Hailey Robertson

Genomic epidemiology of dengue virus 2 and 3 reveals repeated introductions and exportations of several lineages in Colombia. Dengue fever, a major mosquito–borne viral disease, is transmitted by Aedes mosquitoes and poses a significant global health burden. Despite extensive research, the spatiotemporal dynamics of dengue v...

It’s my pleasure to share our new preprint, which I had the opportunity to lead, and which has been in the making since 2022.

In this work, we used climate data, phylogeography, and antigenic profiling to uncover the dynamics of DENV spread in Colombia.
www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1...

I'll say it a thousand times -- any account of the past that only celebrates the good parts of a nation without reckoning with the bad is not what we call "history"

It is propaganda, pure and simple.

White House Announces Comprehensive Review of Smithsonian Exhibitions

again, what is interesting to me about this stuff — beyond the obvious fact that what trump wants is propaganda — is that it is grounded in a political theory which holds trump to be the sovereign will of the nation, who can impose his demands on every aspect of the nation's society

Content of letter: Subject: RFK Jr is endangering lives and must resign Dear Senator, I am a faculty member who leads a biomedical research lab at Emory University. On Friday evening I was working in the lab with 4 of my students when we received notification about an active shooter at Emory Point. We sheltered in place for two hours, about a block away from the shooting, watching the news and discussing where we would hide if the shooter came to our building. While this was traumatic for us, it does not compare to the trauma that CDC workers just across the street experienced as bullets were shot at their buildings. We now know that the gunman targeted the CDC due to misinformation about the Covid-19 vaccine. This information has been most heavily promoted by the man who oversees the CDC, the HHS secretary RFK Jr. It is unacceptable that government leaders are putting federal workers within their own agencies at risk for their lives. The fact that he has cancelled contracts for developing mRNA vaccines and changed the guidelines for Covid-19 vaccinations also puts millions of Americans at risk. I am asking you to call for the resignation of RFK Jr. because of his dangerous actions that have already killed one person – the police officer who responded to the CDC shooting – and will certainly kill many more. Sincerely, Anita Devineni Assistant Professor, Emory University

RFK Jr. needs to resign. On top of endangering millions of lives through his demonization and rollback of vaccines, the hatred he has spread for federal workers in his own agency led to the CDC shooting on Friday and the death of a police officer.

Here's the letter I wrote to my senators:

In a Monday interview with Scripps News, Kennedy reiterated his concerns about coronavirus vaccine injuries. He also criticized public health messaging about coronavirus vaccines when asked about the plan to quell misinformation to prevent something like the CDC shooting from happening again. "One of the things that we saw during covid is that the government was overreaching in its efforts to persuade the public to get vaccinated, and they were saying things that were not always true," Kennedy said, later adding, "The public health agencies have not been honest."

he might as well have said “they deserved it”

Bakeries cannot be forced to sell cakes to gay couples. But farmers market vendors can be forced to sell pierogis to pedophiles.

by Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, John Roberts, and Clarence Thomas

CDC employees told me the shooting at CDC was much worse than initial police reports suggested. More than 40 bullets hit buildings. “It’s a miracle more people weren’t hit,” said one staffer who was locked down in a building for hours last evening.

New EO mandates *codification* of a process allowing termination of AWARDED grants at any time “for convenience, including when the award no longer advances agency priorities or the national interest.”

I can’t fathom the number of ways this will hurt trainees, ECRs, and TT faculty.💔

Excellent thread.

If you're American, you are literally safer from violence and theft than your parents or grandparents were. But almost no one realizes that.

excellent stuff here

if i do not comply within approx, 30 minutes of her starting to whine at the door, she pees in my big leather tote bag or whatever else is near the entryway. please help

a grey cat eagerly walking on a brick path, wearing a bright green harness and blue leash (that has definitely also been used as a toy)

grey cat with beautiful green eyes (it’s true) sitting outdoors on an apartment stoop

taking my cat on her daily walk around the courtyard to the delight of the neighborhood children. you might think this is whimsy and cute, however

Handwritten notecard. Prompt at the top asks: What object was most devastating for you to lose, and how have you been coping? Answer below: Dentures. Were thrown away and coping isn't somthing I can do. It’s made me feel ugly, unworthy, can’t go get a job with no teeth. So how can get off the streets until another pair can be made?

ProPublica spoke to about 150 people who had lived in homeless encampments when cities cleared them out in “sweeps.”

We distributed notecards so people could tell us about the toll in their own words.

➡️ This is what they wrote: projects.propublica.org/impact-of-ho...

Biodiversity science and biosurveillance are fellow travelers The failure to meet the Aichi targets to alleviate global biodiversity decline (Nature 2020) was a wake-up call to the biodiversity monitoring community (T

🦠🌿🐦🧪 How can biodiversity monitoring help global efforts in disease surveillance?

With ✨ fantastic ✨ colleagues from @viralemergence.org and the @geobon.org working group on One Health, we try to identify three key lessons for the future.

🧵 A short thread!

academic.oup.com/bioscience/a...

Two women social distancing on a park bench, wearing masks

A live animal market

A school being decontaminated

A chicken biosecurity area

3️⃣ An "IPCC for pandemics" would let scientists develop consensus on key issues where the evidence is complex and sometimes contradictory - think airborne transmission, social distancing, herd immunity, school closures, pathogen origins, and most importantly, future risks - BEFORE the next pandemic.

