This is a problem. NPR reported yesterday that the Louisiana Department of Health has told staff "advertising or otherwise promoting" influenza, mpox, and COVID vaccines is no longer allowed. Promoting and increasing access to vaccinations is one of the central functions of health departments across the country. According
immunology
The 'Make America Healthy Again' movement is tapping into the commonly held belief that children in our modern era are less healthy than they used to be. Fueling this sentiment is the 'Hygiene Hypothesis' – an idea postulated in the 1980's that modern, overly sterile
When I started this newsletter over four years ago as a PhD student, I remember naively thinking "the pandemic is only going to last a few months... I'll do this blog for a little while, but there probably won't be much to write about after
On Tuesday, H5N1, the influenza virus that causes bird flu, made headlines – fragments of the virus were detected in the commercial milk supply in the United States. Here’s a quick update on what’s going on and how we got here. Bird flu is spreading in mammals, which is
CDC.gov is not the answer to all vaccine questions.
Excited to share my new op-ed in MedPage Today, addressing the tragic NIH decision to cancel investment into improving health communication. If there was one bipartisan sentiment that came out of the pandemic, it was this: the communication was terrible. We have a chance to fix it. A new initiative
You may have heard rumblings in the news, but COVID wastewater levels are starting to pick back up again. COVID tests aren’t the greatest metric (especially now), and more and more we’re relying on levels of COVID circulating in wastewater to track how it’s spreading in the
Live debate rewards charm, not data.
You may recall Florida’s vaccine analysis released last October 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 This week, the Tampa Bay Times shared earlier, unpublished drafts of that analysis.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… The Tampa Bay
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. With the confusion and distrust circulating around science and
You may have heard the shocking headline this week that 250,000 people die every year in the US due to misdiagnosis in the ER. You may be even more shocked to know that this statistic is extrapolated from the death of… just one man. In a Canadian ER. Over
Yesterday, the Florida State Surgeon General issued new guidance around the COVID vaccines based on an analysis they performed. They say the results show “an increased risk of cardiac-related death among men 18-39” for the mRNA vaccines, and recommend this group not receive these vaccines. This is a bold recommendation.