#AotearoaProblems

Why do you keep talking about "pair of thyroid hormone"? I just have one thyroid.

bsky.app/profile/refl...

Regarding the White House’s announcement that Trump has a rash to his neck due to a “preventive“ skin cream:

-this is almost certainly fluorouracil (probably with calcipotriene added), which treats certain pre-cancers (actinic keratoses) and early stage squamous cell carcinoma. Not deadly.

As an American studying at university in the US, I tried to organize a college trip for students to serve as election monitors overseas.

We had to scrap the trip because most countries have snap elections and we couldn't plan. I thought those countries were so dumb for that. Now I know better.

Next year, when private equity replaces all physicians with AI, penisomab sales are going to skyrocket.

This made my day

It’s worth it, even if it’s just to have another passport for visa-free entry to places.

Confounding Variables

xkcd.com/2560/

(Technical note: there are already 2 forms of flu vaccine in the US that are not made from eggs: Flublok and Flucelvax.)

You’re right, and I didn’t do a good job clarifying in the main portion of the thread that most of our flu vaccine comes from eggs but not all.

5. The hostile regulatory and trade environment will drive vaccine manufacturers out of the US. Vaccines will be made in other countries. There's an advantage to having robust vaccine manufacturing in your country--you get dibs when there's a pandemic. The US is going to lose that advantage.

4. An advantage of mRNA vaccines is that an mRNA manufacturing facility can make many different vaccines, and switch between them. That lets you surge production of any particular vaccine if there's an outbreak.

You can only use eggs to make vaccines for flu and MMR, and they can't be scaled up.

3. The FDA is again revealing that it is anti-vaccine. This decision reinforces that we are almost certainly not going to have any new vaccines approved so long as the Trump/RFK regime remain in power.

2. The decision shows that FDA can't be trusted, because the FDA spelled out for Moderna exactly what it wanted in a drug submission. Moderna followed those instructions, and the FDA rejected the application anyhow without reviewing it. Goodbye US drug development.

The beauty of an mRNA influenza vaccine, such as what Moderna has developed, is that you can manufacture it extremely quickly, and you can easily and quickly adjust the vaccine strain to match the virus, even as it mutates.

Eggs can be finicky, and might not grow the exact vaccine strain you want.

Also, you don't want a vaccine supply that depends on chicken eggs, because if there is a flu that infects both humans and birds, and it kills the birds, now you might lose the things that lay the eggs that make your vaccines. (Chickens that make vaccine eggs are sequestered to prevent this).

But our current flu vaccines are not ideal. One major issue is, even in a crisis, it takes many months to make a vaccine against a new flu strain. For one thing, flu vaccines are still grown in chicken eggs, and it takes a while to grow enough vaccine in enough eggs to cover the population.

[THREAD] Why it matters that the FDA is refusing to review Moderna's application for an mRNA based influenza vaccine.

1. Flu is a perpetual threat to human health, because it sometimes mutates and sparks major, deadly pandemics (including the 1918 flu). Our best defense is vaccines.

Thank you!

How important is a fighter aircraft when you can make lots and lots of drones for the same price?

The Atlantic also platformed some of the absolute worst people in their articles about COVID, including Vinay Prasad (who is now directing the FDA's efforts to block vaccine access) and Emily Oster (who once argued that we shouldn't help provide HIV meds to Africans).

I canceled my subscription.

I'm still surprised that his administration started off by dramatically diminishing state capacity, through firing, cuts, and dismantling whole departments (incl Dept of Education!?). Wouldn't an authoritarian want a robust, sprawling state bureaucracy that intrudes everywhere?

A legend of public health has died. Dr. William Foege co-led the successful global effort to eradicate smallpox, and later was director of the CDC.

I quite recommend his book, "House on Fire." It is a remarkable account of smallpox eradication, one of the greatest public health achievements ever.

I thought it was good! The last part is interesting if you’re a doctor.

Testifying in a deposition just as a witness is hugely stressful. Let alone being the accused.

I don’t know if it would have made a difference, but one of the gunshot wounds was to the arm, and a tourniquet could have been applied to slow the bleeding from there.

Which is also why this administration is attacking mail in voting so fiercely, to force people to vote in person.

Cut Rand Paul a break, it's not like he's a physician or anything. How is he supposed to understand NSF grants and math?

It would let the government identify whoever is looking up the QR code.