Tony Schountz

The high-dollar journals are the real predatory journals as far as I’m concerned.

...an industry that is expected to generate $167 billion in revenue in 2025. All because of basic scientific research that seems to now be unimportant to certain politicians.

Nobel Prize for Kohler and Milstein
www.nature.com/articles/256...

…and produce large quantities of monoclonal antibodies. The work on these “hybridomas” was one of basic research that used sheep red blood cells as the immunogen. Today, therapeutic monoclonal antibodies are used to treat dozens of disease and has led to...

Fifty years ago tomorrow, a seminal paper in immunology was published that revolutionized research and medical treatments. The paper, titled “Continuous cultures of fused cells secreting antibody of predefined specificity” demonstrated that cells could be generated that propagate indefinitely...

How conspiracy theories about COVID’s origins are hampering our ability to prevent the next pandemic | CNN The public discourse around the origin of the pandemic has increasingly been shaped by political agendas and conspiratorial narratives. Some of this has vilified experts who have studied this question...

Our understanding of the origin of COVID-19 is increasingly being polluted by conspiracy theories. Many, presented in OpEds in places like the NYT, WaPo, and WSJ.

It's time to drop the nonsense and refocus on the science - it's long overdue and the data is in.

edition.cnn.com/2025/07/31/h...

How conspiracy theories about COVID’s origins are hampering our ability to prevent the next pandemic The COVID pandemic likely began when the virus jumped from animals to humans, and didn’t start in a lab. But false narratives continue to circulate.

You’ve been badly misled over COVID origins theconversation.com/how-conspira...

The Lab-Leak Hypothesis Made It Harder for Scientists to Seek the Truth Virus origin stories have always been prone to conspiracy theories. COVID disinformation has threatened research—and lives

More than 3yrs down the line this has held up surprisingly well, very much because of @lewan.bsky.social prescience borne from climategate and previous clashes with USRTK

What we couldn’t predict was how the conspiracists would destroy US biomed science
www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-...

Glad it went well and wish I could have been there.

One Hundred Days, Incalculable Losses Emily J Erbelding, M.D., M.P.H; One Hundred Days, Incalculable Losses, The Journal of Infectious Diseases, , jiaf317, https://doi.org/10.1093/infdis/jiaf31

"The story of the negative impact on the future of infectious disease research will only become part of public discourse if scientists speak up loudly"

A must read.

One Hundred Days, Incalculable Loses @jidjournal.bsky.social

Emily Erbelding, MD - NIAID/DMD

academic.oup.com/jid/advance-...

A critical review of "The mystery of Wuhan - The hunt for the origin of the covid pandemic" by Sigrid Bratlie A book filled with contradictions, cherry-picking of data, conspiratorial arguments, and serious accusations that undermine trust in research and contribute to making the world less safe in the face o...

English version of my review of Bratlies book:

A book filled with contradictions, cherry-picking of data, conspiratorial arguments, and serious accusations that undermine trust in research and contribute to making the world less safe in the face of the next pandemic.

tjomlid.com/a-critical-r...

Exclusive: Inside the thriving wild-animal markets that could start the next pandemic Live-animal markets are a natural laboratory for viruses to evolve and spark deadly outbreaks, yet scientists lack support to study the risks they pose.

Wildlife trade acts as a vast global network of unregulated natural laboratories,with ample opportunities for viruses to circulate & evolve to become more dangerous

We can either turn a blind eye or try to understand & mitigate the risks

My latest in @nature.com

1/

www.nature.com/articles/d41...

A Critical Reexamination of Recovered SARS-CoV-2 Sequencing Data Abstract. In 2021, Jesse Bloom published a study addressing why the earliest SARS-CoV-2 sequences in Wuhan from late December 2019 were not those most simi

It's notable that @zey.bsky.social is reading people who think our article is too dangerous to even link to, so here it is: academic.oup.com/mbe/article/...

A Critical Reexamination of Recovered SARS-CoV-2 Sequencing Data Abstract. In 2021, Jesse Bloom published a study addressing why the earliest SARS-CoV-2 sequences in Wuhan from late December 2019 were not those most simi

Four years ago, Jesse Bloom announced the recovery of SARS-CoV-2 sequences and suggested they could come from very early COVID-19 patients.

