Justin Lessler

One of my favorite papers I have ever written....and one of the least cited :-)

Seniors came to JD Vance's event to demand the Trump Administration stop cutting Social Security.

JD's response:

"Don't you all have jobs?"

An excerpt from a Wall Street Journal article: "Johns Hopkins was founded in 1876 “to foster independent and original research” and now spends more than $3 billion annually on that effort—more than any other U.S. school, according to data from the National Science Foundation. Scientists at the school invented cardiopulmonary resuscitation, or CPR, confirmed the authenticity of the Dead Sea Scrolls, introduced the rubber glove to surgery and landed the first spacecraft on an asteroid. Twenty-nine people with links to the institution have won Nobel Prizes."

An excerpt from a Wall Street Journal article: "A long list of Johns Hopkins’ USAID-funded projects have already been halted, including a nearly complete eight-year effort with half a billion dollars in funding to convince people in more than 50 countries to adopt behaviors such as sleeping under mosquito nets in Mozambique, breast-feeding in Baltimore and using contraception in Nigeria. Another project halted: An effort to provide chlorine tablets and soapy water and messages about good hygiene to help prevent diarrhea deaths in Bangladesh. "

Cutting off funding to the institution that INVENTED CPR definitely seems like a smart idea. How did no one ever think of this before?

Ran out of room to tag the original post #episky (read it to see @justinlessler.bsky.social on @npr.org describing the contagiousness of measles given different vax rates)

As the Texas outbreak grows, how contagious is measles, really? Vaccination eliminated measles from the U.S. 25 years ago. But it can still spread in pockets where vaccination rates are low, like the west Texas county with a current outbreak. Here's how fast.

Wonderful explanation of contagion, reproductive numbers, & the reason #measles outbreaks *are* a big deal (courtesy of @npr.org & including insight from brilliant ID Epi @justinlessler.bsky.social):

www.npr.org/sections/sho...

DOGE By The Numbers
theonion.com/doge-by...

Maryland National Guard out of Frederick Douglass parade after DoD order Strict guidance from the national defense department crushed plans for a parade held in honor of Frederick Douglass’ 207th birthday because it was being held during Black History Month.

“The Maryland National Guard must decline events which celebrates individuals based all or in part on immutable characteristics,” the memo said.

Douglass was an abolitionist, suffragist, orator and author. That’s what we celebrate him. Let’s be clear: This bars celebrating him because he was Black.

But again and again there comes a time in history when the man who dares to say that two and two make four is punished with death. The schoolteacher is well aware of this. And the question is not one of knowing what punishment or reward attends the making of this calculation. The question is one of knowing whether two and two do make four. ― Albert Camus, The Plague

Goodnight friends. We end today with this quote for ourselves and for our new secretary of HHS.

Yellow background. Different CDC websites that have been removed. Some are in black and white. Others are purple or red and green.

✨PLEASE SHARE! CDC GUIDELINE ARCHIVES✨

▶️STI GUIDELINES
buff.ly/4jReLT4
buff.ly/3EmjR9B

▶️Medical Eligibility Criteria (MEC) for Contraceptives buff.ly/3PZzQNf
buff.ly/4aKMEko

▶️VACCINE VIS buff.ly/4jJ1603

▶️Others from @jessicavalenti.bsky.social
LGBTQ CDCGuidelines.com

#medsky #pedsky #IDsky 🛟🧪

Five years ago (Monday 30 Dec 2019), a turning point: the news of an outbreak in Wuhan spread on messaging apps, social media (Weibo, then Twitter), and got out of China, culminating with a ProMED alert sent to the international medical community on 30-31 Dec. ▫️1/

Due warning that they can be a little persnickety about the verification.

Getting free access to Copilot as a student, teacher, or maintainer - GitHub Docs Learn how to use Copilot for free as a student, teacher, or open-source maintainer.

I thought that was free to teachers/students? At least appears to be for me. docs.github.com/en/copilot/m...

The studies informing stratified parameters in IDD models often have partitions (e.g age group) different from the model partitions. Most papers takes the median/mean estimates, but a correct solution exists: see this great paper/R pkg (C. Pearson, @lucygoodfellow.bsky.social @mert0248.bsky.social)

paramix : An R package for parameter discretisation in compartmental models, with application to calculating years of life lost Compartmental infectious disease models are used to calculate disease transmission, estimate underlying rates, forecast future burden, and compare benefits across intervention scenarios. These models ...

