Dr. Catherine Herzog (PhD MPH)

This Is How a Child Dies of Measles When your family becomes a data point in an outbreak

This is a vivid, horribly relevant read. “She does not sleep well. And as you lift up her pajama top to check her rash one morning, you see that her breathing is labored, shadows pooling between her ribs when she sucks in air. You suffer an icy moment of realization: This is a medical crisis.”

This week marks a year since 10% of the CDC work force was fired. We are more vulnerable to the next pandemic,outbreak monitoring is crumbling, measles is basically endemic again,vaccine guidelines are now RFK Jr fan fiction.
All it took was one year.

Rare, dangerous side effects of some COVID-19 vaccines explained “Groundbreaking” study uncovers why adenovirus-based shots caused life-threatening blood clots and bleeding in some people

Five years after the rollout of Covid-19 vaccines started, it seems the mystery of why the Astra-Zeneca and J&J vaccines led to a rare but deadly side effect of unusual blood clots and bleeding has finally been solved. 

It's a fascinating case of molecular mimicry that may help make vaccine safer.🧪

1/ ProPublica collected handwritten letters in mid-January from children held at the Dilley Immigration Processing Center, the same facility where 5-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos was taken.

Hundreds of kids are still detained.

We’ll let the children’s words speak for themselves. 🧵

Around the world, politicians and businessmen are resigning from their positions because of the Epstein Files.

Except in the United States.

Here: Zero shame, zero consequences.

We need resignations, investigations, impeachments, and punishments now. Should have been years ago.

How I Work What I’ve learned about authority, capability, and the conditions for meaningful change

A lot of the stuff I’ve been writing about recently is about modelling better behaviours and holding myself to account.

This isn’t entirely how I work. It’s how I WANT to work.

The Cost of Noticing First Why regulation determines whether early signals become insight or burnout

ohhh that pairs nicely with @himal.bsky.social's piece

Burnout and Disengagement Are Signals Why exhaustion and disengagement are signals, not failures

Burnout and disengagement aren’t individual failures. They’re signals of systems under strain.

When effort replaces capacity and responsibility is pushed down without authority, people adapt. Some burn out. Others disengage.

Until conditions change, transformation only reproduces the same risks.

Exclusive: Detention Center Captives Are Throwing Lotion Bottles Wrapped With Notes to Organizers Outside Otay Mesa Facility ~ L.A. TACO “For 280 days we haven’t eaten a single piece of fruit, banana, apple, orange, or anything fresh," an Otay Mesa captive communicated through handwritten note. "We are all in one big room with no doors...

Otay Mesa "Detention Center" (prison camp) in San Diego, CA:

lataco.com/captive-loti...

The Trump admin has shut down the CIA’s World Factbook, a country reference that for six decades has provided data on birth and death rates, major exports, and more. Long used by government officials and by researchers, educators, and journalists, the database was taken offline today.

Cartoon of the Bill of Rights on life support

OPM removes language on back pay for furloughed feds from shutdown guidance | Federal News Network OPM's shutdown guidance also added a section stating that performance-based adverse actions against employees are allowed in some cases during a funding lapse.

1/5
OPM quietly revised its Jan 2026 shutdown guidance. The new text backs away from guaranteed back pay for furloughed feds -- even though a 2019 law already guarantees it. The statute didn’t change; the guidance did. 🔍

🙏 @jheckman.bsky.social @dfriedman.bsky.social @federalnewsnetwork.com

NSF GRFP applicants (and mentors): Was your application Returned Without Review and deemed ineligible despite fitting in the allowed topics?
1) Write NSF
2) Write your Congressperson
3) CC us at grfp@grant-witness.us so we can compile + follow up

Details and template at grant-witness.us/grfp-letter

We're already at 1/5 of the measles cases we saw last year, and it's only been three weeks

Incredible. The people of Minnesota are inspiring a nation.

The most important public health story in America right now is that the Trump administration is kidnapping 2-year olds

This whole article is just flabbergasting. Here for instance, he's either forgotten about the massive measles epidemic 1989-1991 or is ignoring it. How different do you think our treatment is today? (Not that much!)

I've talked to people on the ground about the strike here tomorrow, and the single thing everyone brings up is just how shockingly wide the support for the strike is. Businesses that no one would have expected to support it are doing so.

Kennedy Plan to Test a Vaccine in West African Babies Is Blocked

“On Thursday, Quinhin Nantote, Guinea-Bissau’s minister of public health, said the study had not received proper ethical approval, and his office has suspended it… “We have no evidence of any meeting they held, we don’t even have minutes of a negotiated approval,” he said.”

YouTube video by DRM News FULL SPEECH: Canada’s PM Carney Says US-Led World Order Is Breaking at World Economic Forum | AC1G

"The middle powers must act together because if we‘re not at the table, we‘re on the menu".

www.youtube.com/watch?v=dTvF...

Phenomenal timeline viz from our dear friends at @firedbutfighting.bsky.social 💚💚

Highlights the chaos we've endured at CDC over the past year.

www.cdcdataproject.org/chaos-at-cdc

SPEECH: The Three Evils of Society, Martin Luther King, Jr., 1967 | Black Agenda Report Dr. Martin Luther King’s radical critique of racism, militarism, and poverty can never be bought, bridled, controlled, or compromised.

“It seems that our legislative assemblies have adopted Nero as their patron saint and are bent on fiddling while our cities burn… That is the sickness of racism, excessive materialism and militarism. Not only is this our nation’s dilemma, it is the plague of western civilization.” -MLKJ, 1967

MLK Jr. said America suffers not just from "the vitriolic words and actions of the bad people but for the appalling silence of the good people."

Remember this.

Thousands of people protesting throughout Denmark showing solidarity with Greenland and standing against the fascist MAGA regime. Couldn’t be prouder seeing this.

The first thing Virginia Spanberger did after being sworn in as Governor of Virginia was repeal Youngkin’s executive order requiring state and local law enforcement to cooperate with ICE.

This is the kind of leadership Democratic governors nationwide should be emulating.

75+ years of history...

and one day, when things change, there will be panels to restore and more panels to add because enough people have spoken up to make it so & because of new discoveries enabled by NSF support that open vistas into the world.

nsf.widen.net/s/tnknqt9sz8...

The U.S. Senate voted 51–50 against a measure to block President Trump from taking further military action in Venezuela without Congress’ authorization, with Vice President J.D. Vance casting the tie-breaking vote.

NIH funding underlies all of these advances--support fundamental science, and the bridge from there to the clinic 🧪

U.S. Attacked Boat With Aircraft That Looked Like a Civilian Plane

Retired Maj. Gen. Steven J. Lepper “said that if the aircraft had been painted in a way that disguised its military nature and got close enough for the people on the boat to see it — tricking them into failing to realize they should take evasive action or surrender to survive — that was a war crime”