Maciej F Boni

Doctors push back on Trump admin’s autism & Tylenol link | CNN Dr. Paul Offit and Dr. Veronica Gillispie-Bell joins The Lead

tinyurl.com/yc5nhcv4
In one of the most irresponsible presidential press conferences in history, Donald Trump declares that Tylenol during pregnancy cause autism. Again, apparently, mothers are to blame.

Life in authoritarian states is mostly boring and tolerable Americans have an overly dramatic view what the end of democracy looks like.

The point is that many can live quite normally under the thumb of authoritarianism. Yes: many suffer and suffer now but large swaths of the American public chooses to be clueless and it’s not difficult. This is how the world ends, not with a bang but a whimper. www.vox.com/the-big-idea...

Monarez: "Kennedy demanded 2 things of me that were were inconsistent w/ my oath of office. He directed me to commit in advance to approving every ACIP recommendation regardless of the scientific evidence. He also directed me to dismiss career officials responsible for vaccine policy without cause"

Discussions grounded in science and clear that pandemic response involves hard choices, are a vital part of how we *should* respond to Covid. Even if they are thin on the ground right now

Did non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) like masks & bans on large gathering work to reduce COVID cases? Yes, the data tell us that they did. Minutes 18-21 show what we saw at state level. In general (not always) states with stronger messaging and better compliance had fewer COVID deaths. 4/

Did opening schools increase viral transmission? See minutes 53-58. COVID cases increased by 10%-30% when you compared open/partially open schools to closed schools. Thru June 2021, 600K Americans died. What should school policy have been during this period? Likely the hardest q we have to answer 3/

Some key points. Consider the nature of the emergency. You wake up one morning, it's March 2020, and a half a million people are about to die; minutes 41:45 to 44:00 give you an explanation of the primary risks and secondary risks during this period. 2/

YouTube video by Braver Angels A COVID Pandemic Policy Conversation

Thanks to Braver Angels & David Zweig for engaging in this debate on the primary effects of the first year of the pandemic (540,000 deaths), the secondary effects (one year of learning loss for kids, unemployment, isolation), and things that we did right and wrong 1/
www.youtube.com/watch?v=59Gg...

JB Pritzker, August 25: Mr. President, do not come to Chicago.

5 Chicago article, September 6: Protest against deployment of federal troops to Chicago takes over Michigan Avenue

Man holding sign that says National Guard stay out of Chicago

Trump on Sept 7 responding to "Do you have plans for Chicago this week?" saying "No. Not really."

Pushing back works. Stand strong, Chicago.

Please join us in Sunny Philadelphia, Friday evening Sep 5, for a chat about what went wrong and right during the COVID pandemic response. Hosted by Temple University.

Reserve a spot on the Braver Angels website here: www.eventbrite.com/e/a-covid-pa...

Let's please keep the remaining staff at NIH, NSF, etc in our thoughts even as you lose sleep over your own lab and scientific career.

They are enduring pure chaos to try to hold the fort.

See snapshot from wapo.st/4feKKuu (gift 🔗) saying they are "barely holding it together"

Rewording my earlier post.

RFK Jr will be testifying before Congress.

I am interested in what experts and others think would be the best way to leverage this time and opportunity for the public good.

If you were behind the dais for this hearing, what would you do? What do you want to see asked?

Censorship vs. Science: The Fight Over Free Speech That Is Tearing Us Apart Podcast Episode · Why Should I Trust You? · 03/06/2025 · 1h 23m

Hello @episky.bsky.social -- tenth episode of "Why Should I Trust You?" , a podcast on the trust we lost in public health and some routes on how to get it back. Episode 10: censorship. podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/c...

Today, a collaborative grant we submitted to the National Institutes of Health won't be reviewed. No one's will.

Grant reviews have been halted for study section after study section.