Congrats to team member Carl Pearson and his co-authors @lucygoodfellow.bsky.social and @mert0248.bsky.social. An important tool for a pervasive problem in modeling infectious disease data www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1...

‘Emergency’ or Not, Covid Is Still Killing People. Here’s What Doctors Advise to Stay Safe. - KFF Health News Thousands of people are still dying of covid, but government has mostly handed over responsibility to the people to weather the seasonal surges with their own strategies.

Now is a great time to get flu & covid vaccines before holiday travel & parties lead to an uptick. Flu cases are rising. Covid deaths are down compared to other yrs *but still outnumber flu*.

Re-sharing my piece on why vax, masks & tests are the best defense.
kffhealthnews.org/news/article...

Note to journalists: important to communicate that the stated aim of GBD was to have a massive epidemic (immediately before vaccines became available), and also somehow keep it away from older population at higher risk (which would be about 25% of UK population if take age 60 as cutoff)

.@capublichealth.bsky.social reports finding #H5N1 #birdflu virus in raw milk. The producer, Raw Farm LLC of Fresno County, has agreed to recall a batch of a whole milk product called "cream top."
Milk from infected cows contains staggering levels of virus. www.statnews.com/2024/04/29/b...

Bard Academy and Bard College at Simon’s Rock Announce Relocation to Bard College in New York’s Hudson Valley The Bard College Board of Trustees and the Bard College at Simon’s Rock Board of Overseers today jointly announced that Simon’s Rock will be relocating from its Great Barrington, MA, campus to a new c...

In a month of bad news, this one hits especially hard. Simon's Rock was an incredibly special place that changed my life. Early college at Bard will be no substitute. www.bard.edu/news/bard-ac...

Chicken Fajita

Modeling dynamic disease-behavior feedbacks for improved epidemic prediction and response Human behavior significantly influences infectious disease transmission, yet traditional models often overlook this factor, limiting predictions of disease and the associated socioeconomic impacts. We...

Our framework for combining standard epi models with an economic dynamic decision model is up on medRxiv! super flexible and excited to see where this project goes next www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1...

We are hiring a postdoc to work on projects related to scenario modeling for public health with scenariomodelinghub.org. Apply at unc.peopleadmin.com/postings/288...

Here is analysis of HA mutations in H5 influenza case in Missouri resident without known contact w animals or raw milk.

TLDR: there is one HA mutation that strongly affects antigenicity, and another that merits some further study.

Karaoke inventor Shigeichi Negishi dies at 100 Negishi was in his 40s when he came up with the idea of prototyping a mass-produced, coin-operated karaoke machine, branded "Sparko Box" in 1967.

Shigeichi Negishi, the inventor of the world's first commercially-available karaoke machine, has died in Japan. He was 100 years old.

Excited to see our working out in The Lancet Infectious Diseases on the effectiveness of one dose of oral cholera vaccine (OCV) in DR Congo. One dose of OCV protects against clinical cholera for up to 24-36 mo
www.thelancet.com/journals/lan...
with @justinlessler.bsky.social @andrewazman.bsky.social

We are recruiting for Research Assistant Professor positions at UNC to work on projects aimed at making epidemic projections and analytics more accurate and more relevant to those who need them most. Consider applying to join our team!
unc.peopleadmin.com/postings/270...

Evaluation of the US COVID-19 Scenario Modeling Hub for informing pandemic response under uncertaint... The US COVID-19 Scenario Modeling Hub produced medium to long term projections based on different epidemic scenarios. In this study, the authors evaluate 14 rounds of projections by comparing them to ...

Excited our work evaluating covid19scenariomodelinghub.org is out in Nature Communications www.nature.com/articles/s41... , with an accompanying piece here theconversation.com/pooling-mult.... Kudos to the brilliant @emilyhowerton.bsky.social for leading this work, and the many other contributors.

Super excited that our ACCIDDA center at UNC was selected to be a Center of Innovation and the Coordination Center for the CDCs Center for Forecasting and Outbreak Analytics. With JHU, UF, APL and Pitt. sph.unc.edu/sph-news/unc...

An ad for AN IMMENSE WORLD, which says that it’s now out in paperback, and which lists publications that have named it one of the best books of the year

AN IMMENSE WORLD is out in paperback in the US today! 🥳

Howdy all, I am an epidemiologist at the Rush Alzheimer’s Disease Center in Chicago. I got three kids, and the youngest two are turning 2 today. Big boys 🎂2️⃣

My theory is folks are just sitting around holding their places on this site until there are enough people that they can focus here instead of the other one.