Plenty of evidence that this is a negative policy step. Doctors, scientists: don’t just roll your eyes - call it out. The attack on truth, on institutional trust, is cynical and calculated. We must respond. 🧪 #medsky #episky #academicsky www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026...

Trump signs order attempting to override CDC vaccine schedule and break up MMR shots

Order also recommends all shots be given at separate medical visits though cost of doing them together is lower

theguardian.com

Vaccine benefit in children "Since 1974, vaccination has averted 154 million deaths, including 146 million among children younger than 5 years of whom 101 million were infants younger than 1 year." www.thelancet.com/journals/lan... The most striking benefit was for vaccination vs measles (Figure)

Introducing the NextGen Covid Vax Tracker! vaxtracker.wordpress.com/2026/07/29/i... A monthly update on vaccine progress, featured vaccines, analyses, plus lots of background info. #Vaccines #Covid #Covid19

New Substack: From interventions to architecture. Prevention rarely fails because we lack evidence. It fails because interventions aren't designed to work across system layers and timescales jimmcmanuswrites.substack.com/p/designing-... #PublicHealth #Prevention #SystemsThinking #Implementation

Designing Prevention to succeed: beyond the 17 reasons for failure

A framework for thinking about prevention across layers and across time phases

jimmcmanuswrites.substack.com

Hey @lewisgoodall.com here is our Lancet article on Long COVID. Happy to chat. www.thelancet.com/action/showP...

NEW: Elderly & frail patients are worst affected by the A&E crisis. New #QualityWatch findings show that 43% of over-80s wait more than 12 hours between arrival in A&E & admission to a ward – compared with 19% of 21-30-year-olds. www.nuffieldtrust.org.uk/news-item/lo...

If you shop online please consider supporting a small charity like @longcovidkids.bsky.social You buy your usual stuff @easyfundraising.bsky.social collects the donation from the store. Every little helps. join.easyfundraising.org.uk/long-covid-k...

You spend, brands donate to Long Covid Kids and Friends.

Help us when you shop with 7,000+ brands. Join now.

join.easyfundraising.org.uk

Prevention doesn't usually die in a dramatic policy failure. Its much more like a long defeat. My latest piece maps the remaining 9 of 17 reasons prevention fails—and the deeper pattern tying them together. jimmcmanuswrites.substack.com/p/the-long-d... #PublicHealth #Prevention #SystemsThinking

The Long Defeat: Seventeen Reasons Prevention Fails Continued...

Part Two: Why good prevention still loses momentum

jimmcmanuswrites.substack.com

A *bumper* month of nextgen Covid vax clinical trial news: — Results of 2 clinical trials for mucosal vaccines, including Vaxart's oral vax — Another mucosal vaccine is going into clinical trial, and 4 others are fully recruited or completed ...1/3 absolutelymaybe.plos.org/2026/07/29/b...

Bumper Month of Clinical Trial News to Ring Out This Vax Series - Absolutely Maybe

Before I get to the bumper crop of recent clinical trial news, there is news about this monthly update. This is the…

absolutelymaybe.plos.org

PLOS' Independent Blog Network is ending this month (2010-2026). I've been so proud to be a longstanding member: Thank you for everything, @plos.org! My farewell post, with thoughts on blogging's history: absolutelymaybe.plos.org/2026/07/29/f...

Farewell Post - Absolutely Maybe

Experimenting with colors for the Absolutely Maybe logo feels like another lifetime. It was 2013, and this blog was launching on the…

absolutelymaybe.plos.org

A New Chapter It's wattle time here in country Victoria, and the bees are ecstatic! All that glorious yellow cheers up the middle of winter no end. It's such an optimistic color. I'm feeling optimistic, too, even though this month did not go as planned. That began, as disruptions so often do, with…

A New Chapter

It's wattle time here in country Victoria, and the bees are ecstatic! All that glorious yellow cheers up the middle of winter no end. It's such an optimistic color. I'm feeling optimistic, too, even though this month did not go as planned. That began, as disruptions so often do, with an unexpected email. This one was from PLOS, the home of my blog, …

hildabastian.wordpress.com

Award winning singer-songwriter Claire White has been appointed Shetland’s first Shaetlan scriever, taking up a year-long residency with the National Library of Scotland. shet.news/ofpux

Claire White selected as first ever Scots scriever from Shetland

White will produce original work in Shaetlan language during year-long residency

shet.news

Brilliant metaphorical explanation of the cruel game of chance which is social care funding in the UK from @danneidle.bsky.social. There are so many better ways to fund social care than this! taxpolicy.org.uk/2026/07/27/s...

How social care costs work in England - and why it’s mad

One in seven of us will face care costs above £100,000, decided by luck rather than need. We explain how England’s social care charging system really works.

taxpolicy.org.uk

UK people with Long Covid or ME/CFS: please consider helping the HERITAGE project. They need to recruit 1,000 people who have not accessed an NHS specialist service within the last 3 years. heritage.leeds.ac.uk/join/

So why does prevention still fail? Usually not because of evidence. More often because of complexity, misaligned systems, weak implementation, poor accountability and failure to think across time. My latest piece: 🔗 open.substack.com/pub/jimmcman... #PublicHealth #Prevention

The Seventeen Reasons Prevention Fails

Part One: Why prevention fails before it even reaches delivery

open.substack.com

I was disappointed that on "Hello My Name Is" Day, the nurse who took my blood test this morning didn't introduce herself... #HelloMyNameIs Thread 🧵 1/n

How can Andy Burnham’s goal of good growth become a health-creating mission that supports environmental action? Andy Haines and I offer 5 ideas, all based on what already exists somewhere @bmj.com www.bmj.com/content/394/...

