Isabel

DOJ releases Epstein files with accusations against Trump Over the course of four interviews in 2019, a woman told the FBI that Epstein and Trump sexually abused her in the 1980s.

“A DOJ source told the Miami Herald that agents found her to be credible—and that they would not have interviewed her four times if they thought she was lying.”

@jkbjournalist.bsky.social bringing it home
www.miamiherald.com/news/politic...

DHS nominee Markwayne Mullin is one of the most active stock-traders in the Senate — and violated the STOCK Act against insider trading as recently as last August.

He currently holds stock in L3Harris, which has millions in contracts with ICE and FEMA.

The grift continues.

a very fast asleep tuxedo tortoiseshell cat with her beans limp-wristed and head nearly upside down in the blanket (showcasing her orange cheek stripe)

a world-weary tuxedo tort cat resting on someone’s thigh

baby princess, the princess baby!

this is explicitly genocidal

Fishing crews in the Atlantic keep accidentally dredging up chemical weapons Fishing crews face horrifying burns from dredging the dumped chemical weapons.

At least three commercial fishing crews off the coast of NJ between 2016-2023 were exposed to mustard agent dredged up from the ocean floor where until 1970 the US dumped 17,000 tons of unspent chemical weapons from WWI and II in the Atlantic.

If you have gotten to the point that you are gladdened to learn that children have been sickened by infectious diseases, please pause and reflect for a moment.

I would really love it if we moved past having podcast hosts without germane expertise running our regulatory apparatuses. Anyway, take 2, I suppose. Let’s see how long this one lasts.

That’s like 80% of public health work; distilling information down so the majority of people can understand and talk about it. We actually train for this! We take trainings on how to interview people, how to phrase things in ways that people are more receptive to. We do focus groups an experiments.

Deltaviruses spread through a viral Trojan Horse Hepatitis D-like satellite viruses, known as deltaviruses, have been recently discovered in a wide range of animals. These viruses are thought to expr…

We found a viral Trojan Horse: a virus can hide inside another virus.This one surprised us: deltaviruses don’t just borrow a helper virus. They can travel inside it.
A literal Trojan Horse “virus-in-a-virus” route into cells. 🤯 Kudos to 1st author @viroscope.bsky.social and co-authors !

AHRQ has been hit even harder than NIH. They have no grant making staff at all.

Supporting vaccines and simultaneously some kind of education rugged individualism is totally incoherent, but I guess it makes sense if someone’s primary goal is emotional satisfaction from judging others.

man, @publichealthguy1.bsky.social was (afaik) the first former CDC person to publicly call *explicitly* for RFK's resignation, rather than gently scold him, and he's currently being called a piece of shit and dogpiled for saying vaccine hesitant parents are facing a bad information environment

I’m in Upstate SC working directly on the measles outbreak. What’s helping reduce cases lately isn’t writing parents off. It’s clear, credible communication that addresses confusion and misinformation. Many families just need trustworthy information from leaders they trust.

this website loves yelling at people who do actual public health work to expand vaccination offline. it's awesome

People from India remember life before the polio vaccine. They don't want to go back Indian-Americans who remember life before the polio vaccine are worried about what RFK Jr. could do in the U.S.

I know its very frustrating to see when children are falling sick and dying and diseases are coming back from the grave we had consigned them to, trust me, I really know, but I don't think that person is the enemy at all here.

www.statnews.com/2024/12/27/p...

I’ll add that he’s a real person & colleague who I actually know, hence my noting points that aren’t included in his bio.

My entry point in this convo was a post that quoted this one, where the OP screenshotted his post and called him a piece of shit. Apologies for not realizing that that escalation was subsequent to this post chain; hopefully my comment makes more sense in that context.

That’s not true. He’s a real person who I actually know.

And we know via things like seeing abstinence only healthcare approaches that strong (but subjective) morality directives don’t work on people and end up causing waaay more harm than help.

Yeah, I mean, public health experts can’t really get away with it for several reasons, and that’s who’s being harassed for their stance here

My ex was a CDC epi who helped model outcomes of vax deployment strategies in 2020/2021 - they got personally featured on Tucker Carlson, who told his millions of viewers that their work was promoting “WHITE GENOCIDE.” Evidence-based statements can’t evoke a strong enough reaction to counter that!

Right - vaccines are so magnificently effective that they aren’t profitable! Wellness scams are extremely profitable because they don’t actually fix anything, so of course our government full of con artists is absolutely committed to pushing them as much as they do crypto…

They’re literally harassing an experienced public health public comms professional for not using strategies that we’ve found, over & over again, *do not work*. The temptation to individualize & punish systemic issues, like falling prey to an exploitative “wellness” snake oil industry, isn’t useful…

Im a historian of vaccination.
Every semester/year since 2015, I teach the histories of smallpox vaccination.
And every semester/year, I have had anti-vaxxers/vaccine hesitant people in my classes.
If I want to change their minds, telling them how evil or stupid they are isn't going to cut it.

...that is vaccine hesitancy. And it is not useful either to shame those communities/parents for their doubts. If you work in public health, you have to operate from the stance of wanting to change those minds, working with the communities, acknowledging historical traumas, etc.../

Appreciating this a lot. Wariness of the government & healthcare system are very reasonable at this point! No institution or person is above reproach or questioning; ostracizing others for that (or even saying “it’s ok to wonder,” as is happening here) is how fascists & fundamentalists operate…

You get absolutely nowhere if you just say "everyone who distrusts vaccines are just evil people." If you are incapable of seeing this, then I dont know what to say. Blame actual anti-vaxxers like RFK Jr, wellness influencers making billions etc, and social media companies.

I’d note that we actually have a lot of evidence showing that yelling only alienates people further, which is why public health experts tend to avoid doing it.

Notably, he’s an experienced public health *public comms* professional, who’s very familiar with the research on how to most effectively persuade people to make evidence-backed decisions to protect themselves and their families. The antivax propaganda machine & efforts to counter it are decades old.