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Cadhla Firth

@cadhlafirth.bsky.social
1.7K followers 777 following 92 posts

Molecular and evolutionary biologist studying zoonotic disease emergence.

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Cadhla Firth @cadhlafirth.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
Okay this is insanely cool - we've had a front/mid brain and a totally distinct hindbrain for like 500 million years!
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Tim “Positive Subway” Smith @positivesubway.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
“When it comes to the choices my husband and I have made about public education, these days I feel that I failed both my values and my child.” A deeply personal piece from Nikole Hannah-Jones, 10 years after her landmark story about choosing her child’s elementary school, is your Sunday must-read
nytimes.com
In Fighting for Every Black Child, Did I Betray My Own? (Gift Article)
A decade ago, I made a decision about my daughter’s education that I hoped would challenge New York City’s separate and unequal school system. Now 16, she thinks I made the wrong choice.
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Cadhla Firth @cadhlafirth.bsky.social · 12/08/2026
This 👇👇👇
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Tressie McMillan Cottom @tressiemcphd.bsky.social · 26/07/2026
As good as many of you said. I really appreciate the unambiguous point that this primarily a racist moral panic before unpacking the nuanced second-order explanations. dannykatch.substack.com/p/we-used-to...
dannykatch.substack.com
We used to be able to buy things in this country
Locking up toothpaste was a warning sign that our executive class was crazy
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Zeke Hausfather @zekehausfather.com · 17/07/2026
The forest management argument, largely valid in a California pine stand, mostly falls apart when you move it a couple of thousand kilometers north. Today's Climate Brink post provides in-depth details as to why: www.theclimatebrink.com/p/canadas-bo...
theclimatebrink.com
Canada's boreal wildfires aren't just bad forest management
Higher fire season temperatures are strongly correlated with increased area burned
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Tara Haelle @tarahaelle.bsky.social · 17/07/2026
It’s almost as though we had an excellent public health infrastructure until DOGE hobbled the hell out of it. You know, like thousands of us were screaming at the time.
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Jason Scott @textfiles.com · 03/07/2026
I'll summarize this: Mamdani asked NYers to keep air conditioning at 78 degrees. A wave criticism hit online. A MSNBC broadcast pointed out the US Department of Energy recommends that 78 degree figure. Immediately after, the US Department of Energy deleted 6,000 web pages related to energy saving.
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Jeremy Berg @jeremymberg.bsky.social · 02/07/2026
Scott Atlas, the champion of herd immunity as an Fox News commenter and the Trump Advisor during COVID, weighs in with a DEEPLY MININFORMED op-ed in the WaPo. www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/202... 1/7
washingtonpost.com
Opinion | Abolish the NIH
A $48 billion government monopoly should give way to the market.
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Stephen Turner @stephenturner.us · 19/05/2026
Dreaming up the most convoluted schemes imaginable to avoid paying reviewers (real money) www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...
pnas.org
A transparent universal credit system to incentivize peer review | PNAS
A transparent universal credit system to incentivize peer review
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Cadhla Firth @cadhlafirth.bsky.social · 09/05/2026
Trying to leave an abusive relationship is one of the most difficult things for anyone. It's horrible to see the US gov taking a DARVO-informed approach to immigration. I can't see how these changes will do anything but hurt people when they're most vulnerable
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Cadhla Firth @cadhlafirth.bsky.social · 04/05/2026
While we wait for more information on the hantavirus outbreak on that cruise ship, there is a strong narrative about the risk of human-to-human transmission that may not hold up. In the absence of epidemiological data, this paper is worth a read: pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC...
pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
Evidence for Human-to-Human Transmission of Hantavirus: A Systematic Review
Hantavirus is known to be transmitted from rodents to humans. However, some reports from Argentina and Chile have claimed that the hantavirus strain Andes virus (ANDV) can cause human-to-human transmi...
