, and there’s a new variant to watch.

When (and how) do we debate vaccine science?
Over the weekend, a vaccine brawl took place. Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.โpresidential candidate and longtime spreader of old, tired vaccine rumorsโ had a conversation with Joe Rogan on his podcast. The conversation bled onto social media in which Rogan ultimately challenged Dr. Peter Hotezโa Nobel Prize-nominated vaccine scientistโto debate RFK Jr. about vaccine rumors that have already been addressed dozens of times. Dr. Hotez declined. Here’s why that was the right call…

Previous drafts of Florida’s vaccine analysis tell a very different story
You may recall Florida’s vaccine analysis which claimed that mRNA vaccines are associated with increased risk of cardiac death in young men. This week, the Tampa Bay Times shared earlier, unpublished drafts of that analysis. Those earlier drafts tell a dramatically different story…

Who funds you? Explaining research funding.
If I had a nickel for every time someone has accusingly asked me “who funds you??”, I wouldn’t have enough money to buy a box of pipette tips, because research is expensive and requires funding to do much of anything.
Subscribe
By entering your email, you agree to our Privacy Policy.
Support
Want to support this site? Click the ‘Buy Me a Coffee‘ link in the corner, or find more ways to support here.
About

Kristen Panthagani, MD, PhD is a physician-scientist who likes to help people understand science.ย She saw a lot of people getting unnecessarily confused by inaccurate claims flying around, and started this blog to help clarify some of those things.
Data Visualizations
People are looking at the percent of vaccinated hospitalizations and getting alarmed. But by itself, this number can't tell you much about how the vaccines are working, as it's highly dependent on the rate of vaccination in a community. Here's some maths to show what I mean๐๐ฝ pic.twitter.com/MmfiL7H1lw
— Kristen Panthagani, PhD (@kmpanthagani) July 20, 2021
Reviews
Featured In

A shocking headline recently claimed that every year 250,000 people in the U.S. die after misdiagnosis in the emergency room. Even more shocking, the statistic was extrapolated from the death of one man, writes @kmpanthaganihttps://t.co/MDt0lVT8ms
— Wall Street Journal Opinion (@WSJopinion) December 30, 2022
Though Covid vaccines protect against serious illness, they are not perfect shields against the virus, particularly not the Delta variant. Experts say โbreakthroughโ infections are still relatively uncommon.
— The New York Times (@nytimes) July 23, 2021
Hereโs why they occur. https://t.co/rEDD2DMj0U
In a recent #OpEd, @kmpanthagani of @YaleMed discusses funding health communication research and empowering the public to make informed decisions. #MedTwitter https://t.co/HkKXSoH3A9
— MedPage Today (@medpagetoday) September 1, 2023
Breakthrough cases arenโt the cause of the US Covid-19 surge https://t.co/j20tM5QBIN
— Vox (@voxdotcom) August 3, 2021
Florida Surgeon General Ladapo made headlines for announcing that men ages 18 to 39 should not get the COVID-19 vaccine. He said thereโs an 84% increase in cardiac-related deaths for that group, but doctors told us the underlying analysis is flawed. https://t.co/C9P6wey6bS
— PolitiFact (@PolitiFact) October 14, 2022
The @nytimes collected breakthrough data from 40 states. At least until recently, severe COVID infections among fully vaccinated people have been relatively rare.
— Danielle Ivory (@danielle_ivory) August 10, 2021
We also learned that a rising share of breakthrough infections is not necessarily scary.https://t.co/q5zFMoFHxo