Molly Nowels

Anti-vaxxers have long weaponized VAERS, which, as this article notes, is just a repository of *unverified* reports. An adverse reaction found in VAERS is not necessarily indicative of anything, but anti-vaxxers prey on low health and information literacy to sow doubt.

RFK Jr. weighs adding critics of coronavirus shots to key vaccine panel Two urged removal of mRNA coronavirus vaccines. One said physicians “blindly believed” in them. Another said covid isn’t scary, noting Jesus touched lepers.

this needs to be a bigger story —

RFK is rushing to appoint SEVEN more anti-vaccine extremists to his phony vaccine panel so it’s packed with quacks.

my read? he’s panicking and accelerating his plans to take away all of our vaccines.

free to read: wapo.st/3JStzDh

We found that staff do believe pall care is important but have varied knowledge, engagement, and clinical/training needs around it. Pain management, psych symptom management, and caregiver support were identified as top priority areas for pall care to support in nursing homes.

Training and Practice Gaps in Nursing Home Palliative Care: A Cross‐Sectional Study Background Palliative care needs are prevalent among nursing home (NH) residents. However, access to and integration of palliative care services remain limited. NHs often rely on a workforce with va...

More work with @pallipsych.bsky.social is out today! We asked nursing home staff about their perceptions of palliative care, their engagement with advance cafe planning and which components of pall care are most valuable to them. doi.org/10.1111/jgs....

RFK Jr. just implied that antidepressants cause suicide.

This is false.

If you are a woman who needs money for school, apply through my nonprofit The Thurman Perry Foundation on 11/15 at ThurmanPerryFoundation.org

We are awarding $50,000 ($10,000 each) to women nationwide

This should be the lead story in all major national news outlets. Public health people prefer to stay out of the limelight unless there is no other choice. I can’t overstate how bad things have to be for 9 former CDC directors to band together and pen an op-ed in the NYT warning the entire country.

State steps in to ensure access to COVID-19 vaccine Public health order counters potential limitations set by the USFDA

New Mexico is overriding the federal government on the topic of COVID19 vaccines to ensure their residents can access them.

States hold a tremendous amount of public health power. They should use it.

For 12 months, America had a limited proof of concept for universal healthcare, and it was so uniformly successful we had no choice but to obliterate our society

Line plot showing the historical share of those who approve of unions in a Gallup poll from January 1936 to August 2025

Latest Gallup poll data reveal, once again, that the main obstacles to unions in the the US are broken labor laws and employer aggression

Two-thirds of the US public approves of labor unions, but unions only represent about 11 percent of the workforce

Major update: As of this morning, CVS says it's decided it can offer the vax in 13 of the 16 states IF you get a prescription. Still a big new barrier for many people, but a change from its "no vaccines at all in these states" position yesterday.

The three remaining absolute-nos are MA, NV and NM.

Major thanks to @pallipsych.bsky.social and colleagues for helping this one across the finish line!

We found that most PACE clinicians want palliative care access for their patients, and that patients have high unmet needs in multiple domains of palliative care, including advance care planning, family/caregiver support, and psychiatric symptom management.

Staff-Identified Palliative Care Needs Among Programs of All-Inclusive Care for the Elderly (PACE): A Survey Study The Program of All-Inclusive Care for the Elderly (PACE) program provides nursing home–level care to older adults living in the community. We sought to characterize provider perceptions of PACE patien...

My latest paper is out!! In Programs of All-Inclusive Care for the Elderly (PACE), we investigated areas that clinical staff identified needs for palliative care support. www.jamda.com/article/S152...

the expression "never the twain shall meet" is about how Mark Twain will never hear Man! I Feel Like A Woman

If any pro-vaccine study did something like this, the anti-vax movement would broadcast it so loud and make it the centerpiece of a documentary. But, bc the anti-vax movement is fundamentally about eugenics and propaganda, they'll just hand-wave it away, play the victim, and move on.

R.F.K., Jr., Anthony Fauci, and the Revolt Against Expertise

Citing evidence, ignoring appeals to authority, reserving judgment, demanding more research—these are potentially exhausting traits in a conversational partner, but they’re also marks of a scientific mind. Rather than being “anti-science,” Kennedy seems enchanted by it. His accusatory book “The Real Anthony Fauci” (2021) is packed with discussions of clinical studies, and it bears a blurb from a Nobel-winning virologist. (Anyone worried about the lack of public appetite for complex writing should contemplate the fact that this nearly five-hundred-page, data-drenched work of nonfiction has sold more than a million copies.) Kennedy has published two books with the subtitle “Let the Science Speak.”

I will never understand why the media feels the need to whitewash RFK Jr constantly.
www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...

this guy is out here proudly being a eugenicist freak while people at mainstream and "respectable publications" make excuses for him or even muse about whether he has a "few good points"

Vinay Prasad, in his own words, outlines the philosophy he’ll bring to the FDA Vinay Prasad, tapped to be a top official at the FDA, has never shied from speaking his mind.

tl;dr- egotistical edgelord intoxicatingly enamored with the (false) idea that he's far smarter than everyone else and therefore superior

As others have commented, this requirement has ethical problems. It would unethical to use a placebo as a control if an effective vaccine exists.

There has been a significant reduction in the number of kids getting the flu vaccine over the past 5 years—a drop from 64% to 49%.

Consequently, there have been 216 pediatric flu deaths so far this flu season, the highest number since the swine flu 15 years ago (link below).

Vaccinate.

Trump’s Cuts to Science Funding Could Hurt U.S. Economy, Study Shows (Gift Article) Reducing federal support for research and development could cause long-run economic damage and reduce government revenue.

"If you look at a long period of time, a lot of our increase in living standards seems to be coming from public investment in scientific research."

The devastating cuts to science funding aren't just academic, they threaten our livelihoods and wellbeing. www.nytimes.com/2025/04/30/b...

6/ HHS Sec.'s job is to oversee med. product safety (e.g., FDA) & ensure public trust. Thus, RFK Jr. shld be saying, "HHS is here to protect your kids. Instead, he's saying the opposite: Parents (Moms): don't trust us to do this technical work. It's your parental responsibility to do it yourself.

Screenshot from the NYT article linked in first post of this thread, describes comment by RFK Jr.: “I would say that we live in a democracy, and part of the responsibility of being a parent is to do your own research,” the health secretary said, in response to a question from a woman in the audience who asked how he would advise a new parent about vaccine safety. “You research the baby stroller, you research the foods that they’re getting, and you need to research the medicines that they’re taking as well.”

4/ He promotes what sociologists call "intensive parenting," as a superior way to ensure kids are safe. That's a time/labor-intensive & stressful form of parenting many US *mothers* feel pressured to follow due to cultural norms/expectations around mothers as primary caregivers.
...

“Do your own research” also implies that research cannot be a collective enterprise, that there is no purpose to funding actual scientific research, and that you should just manage your child’s healthcare with no guardrails.

Toxicologist here! This will improve the health of zero Americans. Current synthetic food dyes are not causing health problems, and are often times used because they are actually safer than natural food dyes. Reminder that guns are the #1 cause of death of children but we are going to ban food dyes.

Who needs data when you can have vibes like "the COVID-19 vaccine made people more hesitant about other vaccines"

"the US is an outlier in its vaccination policy"

Wanna guess what else we're an outlier in? Healthcare accessibility. Burden of comorbidities. COVID-19 death toll.