Hugely concerned that part of JCVI cost effectiveness calculation considers that older people are more willing to pay private vax costs. This ignores pensioner poverty and rising costs of utilities, dentists etc and increases issues around equality.

UK restricts Autumn boosters to 80 year olds

JCVI noted in their cost-benefit analysis that willingness to pay privately increases with age

open.substack.com

Can Ozempic prevent cancer? Several large studies suggest it might. But the excitement is running ahead of the evidence. In @theconversation.com, I explain what the evidence actually shows and why these studies are so easy to misread. theconversation.com/can-ozempic-...

Can Ozempic prevent cancer? A doctor explains why the headlines are easy to misread

Several studies suggest GLP-1 drugs may lower cancer risk. But that benefit may be due to the patients themselves: those who are healthier, wealthier and with better access to care.

theconversation.com

June heatwave killed up to 440 people a day in England and Wales, data suggests

June heatwave killed up to 440 people a day in England and Wales, data suggests

Extreme temperatures in May and June led to about 2,700 lost lives in total with climate crisis adding 3C to 4C

theguardian.com

As part of South Asian Heritage Month, You're Not Imagining It is a free online event exploring Long COVID, ME and invisible illness in South Asian communities - a hopeful, practical conversation by host Asma Younus and leading experts Dr Binita Kane and Dr Sanjay Gupta. 1/

ICYMI: The UK signed a trade deal with the US that is increasingly being called into question 🔎 In a blog published by the BMJ, @sallygainsbury.bsky.social and James Lomas called for the deal's impact assessment to be released so its implications can be properly scrutinised. Read on our website 👇

US-UK medicines partnership: the impact assessment of the costs and benefits must be published

Sally Gainsbury and York University’s James Lomas argue that the terms of the recent US-UK medicines agreement will clearly reduce the cost effectiveness of the NHS’s finite resources. The blog was or...

nuffieldtrust.org.uk

New: OECD report on Long COVID #longcovid www.oecd.org/en/publicati...

Addressing the Costs and Care for Long COVID

Long COVID is a post-acute infection syndrome characterised by the persistence of symptoms following a COVID-19 illness. This novel and complex condition has a debilitating and often disabling impact ...

oecd.org

Read Mark's blog for five ways that Brexit has affected health and social care in the UK 👇 www.nuffieldtrust.org.uk/news-item/th...

Five ways that Brexit changed the NHS

A decade ago to the day, the United Kingdom voted to leave the European Union. Mark Dayan looks back at the 10 years since and picks out five ways in which Brexit has affected health and social care i...

nuffieldtrust.org.uk

Has the UK's post-Brexit freedom to strike its own trade deals helped or hindered the NHS and health? Ten years on from the EU referendum, @markgdayan.bsky.social explains the picture today.

'This is an abject failure of the democratic process + a damning legacy both for Keir Starmer + for Wes Streeting, who pushed the deal through in April before resigning as health secretary.' £45bn and 300 000 deaths: the UK’s anniversary gift to the US www.bmj.com/content/394/...

£45bn and 300 000 deaths: the UK’s anniversary gift to the US

Two hundred and fifty years after liberation from British colonialism, the United States is co-hosting the football World Cup. The US might even win it for the first time—although France, its former a...

bmj.com

@elstorreele.bsky.social & I have been pointing out the serious problems with this “deal” for months. The way govt has got respected organisations to endorse it is disgraceful www.bmj.com/content/391/...

Who are the winners and losers of the UK-US pharma deal—it depends which side you believe

Behind the UK’s “landmark” pharma deal with the US lies a costly surrender, with higher drug prices, weaker safeguards, and vague promises of investment, write Els Torreele and Martin McKee When the...

bmj.com

Saying “we don’t recognise the figures” is lazy and disingenuous. DHSC rejects peer reviewed analysis of impact of U.K.-US pharma “deal” but won’t publish its own impact assessment www.theguardian.com/society/2026...

US-UK drug deal could result in 229,000 excess deaths in England, analysis suggests

Analysis reveals extent of impact on NHS of placating Donald Trump over price of British medicine exports

theguardian.com

My monthly update on next generation Covid vaccines is online now @plos.org — with a new streamlined structure I hope makes it easier & quicker to read. News on a major UK grant supporting a UK/US collaboration on a vax from Stanford Uni, plus ...1/2 absolutelymaybe.plos.org/2026/06/29/m...

More Trials Recruiting and Other NextGen Covid Vaccine News - Absolutely Maybe

June was a relatively slow news month for next generation Covid vaccine development. So I took the opportunity to simplify the structure…

absolutelymaybe.plos.org

This is *very important* work by @martinmckee.bsky.social and @chrischirp.bsky.social. It would be well worth any incoming government reading this to show how vulnerable institutions are to political control (see USA). christinapagel.substack.com/p/a-new-guid...

A new guide to Britain's scientific public bodies and their vulnerabilies to political interference

Our new searchable guide, building on our previous research, details how 33 key public bodies and 11 advisory committees are protected or exposed to political interference.

christinapagel.substack.com