LA Jen

IT'S HAPPENING: House Democrats are introducing articles of impeachment against Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr for slashing research funding and spreading medical misinformation.

New COVID-19 variants surge as Kennedy escalates war on science The Trump administration is slashing health agency budgets and firing vaccine experts as highly transmissible variants threaten to double daily infections within a month.

"The 11th COVID wave is sweeping the US, driven by new highly transmissible variants. SARS-CoV-2 shows no sign of becoming endemic, as falsely promised."

"The average American has now been infected 3.85 times, meaning more than 1 billion COVID-19 infections have occurred since the pandemic began."

US Weekly COVID update: June 9, 2025

🔸1 in 189 People Currently Infected
🔸253,000 New Daily Infections
🔸1,771,000 New Weekly Infections
🔸89,000 to 354,000 Weekly Long COVID Cases
🔸600 to 1,100 Weekly Excess Deaths

Source: pmc19.com/data/

Health secretary RFK Jr. abruptly fires CDC vaccine advisory panel Health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has taken the extraordinary step of firing the expert panel that advises the CDC.

BREAKING—RFK Jr has abruptly fired CDC’s entire expert panel of vaccine scientists, claiming the action is needed to restore faith in vaccines. This is a dark day for science and public health. Disinformation now has an iron grip on Trump CDC/HHS.
www.statnews.com/2025/06/09/r...

sperm racing is a scam? would've never guessed

HHS’s Long COVID Office Is Closing. What Will This Mean for Future Research and Treatments? The Office for Long COVID Research and Practice was instrumental in coordinating the U.S. government’s initiatives to treat, diagnose and prevent the mysterious postviral condition that affects millio...

"You said you want to prioritize long COVID, you said you want to help with chronic disease and ‘Make America Healthy Again,’ and that’s not what we’re seeing now"

-Dr. Al-Aly to RFK

www.scientificamerican.com/article/hhss...

The paperback of Suzanne Collins’ “Sunrise on the Reaping”, a Hunger Games novel, sitting on a charcoal bedspread.

It’s scary that the Hunger Games books are actually becoming more relevant now.

This was brilliant. I am so unbelievably sad.

I just finished it, too. Same.

Nate Balcom's review of Sunrise on the Reaping (The Hunger Games, #0.5) 5/5: WOW! I haven't enjoyed a Hunger Games book this much since the original The Hunger Games! Haymitch Abernathy's story in this book 100% does his character justice. I've long said that the series s...

WOW! I haven't enjoyed a Hunger Games book this much since the original! I've long said it should've have stopped at Book 1. I'd amend that now. If you loved THG read #SunriseOnTheReaping. If you remove the epilogue from Sunrise they become a perfect duology. www.goodreads.com/review/show/...

I just checked in at the Atlanta airport and the kiosk wanted me to show a "passport or permanent residence card."

The airline rep who was helping me said "I don't know why it's doing this it's been doing it all morning."

I decided to start a #thread 🧵 of stories about legal residents and tourists being (illegally) arrested, detained and/or deported by the Trump regime. I'll only post stories from serious sources, as rumors and conspiracies are really not needed in this authoritarian moment.

The good news? UK comic maker Becky Burke is home after being detained by ICE. The bad news, the new regime’s stricter reading of the previously ignored rules on work will catch others out coming to the US for comic events - comicon.com/2025/03/18/f...

Why Do Recipe Writers Lie About How Long It Takes To Caramelize Onions? Browning onions is a matter of patience. My own patience ran out earlier this year while leafing through the New York Times food section. There, in the...

Just spent 1.25 hours caramelizing onions because that is, and I really must insist on this, how long they take slate.com/human-intere...

Solving the puzzle of Long Covid Long Covid provides an opportunity to understand how acute infections cause chronic disease

Solving the puzzle of Long Covid www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... #covid #longcovid #idchat

How Risky Are Repeat COVID Infections? What We Know So Far Four years into the pandemic, many people have had COVID more than once—but the health consequences of repeat infections are not yet clear

“Every time you get infected [with COVID], it does harm to the body in some way,” says Avindra Nath, a neurologist at the National Institutes of Health who has led research on long COVID and other post-viral conditions.

www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-...

First case of measles in an LA resident -- who recently spent time at LAX, a nail salon in North Hollywood and a grocery store in El Monte:

How denial of airborne COVID transmission broke the world - Healthy Debate Five years later, the greatest basic science failure in generations caused the pandemic harms highlighted by people across the political spectrum, and broke our social cohesion.

Five years on and we’re still going round and round with whether Covid is airborne. There’s no scientific doubt. Denial broke us.
healthydebate.ca/2025/03/topi...

The image shows a newspaper or magazine article headline and subheading titled "DIAGNOSIS OVERLOAD" in large, bold black text. The subheading reads: "The number of people with chronic conditions is rocketing. Are we less healthy than we used to be? Or are ordinary life experiences, bodily imperfections and normal differences being unnecessarily pathologised? Neurologist Suzanne O'Sullivan investigates"

That could have been where Garner's story ended. By September 2020, he had improved but he was no longer recovering further. So he started searching beyond the non-recovery stories, for those with more positive outcomes. That was how he found Recovery Norway, a group of people who once had chronic fatigue syndrome but had beaten it. The group gave him a recovery mentor as well as another perspective and, crucially, a recovery identity. He realised that while pacing had helped him at the start, he had then become obsessed with it. As he described in his blog, he had started to unconsciously monitor signals from his body until he became paralysed with fear. He believed long Covid was a metabolic disease that had damaged his mitochondria, but the Norway group made him think differently. He didn't doubt the virus had triggered the fatigue but felt he had later become caught in a vicious cycle of illness driven by his fear. Viruses cause fatigue in order to make people rest, which promotes recovery. But, in Garner's case, his recovery had gone awry because he inadvertently conditioned his body to stay tired. Garner realised he had to retrain his brain to react differently to the fatigue if he was to get better. "I suddenly believed I would recover completely," he writes. "I stopped my constant monitoring of symptoms. I avoided reading stories about illness and discussing symptoms, research or treatments by dropping off the Facebook groups with other patients. I spent time seeking joy, happiness... and overcame my fear of exercise." By the end of 2020 he had made a full recovery.

