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.

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.

A quick summer update — COVID levels are starting trend back up again, and there’s a new variant to watch.

Over the weekend, a vaccine brawl took place. Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.—presidential candidate and longtime spreader of old, tired vaccine rumors— had a conversation with Joe Rogan on his podcast. The conversation bled onto social media in which Rogan ultimately challenged Dr. Peter Hotez—a Nobel Prize-nominated vaccine scientist—to 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…

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 This week, the Tampa Bay Times shared earlier, unpublished drafts of that analysis.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…

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.

This week a shocking headline was published: ER misdiagnoses kill up to 250,000 per year!

Turns out this statistic is based on the death of just one man. In Canada. Over a decade ago…

Florida just announced the results of an analysis that they performed, claiming 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.

Is this justified? Let’s look at the data…

Graphs are central to scientific communication, and when used appropriately are amazing tools that help people understand complex data. But with a few small changes, graphs can also be used to mislead and distort what’s going on. Recently I came across a graph (trying to minimize the effectiveness of COVID vaccines in kids) that was so bad it deserves its own entire post. Check out a break down of the chart crimes here.

Recently, BA.5 has been all over the news, raising alarming questions about immune evasion, reinfections, and the future of the pandemic. What makes BA.5 different from previous COVID viruses? In our latest post, we address what makes BA.5 special, along with what these differences mean for vaccine efficacy and the chances of reinfection.

Why do new variants keep emerging, and do they render vaccines useless? This post tackles the genetics of where variants come from and how changes to the spike protein impact vaccine effectiveness.

COVID is not just a respiratory disease; it attacks multiple systems, including the brain. More and more COVID-induced strokes are being reported, as are cases of long COVID, which involve brain fog and other neurological symptoms that can persist for years after infection. So how can COVID affect the brain? This post explores the neurological symptoms of COVID and signs of brain damage after infection, as well as possible explanations for how COVID could cause these problems.

In November 2020, we got the news: the results from the first COVID vaccine phase 3 trial were released, and they were better than even the most optimistic expectations: 95% efficacy! This was far better than we had dared to dream. But, in the midst of all the celebrating and enthusiasm, groundwork was laid for a communication blunder that later left many feeling confused and betrayed. Check out part 2 of the series covering the story of the COVID vaccines (and the communication around them.)

Rumors about COVID vaccination and alleged impacts on fertility have been circulating since before the vaccines were even available. Because the initial vaccine trials did not study pregnant women specifically, when the vaccines were first authorized, we didn’t have a complete picture about the risks and benefits of COVID vaccination for pregnant women. Now over a year later, we do. In this post, Dr. Sana Zekri dives into the latest data on COVID vaccination during pregnancy.

How well do the COVID vaccines work? This question is not as simple to answer as it may seem. The communication during the pandemic has been in many ways very confusing, and vaccine efficacy is no exception. In this series of post, I’m going to tell you the story of the COVID vaccines and dissect where the communication broke down. And along the way, we’ll answer the question: just how well do the vaccines work?

Even before COVID vaccines became available to the public, rumors were circulating about hypothetical impacts on fertility. This is the first in a series of articles by my friend Dr. Sana Zekri, MD, a board-certified physician in Family Medicine with Obstetrics, tackling these rumors and discussing the risks and benefits of vaccination for those who are trying to become pregnant as well as those who are pregnant or breastfeeding.

While COVID cases are thankfully falling in the US, omicron, despite being “milder,” continues to kill more people per day in the US than the worst day of the delta surge. This post explains why, and dives into the confusion over the word “mild.”

Arguments about vaccines are often rife with logical fallacies. Many logical fallacies, at their root, are oversimplifications. They are appealing because they make something complex, like vaccine safety or the efficacy of vaccines, into something very simplistic that is easy to understand. However, that oversimplification often leaves out important details, which can lead to inaccurate conclusions. Here are 10 logical fallacies commonly used in vaccine arguments, with explanations of why they don’t hold up.

One of the latest vaccine rumors centers around luciferase, a (perhaps) unfortunately named protein that is as harmless as a firefly. This post tackles where this rumor came from, tells how luciferase got its name, and explains how you can be sure that the vaccines aren’t using bioluminescence to track people.

A paper published in a legitimate scientific journal is making the rounds, claiming that there is no association between vaccination rates and increases in COVID cases. Is this true? This post tackles the claims made in the paper, digging into the data and providing a little analysis of my own.

The vaccine mandates have led some to question vaccine effectiveness. If the vaccines really work, they argue, then why do the vaccinated care if others choose not to get the vaccine? This post tackles what it means to say a vaccine “works,” and explains how my neighbor’s vaccination status impacts me.

Just how contagious is delta? These visualizations show how much faster the virus can spread.

Ivermectin has been promoted as a miracle cure for COVID-19. One of the main studies used to support this claim has signs suggestive of scientific fraud.

Are thousands of people dying from COVID vaccines? These rumors have been circulating for a while and are based on a misunderstanding of causation, correlation, and the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS). Here’s a quick explanation of what VAERS is and isn’t, and why the rumors that the vaccines are killing thousands isn’t true.

What exactly is an MD-PhD program, and why am I still a student? This post explains what MD-PhD training is, and how to know if it might be a good career path for you.