"Today is August 4, 2026" There Will Come Soft Rains By: Ray Bradbury

I'm excited to be co-organizing the 2026 Midwest Microbial Pathogenesis Conference, which will take place Sept 25-27 on the UMN campus in Minneapolis! Poster abstracts due Aug 7! Submit yours & register here ➡️ mmpc2026.umn.edu

Shocking.

This article would be very short in our house: "when the cat does".

Nature@nature.com · 4d ago

How does the brain know when it's time to wake up? go.nature.com/4hcDRNn

It's been two weeks since Taylor Farms initiated a recall and cases are still rising. One in 940 Michiganders have *tested positive*, and that's definitely an undercount.

Reuters@reuters.com · 5d ago

Cyclosporiasis cases in Michigan rise to 10,773 in ongoing outbreak reut.rs/4w2soUh

I won't link to it, but somehow we've arrived at a place in the history of humanity that someone saw fit to *write an article* about Stephen A Smith's take on Tony Fauci's use of the Fifth Amendment... and then it ended up in a news feed for me? Mistakes have been made.

After my post, more NIHers wanted to share: "Dr. Fauci took the time to recognize each new staff member during in-person town halls before COVID came along. Although he is not a warm and fuzzy guy, he still cares about people. That included those who worked under his direction at NIAID."

Jenna Norton@jenna-m-norton.bsky.social · 7d ago

You can tell a lot about a leader by listening to the people who worked for them. Those who worked for Tony Fauci uniformly respected him. Today’s congressional hearing was a witch hunt, part of a larger effort to undermine science and scientists. www.reuters.com/business/hea...

In my lifetime, the two most impactful medical interventions I can think of have been antiretrovirals for HIV and vaccines for COVID, and Fauci has been deeply involved in both.

Ilan Schwartz@germhuntermd.bsky.social · last wk.

Fauci has “saved more lives, created more amazing infrastructures for developing research opportunities, cured more people, provided health care to more people both in the United States and abroad, probably, than any single scientist in his lifetime” - Larry Corey @fredhutch.org

Woke-ass avocados But srsly, this is some Left Hand of Darkness stuff

Jeff Groh@jeffgroh.bsky.social · last wk.

Avocados come in 2 varieties - A-types start each day female and switch to male midday. B-types do the reverse. In work just published from the last chapter of my PhD, we show this system evolved 40+million yrs ago and is regulated by alleles of 1 transcription factor www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Denominators are important here too, and would be super interesting to see. Who's testing, why, etc is surely all shifting...

Alex Sundermann, DrPH@sundermannaj.bsky.social · last wk.

Biofire cyclospora % positive looks like it has finally peaked 👀 🤞🏻💩

Biofire cyclospora % positive looks like it has finally peaked 👀 🤞🏻💩

Among the most remarkable advances in medical history…

NEJM.org@nejm.org · 2w ago

On the basis of the results of clinical trials, the @fda.gov approved 36 antiretroviral drugs between 1987 and 2026 for the treatment of HIV infection. Learn more about antiretroviral therapy in a new review: https://nej.md/4wn6mg2

8 yo is putting away dishes while singing "master of puppets is a-pulling your striiiings" in a low voice with a smile, not to sass at being made to do chores, but just bc it's a catchy tune. Is this the greatest GenX parenting triumph?

This outbreak is starting to approach the size of Kivu outbreak (second largest ever recorded at 3,470 reported cases). But that outbreak ran for almost 2 years. This outbreak was declared little more than 2 months ago. (And yes, it also suggests that this was spreading undetected for a long time.)

Another massive jump in Ebola cases in DRC (reflecting new cases as well as "data harmonization"). Now 2,905 cases including 1,269 deaths. I find it harder every day to square the size and speed of spread of this outbreak with the lack of attention it is getting. insp.cd/sitrep-n069-...

The CDC officially recorded more measles cases this year than in all of 2025, making 2026 the worst for measles in 35 years. Public health officials warned that falling childhood vaccination rates left more communities vulnerable to sustained outbreaks.

CDC has announced record measles numbers. See how bad cases have been.

