Krys Johnson-O'Leary, MPH, PhD

Just catching up on this after being in class all day. It would be great to have a functioning federal emergency management agency with competent leadership in times like this…

Live updates: 100,000 evacuated in historic Skagit Valley flood in Washington state "Catastrophic" conditions continue to threaten Western Washington as an atmospheric river sweeps through the Pacific Northwest. 100,000 people have been placed under evacuation orders from their homes...

You would think that 100k people under evacuation orders from flooding would feature more prominently in national news? www.kuow.org/stories/go-n...

I’m not debating anything with antivaxxers. Predecessors in my field eradicated smallpox in the Americas. Eradicated wild polio during my mother’s childhood. Eliminated measles when I was in elementary school.

COVID denial killed my 31 y/o science-denying brother.

Goodluck and God speed.

Yep.

KFF Health Tracking Poll: Health Care Costs in the Current Moment of Economic Anxiety | KFF As economic anxiety rises, KFF's Health Tracking Poll finds that younger adult, LGBT adults, Hispanic adults, and adults with modest incomes are among groups most likely to report difficulty earning a...

KFF Health Tracking Poll: Health Care Costs in the Current Moment of Economic Anxiety www.kff.org/public-opini...

“We haven’t built enough housing in the Country for a long time.”
- Fed Chair Powell

I hear
there’s a lot of flu
out there.

I hear
there’s a lot of Covid
out there.

I hear
there’s a lot of measles
out there.

I hear
there’s a lot of RSV
out there.

I hear
there’s a lot of “something”
out there.

So here
there’s a lot to be said
for not going out.

I know
most people do not care
about viral threats
to humans or animals,
but in Greece a virus has killed
nearly 500,000
sheep and goats
imperiling the supply
of feta cheese,
so even if people do not care
about humans or animals
perhaps they’ll care
about viral threats to cheese.

In Ireland we probably averted about 500 newborn RSV hospitalizations once nirsevimab was introduced last year (~75% risk reduction). Uptake was > 80%, and that's what's threatened by these cynical safety concerns from the antivaxxers in the US government.

www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1...

Neither breastmilk nor formula can protect babies from hepatitis B.
But vaccines can.

Having worked in prevention my entire career—cancer, then vaccines, and then COVID19, I can say that while many people understand that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, for others, if it doesn’t happen immediately they aren’t able to follow cause and effect.

Vaccination coverage doesn’t collapse overnight.

Yes, we are definitely already seeing outbreaks, and yes we are already seeing substantial declines in vaccine coverage.

But the true horror awaits a few years from now, barring another pandemic of a novel pathogen.

One of the most disturbing things about the U.S. government getting themselves into the anti-vaccine game is that it is a time-release poison pill.

It will take a few years before the worst of the harm is visible to enough people that they will truly understand what has been done to them.

Every day is a good day to ask.

Incredible thread. I wanted to breastfeed so badly but my body just couldn't produce enough. Still, I pumped for EIGHT MONTHS to give my kids whatever I could. With kid #1, the 2022 shortage meant supplementing with whatever formula I could find to Keep. My. Kid. Fed.

Infant Formula Company Tied to Botulism Outbreak Had Known Problems

And we just had a botulism outbreak, where there were a series of safety violations reported by @by-cjewett.bsky.social & Julie Creswell www.nytimes.com/2025/11/13/h...

Unsanitary Practices Persist at Baby Formula Factory Whose Shutdown Led to Mass Shortages, Workers Say “Persistent leaks” and “unaddressed contamination issues” are among the problems workers say they witnessed at one of the nation’s largest baby formula plants. “I can’t have this on my conscience,” on...

@propublica.org earlier this year raised concerns about the very same plant that was at the heart of the 2022 formula crisis www.propublica.org/article/baby...

In fact, a key concern is basic safety issues & how to hold companies accountable for their marketing & lobbying practices. There are a lot of conflicts of interest in formula regulation @by-cjewett.bsky.social showed: www.nytimes.com/2025/03/04/h...

To date, the administration has had a complex relationship with infant feeding, with heavy involvement from the infant formula industry. There is no danger of formula going away. We would benefit from evidence-based, non-stigmatizing discussions about infant feeding where all families are valued.

To Improve Breastfeeding Rates in U.S., Report Recommends Creating National Strategy, Enacting Paid Federal Family and Medical Leave

this begins with addressing the health system, workplace policies, and regulations so that everyone can receive evidence-based information without commercial influence. We wrote about what needs to happen in our recent NASEM report on breastfeeding: www.nationalacademies.org/news/to-impr...

👋 Breastfeeding & infant feeding expert here! All babies need safe, accessible nutrition. Most people already want to breastfeed and 84% start out doing so but can’t realize their goals. What we need are *policies* that make it possible to breastfeed for all who desire to do so and…

Of babies infected w/Hepatitis B, 90% develop chronic infection.

Of those, 1 in 4 will DIE.

They lose the ability to get rid of toxins & make important proteins. Their skin yellows, their abdomen swells, they’re uncomfortable. A fate no one deserves.

One we can avoid w/ vaccination.

.

My teen, who had dreamt of being an astrophysicist, just told me he wants to go to law school because, “Science isn’t going to be a priority in the US in the future…I don’t want a job where I’ll be constantly worried my funding will be taken away.”

Gutting. How many future scientists have we lost?

Bad framing: ACIP voted to scrap the universal hepatitis B vaccine recommendation for newborns.

Accurate framing: Anti-vax conspiracy theorists appointed to ACIP by Robert Kennedy Jr., who made a fortune as an anti-vax profiteer, voted to expose babies to a preventable, incurable, deadly illness.

My aunt, the doctor,
told me a new joke.
She asked:

Why are we hearing
about hospital admissions
rising in the UK and Canada
but not in the US?

I said I did not know.
And so she answered:

Because in the US
no one can afford
to go to a hospital.

And then neither of us laughed.

Why do babies need the hepatitis B vaccine if they aren’t high-risk?

Short answer: Because hepatitis B is a tricky virus.

Longer answer: Continue reading ⬇️

🧵1/9 @kkjetelina.bsky.social @meganranney.bsky.social @jasonlschwartz.bsky.social @enirenberg.bsky.social

What did minimum wage get you each decade? In 2025, it buys you nothing but exhaustion.

There’s not a single place in America where a full-time minimum-wage worker can afford even a modest 2-bedroom. Not one. That’s the economy we’re living in. #TrumpAffordabilityCrisis

Autism is not a mental health condition in and of itself and ironically if we didn't have to fight to survive in a predominantly neurotypical world, most of us would not suffer with poor mental health at all!

My takeaway from ACIP so far: they have not presented any evidence of harm from the hepatitis B vaccine, yet there are immense benefits.

Mastitis would have killed me thrice. I would be dead, dead. But SCIENCE!