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Cadhla Firth @cadhlafirth.bsky.social · 26/04/2026
From this thread it seems like with universal basic income we might also have more arts and culture and community
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Cadhla Firth @cadhlafirth.bsky.social · 25/04/2026
It's no wonder we're losing the war on vaccine misinformation when we don't even agree on what math is 🤦‍♀️
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Marisa Kabas @marisakabas.bsky.social · 14/04/2026
NEW—I got an exclusive excerpt from a USAID whistleblower's new book that made me gasp multiple times. It details Trump's dismantling of the humanitarian aid agency & his team/DOGE's shocking ignorance to public health. 'Into the Wood Chipper' by Nicholas Enrich is out tomorrow. Read excerpt here:
thehandbasket.co
Whistleblower says Trump officials thought USAID did 'just abortions,' asked for 'Barney-style' slides before gutting agency, per new book
Read an exclusive excerpt from Nicholas Enrich's "Into the Wood Chipper"
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NPR @npr.org · 26/03/2026
The annual observance marks how far into the new year women must work to make what men earned in the previous year. This year, it's March 26, a day later than it was in 2025. n.pr/4t9rLqU
n.pr
It's Equal Pay Day. Women have lost ground for the second year in a row
The annual observance marks how far into the new year women must work to make what men earned in the previous year. This year, it's March 26, a day later than it was in 2025.
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Eric Topol @erictopol.bsky.social · 26/03/2026
Title: "The United States is Driving a Public Heath Emergency of International Concern" www.bmj.com/content/392/...
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Stephen Turner @stephenturner.us · 21/03/2026
Race is not a biological category: challenging this misconception will help tackle racism in healthcare www.bmj.com/content/392/...
bmj.com
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Prof Gavin Yamey MD MPH @gavinyamey.bsky.social · 17/03/2026
“The State Department is considering withholding lifesaving assistance to people with H.I.V. in Zambia as a negotiating tactic to force the government of the southern African country to sign a deal giving the United States more access to its critical minerals” Extractive, colonial, & depraved 1/2
U.S. Considers Withholding H.I.V. Aid Unless Zambia Expands Minerals Access
A draft State Department memo outlines ways the Trump administration may ratchet up pressure on the African country by ending health support “on a massive scale.”
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Truthout @truthout.org · 22/02/2026
Exposure to chemical irritants can cause chest tightness, coughing and shortness of breath. For kids, there’s more potential for serious side effects.
buff.ly
Public Health Experts Sound Alarm as Feds Keep Deploying Tear Gas Near Kids
“We don’t know the long-term effects. We don’t understand their effects on children,” said a pediatrician.
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Cadhla Firth @cadhlafirth.bsky.social · 15/02/2026
A beautiful reminder that we all have the power to make a difference
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David Roberts @volts.wtf · 07/02/2026
This is excellent & draws out something the rest of the media is ignoring: among other things, the Epstein files have made it super, super clear that the entire "anti-woke" cultural hysteria was engineered by powerful men averse to accountability.
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Billie Jean Sweeney @billiejsweeney.bsky.social · 04/02/2026
A landmark study challenges the foundation of blanket bans, “finding that despite larger muscle mass about one to three years after hormone therapy, trans women have physical fitness levels comparable to those of cis women.”
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Elizabeth Jacobs, PhD @elizabethjacobs.bsky.social · 04/02/2026
Virologist Nathan Wolfe sought funding from Jeffrey Epstein to study whether sexually transmitted infections increased women’s sex drive. He planned to conduct this study among female undergraduate students.
stanforddaily.com
Former Stanford professor Nathan Wolfe ’92 planned sexual behavior research, described interns with Epstein
The Daily investigated correspondence between virologist Nathan Wolfe ’92 and Epstein in which the two men discussed interns’ attractiveness, “female viagra” and sexual research projects.