Perhaps what they actually needed from a diagnosis was permission to do less in a world that values only very particular types of success. For some, medical diagnosis is a means to take the pressure off, so they no longer feel forced to continue chasing after an overly idealistic social and work life. One woman's story stood out. She's an artist who has had some significant successes, but not the success she wanted. She would prefer to be an academic, she told me, but it wasn't her talent. As a teenager, she imagined her adult self quoting poetry off the cuff. The pain of not turning out to be that adult was terrible for her. It stopped her enjoying the success she had. Eventually, a diagnosis of ADHD helped her accept that she could not be equally talented in every way she wanted. The diagnosis gave her some comfort but also caused stagnation in her life. It reinforced her belief in a lesser version of herself. Rather than being defined by a successful art career that others would envy, she became a woman whose life revolved around ADHD and was defined by the things she could not do because she was neurodevelopmentally different. I worry that a child told they are different in this way will underestimate themselves and limit their future. Excessive medical diagnosis risks robbing people of a recovery identity and promoting intolerance by othering; by dividing the world into neurodivergents and neurotypicals. It must be very hard to set out or continue on life's big journey if your aspirations have been narrowed by a diagnosis that is uncertain or offers very little. Let's find a way to be more tolerant of difference and imperfections that still allow aneral

I'm absolutely aghast to see this sinister piece in the Guardian—the author says diagnoses of Long Covid, autism and ADHD are "robbing people of a recovery identity"

Don't Assume You're Safe from Measles, Even if You're Vaccinated A look at the science.

We don't want to know what happens when a disease like measles spreads through a global population in the wake of a virus that dysregulates their immune system, but we're going to find out and it won't be pretty.

Wear a mask.
www.the-sentinel-intelligence.com/p/dont-assum...

a person is riding on the back of a white dragon Alt: a person is riding on the back of a white dragon (Bastian and Falcor from The Neverending Story)

How do you even cope without a big puppet golden retriever dragon firmly seared into your brain??

Long COVID: a clinical update Post-COVID-19 condition (also known as long COVID) is generally defined as symptoms persisting for 3 months or more after acute COVID-19. Long COVID can affect multiple organ systems and lead to sever...

#longcovid

This is an excellent overview but take note: treatment?

Nothing.

COVID-19 Masking: Hundreds of Thousands of Russian Social Media Bots Have Tricked the Public Kevin Kavanagh, MD, discusses how Russian bots have tried to convince the United States public that masking is unnecessary. What do the latest studies say?

@nataliegreenpeer.bsky.social I have seen this happening since 2020. It’s made so many antivax. The far right are calling for a WHO exit and saying climate change isn’t happening. It’s all very concerning. www.infectioncontroltoday.com/view/covid-1...

The role of masks and respirators in preventing respiratory infections in healthcare and community settings The covid-19 pandemic saw frequent changes and conflicts in mask policies and politicization of masks. On reviewing the evidence, including studies published after the pandemic, the data suggest respi...

Anyone want to see our latest paper on #masks?
#healthpolicy 🧪

www.bmj.com/content/388/...

This clip from The Good Place sums up the current state of the Democratic Party quite well and we’re all Michael.

Precautions are personal choice now. The unions fought to have them dropped.

BREAKING: The USDA has confirmed five additional dairy herds in California have tested positive for the virus, raising the total to 732.

Currently, 74% of the state's dairy herds are infected with H5N1.

Steve Martin Says Martin Short Got COVID After ‘SNL50’ Special: “Curse Is Real” "Maya [Rudolph] had Covid. Marty has Covid. I wonder why?," the comedian said while sharing a photo of Short and Rudolph embracing and sharing a kiss.

It’s no mystery. COVID is airborne, very contagious, and dozens of entertainers & performers were gathered closely together & not wearing masks.

Can’t believe we’re still doing this five years in.

www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-news/m...

Screenshot from the Lancet.com Interpretation Among participants followed up to 3 years after initial infection, those with current Long COVID had worse physical and mental health outcomes. The majority of those with Long COVID did not resolve, with less than 2% having resolved Long COVID. The resolved Long COVID cohort had moderately worse physical and mental health compared with those never-having-Long COVID. COVID-19 vaccination was associated with better outcomes. Funding Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

New Lancet study shows extremely low, 2%, recovery rate from Long COVID.

However, those who considered their Long COVID resolved were still in worse health than those who never had Long COVID.

www.thelancet.com/journals/lan...

I’ve been a fan of your past poetry posts. Amazing stuff!

I have insomnia a lot lately so may as well share what’s literally keeping me up at night.

It’s a long list but tonight it’s flu. Yes, H5N1, but also seasonal flu. Firing federal scientists brings a flu-filled future.

Have you ever wondered how flu vaccine strains are chosen?