Pathways to an Intergovernmental Panel on Pandemics: lessons from the IPCC and IPBES Colin J Carlson, Christopher H Trisos, Ben Oppenheim, Shweta Bansal, Sara E Davies, Aïda Diongue-Niang, Victoria Y Fan, John D Kraemer, Rachel Golden Kroner, Lawrence O Gostin, David T S Hayman, Marion Koopmans, Torre E Lavelle, Carlos G das Neves, Zoe O’Donoghue, Laura M Pereira, Benjamin Roche, Matiangai Sirleaf, Kayla Zamanian, Carlos Zambrana-Torrelio, Alexandra L Phelan Pandemics pose a global threat to human wellbeing, justice, economies, and ecosystems and are comparable with other planetary crises such as climate change and biodiversity loss in terms of urgency and impact. The global community would benefit from a dedicated scientific synthesis body to assess pandemic risks and solutions. In this Personal View, we explore proposals for an Intergovernmental Panel on Pandemics and assess potential pathways to its creation. Learning lessons from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) might help national governments and international organisations to chart a course through important decisions about format, governance, operations, scientific scope and process, and ability to recommend policies that make the world safer.

🚨 Very, very big news. Today, a global coalition - including members of the IPCC, IPBES, and WHO expert advisors, as well as independent virologists, epidemiologists, and lawyers - started the process of creating an "IPCC for Pandemics."

🔓 www.thelancet.com/journals/lan...
🧵 Five things to know 👉

👋 We’re still collecting responses!! We’d love your input if you’re in an adjacent field — already seeing some super cool questions that make me so excited for the workshop.

every time someone puts a dual monitor setup in a beautiful bay window an angel loses its wings

Building a resistance to US assaults on public health The administration of US President Donald Trump has launched a full-fledged assault on science and public health;1 its “flood the zone” strategy created chaos and initially overwhelmed potential oppos...

"More people need to find their place in the resistance and to foster what Hannah Arendt called “conditions of courage” to allow others to choose defection rather than compliance"

@aliciay.bsky.social @gregggonsalves.bsky.social

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

Infectious disease researcher Hailey Robertson writes home to Kansas, where bird flu reached four dairy cattle herds in 2024, to urge support for American science 🧪 🏠

Done! Thank you!

Topeka scientist says NSF funds critical to infectious disease forecasting | Opinion Planned budget cuts for 2026 would deepen damage to STEM education, jobs, and public access to taxpayer-funded data.

"You have died of dysentery." A path into science shouldn't be as fraught as the Oregon Trail. Check out epidemiologist, NSF GRFP fellow, and Kansan @haileyrobertson.bsky.social's McClintock letter in the Topeka Capital-Journal! www.cjonline.com/story/opinio...

"When we cut these programs, we're not trimming fat — we're cutting into the muscle that keeps America strong and competitive." Hailey Robertson re NSF graduate research training budget cuts.

Huge thanks to @cornellasap.bsky.social and @sciencehomecoming.bsky.social for the inspiration to get this out there as part of the #McClintockLetters initiative!

Topeka scientist says NSF funds critical to infectious disease forecasting | Opinion Planned budget cuts for 2026 would deepen damage to STEM education, jobs, and public access to taxpayer-funded data.

A bit different from my usual writing, but excited (despite the circumstances) to share my op-ed in the Topeka Capital-Journal! I discuss recent NSF funding cuts and what they mean for Kansans, both now and in the future.

🌻 www.cjonline.com/story/opinio...

Which means a baby born in New York to undocumented parents will be a citizen. But a baby born to undocumented parents in Kentucky will not be a citizen.

This is madness.

So am I reading this court decision correctly? We now have 50 micronations with their own laws interpreting the U.S. Constitution wholly separate from one another? But there's one guy with private law enforcement who is immune from all punishment who can do whatever he wants in those 50 states?

The quote below is from Dr. Lakshmi Panagiotakopoulos, who recently resigned from CDC after co-leading the ACIP COVID work group. The new ACIP jettisoned work group experts in favor of anti-vax activists.
👉Canada's NACI is now the best source for evidence-based vax recommendations in North America

JUSTICE JACKSON, with whom JUSTICE SOTOMAYOR and JUSTICE KAGAN join, dissenting. The Civil Rights Act of 1871 was an exercise in grand ambition. It had to be. In the wake of the Civil War, the American South was consumed by a wave of terrorist violence designed to disenfranchise and intimidate the country’s newly freed citizens and their allies. The threat was existential—not just for the newly liberated, but for democracy itself—and required bold intervention. It was precisely because the goals of the 1871 Act were so ambitious that those most committed to the structures it targeted, including many in South Carolina, opposed the measure so vehemently. A century and a half later, the project of stymying one of the country’s great civil rights laws continues. In this latest chapter, South Carolina urges our Court to adopt a narrow and ahistorical reading of the 1871 Act’s first section, which is codified today at 42 U. S. C. §1983. That venerable provision permits any citizen to obtain redress in federal court for “the deprivation of any rights, privileges, or immunities secured by the Constitution and laws” of the United States. South Carolina asks us to hollow out that provision so that

In her furious dissent, Jackson writes of the Supreme Court's decision: "The project of stymying one of the country’s great civil rights laws continues." She likens today's ruling to notorious decisions after the Civil War cutting back civil rights statutes. www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/24p...

National Science Foundation Staff Booted From Headquarters - Eos Staff at the National Science Foundation (NSF) were notified on 25 June that the agency’s office space, located in Alexandria, Va., will be taken over by Department of Housing and Urban Development (H...

National Science Foundation staff were notified that their office space will be taken over by Department of Housing and Urban Development. It's unclear where the 1,800+ NSF employees will work. Renovation plans apparently include a personal gym for the HUD secretary & family eos.org/research-and...