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Kat Tenbarge @kattenbarge.bsky.social · 03/02/2026
There’s literally a straight line between Trump, Epstein, and the retaliatory lawsuits against women who came forward with allegations against celebrity men like Amber Heard and Blake Lively. They all even have the same PR folks. And yet people still refuse to see it
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Aurelien Mondon @aurelmondon.com · 01/02/2026
Of course there are academics in the Epstein files Academia is not a natural space for radical politics, knowledge and emancipation as many pretend it is, buoyed by reactionary moral panics It is primarily built on conservatism, hierarchies and thirst for power so this should not be surprising
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Jess Calarco @jessicacalarco.com · 31/01/2026
It's easy to see these academics as individual bad actors. But I'd argue--they were enabled by "elite" schools' look-the-other-way approach to dealing with big-name abusers, and by the fact that, societially, we treat people associated with "elite" schools as automatically deserving of deference.
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Jon Cooper @joncooper-us.bsky.social · 31/01/2026
Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche admits that the DOJ excluded all images showing “death, physical abuse, or injury” from yesterday’s Epstein files release. WHAT ELSE ARE THEY HIDING???
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Cadhla Firth @cadhlafirth.bsky.social · 30/01/2026
😂😂😂
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Alejandra Caraballo @esqueer.net · 28/01/2026
Meta: ✅ Sexual chat bots for children ❌ Website unmasking ICE gestapo agents who kidnap children www.wired.com/story/meta-i...
wired.com
Meta Is Blocking Links to ICE List on Facebook, Instagram, and Threads
Users of Meta’s social platforms can no longer share links to ICE List, a website listing what it claims are the names of thousands of DHS employees.
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Greg Folkers @gregfolkers.bsky.social · 26/01/2026
Science: U.S. government has lost more than 10,000 STEM Ph.D.s since Trump took office By Jeffrey Mervis, Monica Hersher @science.org @policyhound.bsky.social @mghersher.bsky.social bit.ly/3M8yf9B
bit.ly
U.S. government has lost more than 10,000 STEM Ph.D.s since Trump took office
A Science analysis reveals how many were fired, retired, or quit across 14 agencies
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Kai Kupferschmidt @kakape.bsky.social · 25/01/2026
“Please get the truth out about our son. He was a good man.”
January 24, 2026 at 18:42
Statement from Michael and Susan Pretti
Parents of Alex Jeffrey Pretti
"We are heartbroken but also very angry.
Alex was a kindhearted soul who cared deeply for his family and friends and also the American veterans whom he cared for as an
ICU nurse at the Minneapolis VA hospital. Alex wanted to make a difference in this world. Unfortunately, he will not be with us to see his impact.
I do not throw around the 'hero' term lightly. However, his last thought and act was to protect a woman. The sickening lies told about our son by the administration are reprehensible and disgusting. Alex is clearly not holding a gun when attacked by Trump's murdering and cowardly ICE thugs. He had his phone in his right hand and his empty left hand is raised above his head while trying to protect the woman ICE just pushed down, all while being pepper sprayed.
Please get the truth out about our son. He was a good man. Thank you.
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Acyn @acyn.bsky.social · 24/01/2026
insane scenes coming out of Minneapolis
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Michelle Wille @duckswabber.bsky.social · 15/01/2026
Amazing work by Erik Karlsson and co - a huge diversity of viruses in animal markets, detected through both sampling of birds, but also environmental surveillance approaches. 👉https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-025-68245-8
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Qasim Rashid, Esq. @qasimrashid.com · 01/01/2026
“Can’t believe NYC elected a Muslim as mayor.” In truth—a Black American Christian woman swearing in a Ugandan American Muslim of South Asian ethnicity as his Syrian American wife holds the Qurans he swears in on, all while standing on the steps of a subway station—is the most NYC thing imaginable.
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Cadhla Firth @cadhlafirth.bsky.social · 27/11/2025
How did I miss that this is somehow real and not the plot of a Despicable Me movie. Shooting dust up into the air to block the sun? Seems cool, why not? Smh the world has gone INSANE
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Jeremy Berg @jeremymberg.bsky.social · 22/11/2025
I have posted about this before, but... Researchers at Pitt School of Public Health (with NIH funding) developed Project Tycho where they digitized reportable disease data from across the country going back to ~1900. graphics.wsj.com/infectious-d... 1/6
graphics.wsj.com
Battling Infectious Diseases in the 20th Century: The Impact of Vaccines
The number of infected people, measured over 70-some years and across all 50 states and the District of Columbia, generally declined after vaccines were introduced.