With more than five months left in the year, 2026 is the worst for measles in 35 years. Public health officials have warned that falling childhood vaccination rates have left more communities vulnerab...

washingtonpost.com

"In a patient with a staghorn calculus, chronic urinary tract infection with Klebsiella pneumoniae enabled within-patient evolution of virulence properties that facilitated dissemination of infection, leading to a brain abscess." Don't mess with Klebs. #UTISky #UTI #IDSky

Andreas Peschel @andreaspeschel.bsky.social · 2w ago

What drives hypervirulence and resistance of the ESKAPE pathogen Klebsiella pneumoniae? Check this exciting story by @dzif.bsky.social Prof. Christoph Ernst Klebsiella Brain Abscess and Evolution of Heterovirulence in the Urinary Tract | New England Journal of Medicine www.nejm.org/doi/10.1056/...

What drives hypervirulence and resistance of the ESKAPE pathogen Klebsiella pneumoniae? Check this exciting story by @dzif.bsky.social Prof. Christoph Ernst Klebsiella Brain Abscess and Evolution of Heterovirulence in the Urinary Tract | New England Journal of Medicine www.nejm.org/doi/10.1056/...

Klebsiella Brain Abscess and Evolution of Heterovirulence in the Urinary Tract | NEJM

In a patient with a staghorn calculus, chronic urinary tract infection with Klebsiella pneumoniae enabled within-patient evolution of virulence properties that facilitated dissemination of infectio...

nejm.org

Astonishing. RFK Jr. adds 8 members to a 6 member FDA advisory panel. 6 of them were sellers of peptides, and the 7th a compounding pharmacist. In an 8-6 vote with all 8 votes coming from these new panel members, the panel approved 4 peptides against the objections of FDA scientists.

FDA Panel Supports Lifting Restrictions on Four Peptides (Gift Article)

In an all-day hearing, the agency’s scientists argued against allowing broad access to unproven drugs that the agency had banned three years ago.

nytimes.com

The CDC has linked four additional states — Illinois, Kansas, Oklahoma and Pennsylvania — to a multistate cyclosporiasis outbreak traced to shredded iceberg lettuce sourced from central Mexico. This is the nation’s largest known cyclosporasis outbreak.

CDC expands largest known U.S. cyclospora outbreak to 9 states

The newly linked states — Illinois, Kansas, Oklahoma and Pennsylvania — join Indiana, Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio and West Virginia.

washingtonpost.com

Hot take: everyone wants to talk about Scylla (scientists are bad at simple, clear communication) and no one wants to talk about Charybdis (scientists, especially in climate or public health, live in constant fear of bad faith attacks on approximate statements by a right wing career-ending machine)

Me, an actual ID doc who’s On Here too much: ‘wow, that many countries use Ranked Choice Voting? (But why is that relevant to infants?) ohhh…’

Kevin Ault @kevinault.bsky.social · 2w ago

"By 2024, approximately 21 million infants aged 12–23 months (16% of the global birth cohort), lived in the 15 countries that had not introduced RCV" RCV is rubella containing vaccine - #MedSky + #IDSky - in tomorrow's MMWR. www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes...

So COOL

Craig Kaplan@triggerloop.bsky.social · 2w ago

Some bacteria use the CRISPR/Cas systems as transcriptional repressors of other anti-phage systems, such that when CRISPR interfered with, gene expression of repressed anti-phage systems goes up www.nature.com/articles/s41...

The talk that was making the rounds a while back is out as a preprint!

George Davey Smith@mendelrandom.bsky.social · 2w ago

Does the (live) shingles vaccine protect against dementia? Fergus Hamilton and colleagues provide important evidence in a new preprint using hospital data from the whole of England in a regression discontinuity design from which we *don't* show evidence of a meaningful protective effect /cont

Microbiology professors/PIs, would you like to join the microPI slack? Microbiology is defined broadly. This is an open tent. Professor/PI is inclusive to teaching focused roles, or pure research PI roles like a National lab PI. Reply or DM me and I will send you a link.

zomg. whose career trajectories does a timeline like this support?

Whatever could be said about that claim when he made it in 1962, it soon became undeniable that government vaccine research, distribution, and mandates are objectively among the greatest achievements of civilization. Claiming otherwise is embarrassing, it's like saying you don't wash your hands.

Cato Institute@cato.org · 3w ago

"The great achievements of civilization have not come from government bureaus." — Milton Friedman. They were driven by individual liberty and free markets. And they always will be.

8 yo yesterday evening: "I can't wait for the weekend!" Me: "why, what's happening this weekend?" 8 yo: "Nothing, and I'm so excited for it!" ❤️

Dang they really got a category for everything