Zach Hensel and I found out that Bloom's claim relied on the deliberate omission of a January 30, 2020 collection date contradicting his narrative. 🧪 #PopGen

“In 1900, 30 percent of all deaths in the United States occurred among children younger than 5, mostly because of preventable infectious diseases. By the end of the century, that number was just 1.4 percent.” #VaccinesWork #VaccinesSaveLives #ACIP

Shot in the Arm Explore vaccine hesitancy historically and in the context of COVID-19.

I strongly recommend fine documentary “A Shot in the Arm” on vaccine hesitancy & its (often well-paid) promoters, incl RFK, Jr.
www.pbs.org/video/shot-i...
Watch whole thing, but especially:
34:32-onward RFK, Jr
43:45-50:27 Samoa deaths: he denies/evades involvement, video records contradict.

Moving forward, there are already other - and better and, hey, transparent - initiatives as it comes to sharing critical data: NCBI, of course, which should be used by _all_ tax-payer funded research, but also @pathoplexus.org, which should become the replacement for GISAID - and I'm sure it will.

Trump Administration Incorrectly Claims Certainty About Origin of Coronavirus - FactCheck.org Since regaining power in January, the Trump administration has repeatedly claimed with false certainty that the COVID-19 pandemic originated in a lab. But there isn’t clear evidence that the virus cam...

“… peer-reviewed literature is dominated by articles supporting a zoonotic origin” while lab leak papers “are rare, fringe, and mutually incompatible with each other.”

Correct. And it’s not because one side is “censored”. It’s because one side has zero evidence.

www.factcheck.org/2025/05/trum...

I suspect that recombination is why we’ll never find an ancestral SARS-CoV-2 in nature. It’s already gone. Yet the lab leakers will continue to insist that finding it is a requirement for natural emergence.

The Neo-Anti-Vaxxers Are in Power Now A new cadre of officials might deal in evidence more than Robert F. Kennedy Jr. does, but they still question the worth of vaccines.

“The Neo-Anti-Vaxxers Are in Power Now - A new cadre of officials might deal in evidence more than Robert F. Kennedy Jr. does, but they still question the worth of vaccines.”

This highlights the central problem with so many of those who want to believe the lab leak narrative: they latch on to the big picture - there's a lab in Wuhan working on bat viruses - but don't grasp the details which show that a lab leak is far less likely than a zoonotic event. Detail is key.

What we know about the safety, efficacy of mRNA vaccines amid recent scrutiny Infectious disease experts say mRNA vaccines have been studied for decades, they are safe and effective, and were instrumental in saving lives during the COVID pandemic.

My comments with @marykekatos.bsky.social ABC News

abcnews.go.com/Health/safet...

FDA won’t approve COVID shot for healthy, non-elderly population - Roll Call The Food and Drug Administration will no longer approve COVID-19 vaccines for healthy people under 65 without rigorous trials.

My comments with @rollcall.com

rollcall.com/2025/05/22/f...

What RFK Jr's MAHA plan says about childhood vaccines Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. released his MAHA plan on Thursday.

My comments @newsweek.com

www.newsweek.com/rfk-maha-chi...

Proximal Origin wasn’t a coverup. It was Kristian et al’s scientific opinion based on limited data (but held up well). Scientists have a right to freely express their opinions, on Slack & in papers.

This isn’t “bad behavior.” It was scientists collaboratively examining the evidence. IOW, their jobs

This is one of the biggest challenges of the modern information environment: learning to distinguish between bad faith criticism designed to destroy things and good faith criticism meant to make things better.

The New York Times disinformation machine continues to roll.

He’s apparently “The best-selling science writer and essayist (that) explores climate change, technology, the future of the planet”! 🤪

A stricter FDA policy for COVID vaccines could limit future access Federal officials unveiled a rigorous regulatory approach to future COVID vaccines that could make it harder for many people under 65 to get immunized.

My comments @npr.org today

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

FDA may limit future Covid-19 shots to older people and those at risk of serious infection | CNN The US Food and Drug Administration is changing the way it approves Covid-19 vaccines for Americans, a move that may limit future shots to older Americans and people at higher risk of serious Covid-19...

My comments with @reportergoodman.bsky.social @cnn.com

www.cnn.com/2025/05/20/h...

SARS-CoV-2 Spike displays multiple adaptive changes in addition to the furin cleavage site SARS-CoV-2 Spike displays multiple adaptive changes in addition to the furin cleavage site. Robert F. Garry1-3 1Department of Microbiology and Immunology, Tulane University Medical Center, 1430 Tula...

virological.org/t/sars-cov-2...