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Cadhla Firth @cadhlafirth.bsky.social · 25/10/2025
I hope everyone watches this
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Cadhla Firth @cadhlafirth.bsky.social · 21/10/2025
So many academics are putting in free labor and paying outrageous publishing fees on tight budgets, meanwhile academic publishers are spending their weekends like Scrooge McDuck diving into piles of money
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Andrew Rambaut (🐏🎀) @arambaut.bsky.social · 19/10/2025
Our paper on the phenomenon of persistence and latency in Ebola virus in an unobserved reservoir is finally out in preprint: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
biorxiv.org
Evidence of latency reshapes our understanding of Ebola virus reservoir dynamics
Ebola virus (EBOV) has caused severe outbreaks of haemorrhagic fever in Central and West Africa since the first observed zoonotic epidemic in the late 1970s. While recent outbreaks have revealed much ...
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Dave Levitan @davelevitan.bsky.social · 30/09/2025
My guess is this was coordinated across the entire executive branch, like a Hands Across the Hatch Act Violation event or something
gravityisgone.com
Breaking: HHS, Commerce, Probably Other Agencies Send Entire Staff Email Blaming Democrats for Shutdown
Please forgive the multiple editions in one day — occasionally I'll send breaking news out such as this. On Tuesday afternoon, employees at the Department for Health and Human Services and the Depart...
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Cadhla Firth @cadhlafirth.bsky.social · 29/09/2025
All time classic!
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Aaron Reichlin-Melnick @reichlinmelnick.bsky.social · 23/09/2025
Hard to express to those not in the weeds just how much the current state of the immigration detention system is just utter chaos.
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Cadhla Firth @cadhlafirth.bsky.social · 21/09/2025
Just a reminder that Charlie Kirk said the civil rights act was a mistake
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Cadhla Firth @cadhlafirth.bsky.social · 17/09/2025
In no way am I in a position to criticize the job Dr. Susan Monarez is doing at this hearing but WHY is it that neither her nor Dr Houry came prepared with numbers/data to support the Hep B or COVID vaccine schedules?? Countering Rand Paul's fake stats with 'it can' is not at all sufficient
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Judah Grunstein @judah-grunstein.bsky.social · 16/09/2025
"Can they truly be so ignorant to the words of a man they have so rushed to memorialize? I don’t know. But the most telling detail in Klein’s column was that, for all his praise, there was not a single word in the piece from Kirk himself." Ta-Nehisi Coates, with receipts.
vanityfair.com
Charlie Kirk, Redeemed: A Political Class Finds Its Lost Cause
By ignoring the rhetoric and actions of the Turning Point USA founder, pundits and politicians are sanitizing his legacy.
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George Takei @georgetakei.bsky.social · 16/09/2025
Education is the enemy of fascism.
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Ron Filipkowski @ronfilipkowski.bsky.social · 16/09/2025
Have no fear, Republicans will bail you out at some point with a huge chunk of taxpayer money to pay you for not being able to sell your products because of their policies. Then you can post on social media that you’re voting for them because you are against socialism.
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ElieNYC @elienyc.bsky.social · 15/09/2025
Karen Attiah, a black woman, got fired for A: accurately quoting what Charlie Kirk said about Black women B: Accurately observing that most white Americans seem permissive of white violence. It's bullshit, but almost expected in this white supremacist country.
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Elizabeth Spiers @espiers.bsky.social · 15/09/2025
Firing a Black woman for quoting Kirk’s horrific statements about Black women is insane. It seems the Washington Post would rather perform politeness (and demand that the people Kirk harmed do it too) that tell the truth: karenattiah.substack.com/p/the-washin...
karenattiah.substack.com
The Washington Post Fired Me — But My Voice Will Not Be Silenced.
I spoke out against hatred and violence in America — and it cost me my job.
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