Ian M. Mackay, PhD (he/him) 🦠🤧🧬📑🦟🧀

More than 250,000 people - most of them exiled Iranians and their supporters - peacefully demonstrated in Munich during the MSC with no major incidents. German police explicitly thanked them for this truly peaceful event.

...but it also followed the pandemic-droven infection pause (mentioned in the article, thankfully, but swamped by "catastrophic")

Having said that...it also seemed a bit misleading. Did you take away from this that numbers declined in 2025? Because they did. Did it mention that there is a ~4-yr cycle to pertussis epidemics? Because there is. Granted, 2024 was huge,

Elon Musk posted about race almost every day in January Many social media posts by Tesla CEO on his platform are indiscernible from those of white supremacists, say experts

Elon Musk posted about race almost every day in January.

"the ideas Musk has publicized are deeply tied to some of the most notorious, violent extremist attacks of the past decade"

Part of the ~40% of Americans who agree and would still vote for this I guess.

www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

Mpox. So it fits with the recombinant monkeypox virus noted by WHO y'day. But it's just a tiny regional numbers update post. Nothing that should get much attention.
It's still going today, 3rd day. Over 5k views. Must be a bot attack.

🤣

Record spike in whooping cough cases due to 'potentially catastrophic' trend A "potentially catastrophic" decline in Australia's childhood vaccination rates has contributed to the sharpest increase in cases of whooping cough in 35 years, infectious diseases experts say.

Whooping cough cases hit record high after vaccine rate drop in Australia.

-we need a government Comms campaign about the benefits of vaccination. Yesterday.

www.abc.net.au/news/2026-02...

Another one of those weird surges of views on an old post on my blog. Weird.

WHO: Mpox: Recombinant Virus With Genomic Elements of Clades Ib and IIb - Global Mpox Multi-country external situation report no. 62  #19,055 Although details were scant, on December 8th, 2025 the UKHSA Identified a New...

AFD Blog `WHO: #Mpox: Recombinant Virus With Genomic Elements of Clades Ib and IIb - Global' afludiary.blogspot.com/2026/02/who-...

These charts show how Trump is isolating the US on the world stage

Analysis shows that the world is moving closer to China, as Trump’s isolationism rears its head at the United Nations

They just don't get it don't hey?

And drone-*defence* technology (and innovations)

Let's not be crazy here!

He seems to be doing this quite a bit lately.
Don't like my invitation on your behalf, of someone linked to genocide? Too bad.
Police too violent? Naaah.
Protest? Nuh.
Not acting on review findings? So?
Unhappy to be affiliated with facist USA? I'm not.

😒 We see you Albo. You're a disappointment.

And yet you have not brought them together for over a year.
And bucko, it's not a 'senseless war' - it was a senseless INVASION that posed an existential threat, one that had to be met with a valiant defence.
Get on the right side of reality

Where "supply" just means "eventually deliver" after another, entrely different, country kindly pays for the weapons that the U.S. is selling, as needed by Uraine.
That's $15 billion dollars of cha ching.
These aren't being supplied after donation.

Rubio Calls For The End Of A Tolerant, Democratic Europe And The Crowd Goes Wild Just over an hour ago, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio called for the end of a tolerant, democratic Europe and its break-up into a disparate group of smaller, Trumpist states, and the Europeans in t...

Europe has become the abused spouse grateful just not to be beaten. Believing this jellyfish is a fool's errand.

open.substack.com/pub/phillips...

Liberal figure Charlotte Mortlock quits party amid feared backlash over dumping of first female leader Some female Liberal members ‘incredibly worried’ after Sussan Ley’s ousting, with one saying: ‘The boys are back in charge’

Women problem? Pfft...

"The 2022 election review, co-authored by the Liberals’ new deputy leader, Jane Hume, found the party had not addressed the concerns of female voters. It recommended a 50% “target” for female candidates and MPs over a binding quota."

www.theguardian.com/australia-ne...

Thank goodness we have this cash lying around and no, more socially desperate, need for it.

This base will be as obliterated as easily as any above-ground installation in the first wave of any war. Or are we also heavily investing in missile defense and offense as well?

Opinion | The Depravity of Trump’s Immigrant Detention The president’s immigration dragnet is vicious but not surprising.

In @nytopinion.nytimes.com

The Trump administration is “using detention to inflict pain on anyone — immigrant or citizen — caught in its grasp,” our columnist Jamelle Bouie writes.

The true cost of the AUKUS agreement

Richard Marles' former chief-of-staff on Australia's ties to the US: "When an alliance becomes this embedded, it becomes difficult to question. Alternatives no longer feel conceivable [and] certain risks stop being interrogated." satpa.pe/Y2aUhTX

I worked at WHO: the USA leaving will not make America healthier On Jan 30, 2020, WHO declared COVID-19 a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC), the highest alarm it can sound, which is used for moments when the world must act together or risk ca...

Dr. @krutikakuppalli.bsky.social: I worked at WHO: the USA leaving will not make America healthier - The Lancet Infectious Diseases www.thelancet.com/journals/lan...

We need a Bill of Rights

I misread vaccination as vacation, and had a minute happily planning a new holiday. :)
(also plan vaccinations, but they aren't quite as fun)

"These lengthening and overlapping disaster seasons were found to be "testing" resource-sharing arrangements"

-but it's all okay, because climate change isn't real, say some purchased, useless idiots.

🧪 🦠 #IDsky #STIsky
#mpox Ib/IIb recombinant strain
„There is likely to be wider circulation of this emerging recombinant strain of MPXV since at least September 2025 than reflected by the two cases documented and linked to four countries in three WHO regions. “

Rubio tells Europe US wants renewed alliance – but on Trump’s terms Secretary of state calls the US ‘a child of Europe’ and urges continent to back a new world order

Just more anti-immigrant, anti-climate BS: www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026...

The El Paso Balloon Incident Could Have Been a Disaster Shooting experimental lasers next to a major airport without telling anyone—what could go wrong?

Retired general Mark Hertling reminds us that no one is as dedicated to weapons control as the US military: The El Paso Balloon Incident Could Have Been a Disaster open.substack.com/pub/thebulwa...