Dr Emma Hodcroft

BREAKING: Friday night massacre underway at CDC. Doznes of "disease detectives," high-level scientists, entire Washington staff and editors of the MMWR (Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report) have all been RIFed and received the following notice:

The cruelty is the point.

They are using this as an excuse to fire even more of our best, most dedicated scientists, researchers, and civil servants.
They do this because they do not believe in science, and they do not genuinely care about the health of America.

We have breaking news in Inside Medicine.

We had heard rumors of RIFs to CDC.

But this is the first visual confirmation that it has occurred tonight, and at high levels in the agency.

Here is what we know...and then some well-sourced rumors (but rumors, nonetheless, not confirmed) 🧵...

The New York Times SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 4, 1939 Goebbels Ends Careers of Five 'Aryan' Actors Who Made Witticisms About the Nazi Regime Wireless to THE NEW YORK TIMES BERLIN, Feb. 3.

“Goebbels Ends Careers of Five ‘Aryan’ Actors Who Made Witticisms About the Nazi Regime”

144 - micro binfie Pathoplexus part 1

🎙️ Just dropped: #MicroBinfie Pathoplexus Part 1!
Join @happykhan.mstdn.science.ap.brid.gy, Lee & guest Clint as they deep-dive with @firefoxx66.bsky.social, Theo Sanderson & Arthur Shem Kasambula into Pathoplexus.
Ready for a journey? 🚀 Listen now: pca.st/episode/c1f8...

The 16th Ebola Virus Disease Outbreak in Bulape Health Zone, Kasai, Democratic Republic of the Congo: A new spillover event from an unknown reservoir host Background The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) is currently facing concurrent outbreaks including mpox, cholera and malaria (1-4). The Ministry of Public Health, DRC has declared the 16th Ebola...

Amid the concerning news of a new Ebola Zaire outbreak in DRC, teams on the ground have already managed to sample, sequence, and share data. This rapid turnaround is a testament to their commitment and capacity to respond.

Read more: virological.org/t/the-16th-e...

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Thanks to all the speakers of the great Bioinformatics in Infectious Diseases session at #bc2basel, chaired by EmmaHodcroft @firefoxx66.bsky.social and #JacquesFellay:
Aurelie Cobat, Charlyne Bürki, Andrea Di Gioacchino, KenoStrotjohann, Hesham ElAbd, Lisa Pagani, and Valeriia Timonina

Drivel from RFKJr with some corrections and fact-checking

Ain't no way RFKJ wrote this when he literally called us "troubled" only a few hours ago. Sorry, anon comms person/maybe the AI forced to write this drivel...

We just added a few notes. Anything to be helpful! ✨😊😇

YouTube video by Associated Press LIVE: CDC staff plan walkout at Atlanta HQ after Trump firings

AP live feed of the CDC walkout in Atlanta. www.youtube.com/watch?v=KZ7Q...

A cartoon version of the EVE lab, generated by ChatGPT from a similar photo, showing Nosihle, Emma, Nadia, and Keno

We're looking forward to including more details of our current projects, new tools we're working on, and sharing regular updates and musings from the lab members via the blog!

Please do check it - hope it helps you learn a bit about EVE! 💗
eve-lab.org

4/4

The EVE lab work & collaborations includes:
🌏 Tracking virus spread globally
🧬 Understanding virus evolution & immunity
📊 Building open tools like @Pathoplexus for transparent data sharing
🤝 Collaborating worldwide to better tackle pathogenic viruses

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Screenshot of the Collaborations page of the Eve-lab website, showing some of our collaborations: ARTIC2, Center for Pathogen Bioinformatics, ENPEN, ESCAPE, Pathoplexus, & VIM

🔍 On our new site you can:

- Meet the EVE team 👥
- Explore our research on viral evolution & spread 🧬
- Explore our phylogenetic @nextstrain.org builds 🌳
- See the tools we build for analysis 🛠️
- Read about our publications & news 📰

2/4

EVE – Epidemiology & Virus Evolution EVE - Epidemiology and Virus Evolution - the Hodcroft lab

🚀 More good news: website lift-off!
The Epidemiology & Virus Evolution (EVE) group at @swisstph.ch has a brand new home on the web:
eve-lab.org
🦠🌍

Check out our research, people, collaborations, & projects all in one place! 👇

1/4

I think if you are a federal institute the 'price' you get for having so much money is not getting a cute nickname 😂

I guess in conversation maybe it's less common - though I certainly do. In emails and everywhere else in writing - definitely!