Yes, I am mad. But, folks outside science should be even madder.

a 🧵

The taxpayers, through Federal NIH funding, have literally invested tens of millions of dollars in my education & career. This is a privledge, & I have always endevored to give my best back to the taxpayers who put me here

I am just one of many thousands of scientists who can tell the same story

American science and medicine has been thrown into chaos and uncertainty over the past week. Here are some stories to get up to speed. 1/12

So many important points on public health communication in this episode. Thanks @pauloffit.bsky.social

[Why Should I Trust You?] The Trump and (Likely) RFK Jr. Era is Here. And Paul Offit Won't Back Down. #whyShouldITrustYou
podcastaddict.com/why-should-i... via @PodcastAddict

Why Should I Trust You? News Commentary Podcast · 2 Episodes · Updated Weekly

Hi @episky.bsky.social, public health and public policy friends. 2025 will be full or surprises, please listen to this new podcast (episode 1) "Why Should I Trust You" as we are all going to need to communicate clearly and empathetically for the next 4 years. podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/w...

The preliminary sequence from the H5N1 human case in British Columbia has been posted and it is not good news. The virus potentially has a quasispecies at HA residue 226 (H3 numbering). This is bad news because we know that mutations at residue 226 can increase binding to human receptors. 1/

Influenza vaccine allocation in tropical settings under constrained resources Abstract. Influenza virus seasonality, synchronicity, and vaccine supply differ substantially between temperate and tropical settings, and optimal vaccinat

New paper on #influenza #vaccination in tropical areas! Published in PNAS Nexus. #episky

doi.org/10.1093/pnas...

Without strong flu seasonality in much of the tropics, timing annual vaccination campaigns is challenging. It becomes more important to ask WHO to vaccinate instead of WHEN.

1/4

Hi @epidemiology.bsky.social we are #hiring - there is a critical need 4 new global health planning in #malaria specifically to push back the artemisinin resistance identified in East/Central Africa in 2020 #jobs #postdocposition plz contact if interested in job/postdoc/PhD in this area👉 mol.ax/opp/

Enjoy early spring and early summer : ) then, in September, don't forget to get re-vaccinated for COVID. As always, many thanks to Fuhan Yang, Emily Howerton, Thu Tran, and @jlservadio.bsky.social for running these analyses in 2022 — FIN — 10/

This would tell us — all other things equal — whether in the long run COVID epidemics are expected to be 25%, 50%, or 75% more deadly than influenza epidemics. Whatever the case, this virus still is and will likely continue to be the #1 infectious disease killer in the United States. 9/

Next winter’s numbers will add to this story. Perhaps the next set of estimates should be done in the context of an influenza comparison, i.e. gathering the data for flu and COVID death, hospitalization, and vaccination coverage. 8/

However, with nearly 100% of the >5 population non-naïve to COVID infection or SARS-CoV-2 Spike antigen, it is likely that we will need new estimates of these fatality rates for the steadier and more predictable phase of COVID transmission we are in now. 7/

The IFR, CFR, and HFR were closely watched and estimated by multiple research groups in 2020 and 2021, in order to continue producing high-quality forecasts of mortality risk during this period. 6/

A second cause for the overestimate is probably the incomplete calibration of infection fatality rates (IFR), case fatality rates (CFR), and hospitalization fatality rates (HFR) for COVID in late 2022 and 2023. 5/

Best case scenario in our previous analysis was 2 years of immune protection from infection or vaccination but it’s becoming clear that this protection likely lasts somewhat longer. This is evident from the 2 small winter epidemics of COVID we just experienced in 2022-23 and 2023-24. 4/

We don’t know how long or how strong COVID immune protection is. Antibody measurements tell you one thing 6-12 months post-infection, but protection against hospitalization & death likely lasts longer esp when compared to the naïve immunological states we were looking at in 2020 and 2021. 3/

In previous analyses and threads, we forecasted these numbers to be >81,000 deaths annually assuming no increases in vaccination or treatment coverage. It looks like our estimates were high. There are a couple likely reasons for this. 2/

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