Literally this. They’re acting like people didn’t die. Like we all didn’t live through it and see it with our own eyes, and Trump wasn’t President at the time. It’s wild to watch.

I'm excited to share a preprint that's been years in the making: the idea took shape during the COVID pandemic. Anecdotally, people would sometimes spread COVID at work but not at home, and vice versa. Why? One explanation would be if infectiousness is fleeting...

How bursty infectiousness shapes epidemic dynamics

An epidemic’s expected course is determined by the magnitude and timing of a typical person’s infectiousness — captured, in turn, by the basic reproduction number and the generation-time distribution....

medrxiv.org

If you’re watching Fauci’s testimony remember that science isn’t an ideology. It doesn’t lie. It evolves. COVID-19 was a once-in-a-century pandemic caused by a brand-new virus, recommendations changed because the evidence changed. That’s not deception. That’s how it works.

Throughout your scientific career, you will read hundreds of dense manuscripts. 📚 As the literature stack piles up, remembering exactly where you saw a specific methodology or finding can be tough. Here is how I use a relational database to keep track of it all (and et al.). 👇

1. A bit of evolutionary biology. I'm really intrigued by a new perspective piece from Steve Frank that explores connections between how natural selection creates systems that generalize and recent work in machine learning about the surprising capabilities of massively overparameterized systems.

Generalization as the great leap in evolvability: insights from machine learning

Abstract. Natural selection encodes learned information in the genome. Learned solutions may be tuned specifically to past challenges, failing in altered e

academic.oup.com

PhD position (Melbourne, Australia) Mechanistic modelling of the epidemic dynamics of vector-borne zoonotic diseases in Australia with Oliver Eales, Freya Shearer, Marya Potorek at University of Melbourne More details: http://iddjobs.org/jobs/2561

Calculations on the containment of Bundibugyo ebolavirus with @caseymiddleton.bsky.social: www.medrxiv.org/content/10.6... We estimate: 1. Symptom screening misses 68%–86% of infected travelers. 2. A 7d post-travel quarantine misses 26% of infections. → 18%–23% missed by combined measures. 1/

Today's academic birthday gifts: ✨ Opinion piece rejected. 🏅 Tiny change required for resubmission of preprint. 🏆 Mandatory Disclosure of External Professional Activities due. Another day in paradise 🌴😎

6/ We eliminated measles 26 years ago. We eradicated New World Screwworm 60 years ago. Keeping diseases at bay requires sustained investment, trained people, and ongoing engagement.

Last night, we celebrated two birthdays: Cecil Earnest Middleton, born May 23, 1941 Casey Elaine Middleton, born June 4, 1996 Highly recommend celebrating your birthday with your granddad ✨

This is such a moving piece. If your interested in #Ebola — the damage it causes, the trauma families and communities and responders face during and after an outbreak — please read it. www.statnews.com/2026/05/20/e...

I saw Ebola as both doctor and patient. I wish people cared more about the Africans I worked alongside

“As another Ebola outbreak unfolds, we cannot repeat the mistakes of the past,” writes Krutika Kuppalli.

statnews.com

🚨 Disease modelers: Do you use empirical VE estimates interchangeably to inform vaccine effect parameters? Me too, and it’s distorting our predictions. VE estimates often do not align with model parameters. We discuss these pitfalls & solutions in our new preprint: arxiv.org/abs/2605.18571 🧵👇

Incorporating vaccine effects into epidemiological models: common pitfalls and solutions

Incorporating vaccination into mathematical models appears deceptively simple: models integrate vaccine-derived protections, such as reduced susceptibility to infection, using parameters informed by e...

arxiv.org

My four year old: I do number maths. Adults do maths with letters they don’t know. Me: Actually, yes, they do! Him: Why don’t they know all the letters yet? I do.

Today's micro-feminist win: changed my email signature from Thanks so much, to Thanks, Please hold your applause 🏅

Claude has started refusing to give citations. Yes, this technically means fewer hallucinations. But it doesn’t mean that AI is now hallucination-free in the way a careful researcher is.

For years, Jay Bhattacharya has been upset at the MMWR for publishing findings that run contrary to his predetermined conclusions (e.g., on immunity after covid vaccination) and his political agenda. Now he's in a position to prevent those findings from being published.

The Washington Post@washingtonpost.com · 4mo ago

Exclusive: The acting director of the CDC has delayed publication of a report showing the covid-19 vaccine cut the likelihood of ER visits and hospitalizations for healthy adults last winter by about half, according to two scientists.

"This is not reversing the damage. It is spending more than we spent on WHO to create an institution that’s unlikely to survive and will certainly accomplish only a fraction of what we did by working together with the entire world.” - Atul Gawande, @agawande.bsky.social 🎁 wapo.st/4tKRwyM

After leaving WHO, Trump officials propose more expensive replacement to duplicate it

HHS proposes spending $2 billion a year to re-create systems the U.S. accessed through the WHO at a fraction of the cost, according to officials briefed on the matter.

wapo.st

In a new preprint, we combine modeling with school-level vaccine data to contextualize the risk of 'breakthrough infections' and impacts on the ongoing US measles outbreak. #idsky #episky www.medrxiv.org/content/10.6...

Interpreting Breakthrough Infections Given Assortative Mixing of Partially Vaccinated Populations

Declining vaccine coverage across the United States has increased the risk of outbreaks of vaccine-preventable diseases. Even when vaccines have low primary failure rates, conventional epidemic theory...

medrxiv.org

Models can be powerful tools to study associations in data. But do they reliably reveal the truth? 🚨 In our new study, @danlarremore.bsky.social and I show that the model used to estimate VE from test-negative designs (TNDs) may not translate to other correlates of risk. doi.org/10.1093/aje/...

Statistical methods for estimating the protective effects of immune markers using test-negative designs

Abstract. While widely used to study vaccine effectiveness, test-negative designs (TNDs) also provide a platform for identifying and quantifying immunologi

doi.org

If you live outside of Minneapolis but want to support the community, Lisa and her husband are doing boots on the ground work to protect families! Donate to their work via Venmo @lisa-szabo-1

Sometimes it feels really heavy to pretend everything is okay in our country and just keep doing research. It seems like the best thing I can do for my career is the worst thing I can do as a human being.

It really says something about the state of our country that I no longer believe banning LED headlights should be a top federal government policy priority… But I still hate them, to be clear 😑

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How can diagnostic tests for infection support public health – and what challenges do we need to overcome to maximize their potential? Kristin Nelson, Tyler Brown, and I have a new article out digging into this exciting, complex issue: www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Diagnostic testing as a public health intervention: challenges and opportunities

Published in Future Virology (Vol. 20, No. 12, 2025)

tandfonline.com

I have recently taken up watercolor as a relaxing after-work hobby. This piece captures a subtle sunset over the lake at my parents’ house in Tennessee!

6/ This is not a debate. That data is crystal clear. Since the 1996 Port Arthur massacre, Australia’s buyback program and strict licensing have kept mass shootings to ~0–1 per year. The U.S. has about 400–650 mass shootings annually and over 46,000 gun deaths each year. It’s not even close.

The MIDAS Trainee Executive Committee is recruiting new members for 2026! 🤓 This is a great opportunity for grad students & postdocs in infectious disease modeling to gain experience organizing events & connect with peers. Applications are due by 9am ET on 1/1/2026, link in flyer & alt text.

Interdisciplinary scientists’ notes apps be like: - VEdirect vs VEtotal - d/dx(a^x) = ln(x) a^x - grocery list - to read: doi.org/… - how to exit vim