A very special day today, as I look back and remember our trepidation on how this crazy idea of a new pathogen database would go down. Would our work be for naught?

But no! I'm so grateful that we've been able to make a big impact on sequence sharing! Here's to year 2! 🥂

An image of a birthday cake with scientific doodles around it, 9 colourful candles, and the Pathoplexus logo in the middle, with the words 'Happy 1 year'

🗓 Pathoplexus turns ONE! 🎂🎉

In the past year we’ve grown from 4 pathogens to a truly global, community-driven platform for transparent, equitable & impactful pathogen sequence sharing.
📰 Read the full update: pathoplexus.org/news/2025-08...

1/10

(Also 10 stars for the fact that the Bluesky social names 100% back me up on this right there in the tweet 😂)

One thing I find endlessly endearing in Switzerland is that the Unis have little nicknames:
UniBas (University of Basel) @unibas.ch
UniBe (University of Bern) @unibe.ch
UNIL (University of Lausanne) @unil.bsky.social

Do the other Unis have little nicknames too?

Keep and eye 👁️ (and an ear! 👂) out for a new Binfie podcast all about Pathoplexus 1 year in!

It was a great pleasure to contribute to this work by Jemma Fendley, @mmolari.bsky.social, and Boris Shraiman on pan-genomes, linkage, and recombination in phage genomes.

We analyzed data collected by the fantastic SEA-PHAGES program in phagesdb.org.

[1/6]

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Scientists Are Caught in a Political Trap Fighting back against the Trump administration means they start to look more like activists.

Insisting on expertise over ideology is not “politicizing” science. The ideologues installing scientific and governmental policy that is contradicted by evidence and data are.

By emphasizing ideology over expertise, THEY have made arguing for expertise and evidence-based decision making partisan.

“Loculus is remarkable for enabling efficient and secure sharing of pathogen genomic data, which is crucial for public health responses to infectious diseases."
🥁That’s what the committee said about this #SIBRemarkableOutputs 2024
👉Discover the output: tinyurl.com/53arz2rz

Never ask postdocs what they'll be doing next year, that's considered terribly offensive in their culture.

It's really key to understand this: ***they don't need actual backlash of any substance or scale to run this cycle***. All they need is a few random comments, which they can always find, which means that you can basically run this cycle at will. You don't need libs to play along at all!

Image showing information on the BC2 (Basel Computational Biology Conference) from 8-10 Sept 2025. Says: "Tutorial: build a microbial genomic sequence database with Loculus - Register now. 8 Sept 2025 - Biozentrum, Basel. Early bird until 30 June 2025"

Interested to learn about how to run your own Loculus (the database code behind @pathoplexus.org)? 🤔🖥️

Sign up for the Loculus Tutorial on Mon 8 Sept at BC2 Conference (@sib.swiss‬) in Basel, run by @chaoranchen.de & Anya Parker! 🧬

Register: www.bc2.ch/registration...

#bioinformatics #openScience

Right! I forgot that bit - and the money :)

I'm definitely not AI-doomsayer (it's been incredible in helping me create a Jekyll website) - but I do feel like we're rapidly heading to a place where we'll have AI-written papers assessed by AI-reviewers (citing AI papers), at which point is it... doing anything real?

Are we placing bets yet on which fairly-reputable journal will be first to announce that they are incorporating AI into reviewing to modernize & keep up with increasing paper volumes (*cough*) - but *don't worry* they have a *specially designed system* and it will be *fine*?

Assim como outros campos da ciência, a bioinformática enfrenta um obstáculo significativo: o fato de as mulheres serem minoria. | Instituto Todos pela Saúde (ITpS) Assim como outros campos da ciência, a bioinformática enfrenta um obstáculo significativo: o fato de as mulheres serem minoria. Este é um problema multifacetado, com raízes em fatores sociais e cultur...

Honoured to be part of a video series by @todospelasaude.bsky.social ‪‪about Bioinformatics! It's been wonderful to see more & more women come into Bioinf, as such an important & wide-ranging field - full of awesome & impactful projects!
#womeninstem

www.linkedin.com/posts/instit...