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Sarah Cobey

@cobey.bsky.social
4.1K followers 766 following 96 posts

Professor at U. Chicago. Computational epidemiology, evolution, influenza, SARS-CoV-2, vaccines, and B cells. Infectious disease dynamics across scales.

PostsRepliesMedia
Reposted by Sarah Cobey
Philipp Markolin @philippmarkolin.eurosky.social · 17/08/2026
I do find it stunning, for all of the NYT's criticism of postmodern constructivism and "woke" ideology, that most of their editorialising signals a deep nihilism towards empirical reality, where science is just annother perspective, and voter polls decide what's moral or political reality.
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vincentholst.bsky.social @vincentholst.bsky.social · 13/08/2026
Instead of a decline in the disruptiveness of scientific and technological knowledge, the data mainly show an increasing metadata quality over time: relatively fewer papers with zero references due to database errors. 7/8
The decline in disruption (including zero reference papers, left panel) mirrors the relative decrease of zero reference papers which were wrongly counted as being maximally disruptive (right panel).
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Jenna Norton @jenna-m-norton.bsky.social · 11/08/2026
Science is a global pursuit. This undermines our leadership in science. And it harms young scientists trying to start their careers here.
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Sarah Cobey @cobey.bsky.social · 02/06/2026
I know it’s hard to decide which battle to fight some days. Pick this one.
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Nigel Goldenfeld @nigelgoldenfeld.bsky.social · 12/04/2026
🧪Totally disingenuous. The question is not whether the speakers you chose are popular or unpopular. The question is whether or not they are qualified. And an administrator cutting science for political purposes and suppressing scientific studies is not "advocating for scientific reforms".
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Amesh Adalja @ameshaa.bsky.social · 30/03/2026
“It was Barry who discovered that lymphocytes-not macrophages, as some hypothesized-that carry immune memory. showed that lymphocytes signal to macrophages through a chemical they termed MIF-which, together w/ interferon, were the 1st cytokines discovered” www.statnews.com/2026/03/30/b...
statnews.com
Remembering public health pioneer Barry Bloom: a scientist, a mentor, a mensch
Marc Lipsitch and Yonatan Grad pay tribute to their former colleague and mentor Barry R. Bloom.
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Joshua Weitz @joshuasweitz.bsky.social · 07/03/2026
The data is in: the NIH goalposts have shifted. What were once almost certain fundable scores have become coin flips and what used to be likely grants have become aspirational, leading to fewer awards. Another manifestation of how HHS policies have led to fewer awards and less science.
Graph of award probability of R35 and R01 from NIH factbook as a function of review rank percentile. As is apparent, 2025 is a significant departure, with lower award probabilities at all scores <40 and significant departures from norm, where even being in the top 10% is no longer a nearly certain indicator of success.

Data source: https://report.nih.gov/nihdatabook/report/302
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Michael D. Green, PhD @michaeldgreen.phd · 28/02/2026
Here’s the full clip @whyshoulditrustyou.bsky.social
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Sarah Cobey @cobey.bsky.social · 21/02/2026
Dr. Bhattacharya recently came to U. Chicago for an "off the record" event. My strong impression was that he is truly unfamiliar with how most biomedical research works.
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James Munday @jdmunday.bsky.social · 05/02/2026
We found that while close contact contributed to elevated risk (rate ratio 1.16 per doubling daily time, 95%-CI 1.01–1.33), time spent in shared classrooms and poor air quality had larger effects (RR 3.17, 95%-CI 1.96–5.17 and RR 1.90 95%-CI 1.23–2.94) respectively).
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Max Kozlov @maxkozlov.bsky.social · 30/01/2026
This is a targeted attack on science media. Bhattacharya has slammed science media for what he calls biased coverage, but how are our readers — the global scientific community — supposed to understand his new agency priorities if we can't even get in the door?
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Dr. Becca @docbecca.bsky.social · 20/01/2026
Just spoke to The Hill about how the dismantling of the NIH is impacting science in America. We still face a cliff of unfathomable heights, w easily 1000+ labs poised to close in the next year due to funding ending. A generation of young scientists lost because there is nowhere for them to train.
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Joshua Weitz @joshuasweitz.bsky.social · 16/01/2026
Yes, we have a problem. The problem starts at the top. The problem is worsened by leadership of @nature.com & other journals & professional organizations who think that power demands a platform without scrutiny.
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Mark Histed @markhisted.org · 13/11/2025
A bad thing is unfolding at NIH this week: It looks like the Trump administration is trying to replace key civil servant scientific leaders, the Institute Directors, with political hires. These directors control the NIH budget, tens of billions. A bit of a video explainer here: 1/ 🧪
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Sarah Cobey @cobey.bsky.social · 07/10/2025
It was surreal to be quizzed on “freedom of inquiry” and other values in my mandated U. Chicago/NIH/NSF research security training tonight given the restrictions to our research over the past eight months. Jeremy describes the experience perfectly below. (His piece is outstanding.)
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Erin Green @erinrgreen.bsky.social · 04/10/2025
Job alert ‼️ UChicago Micro is hiring! Open to tenured/tenure track faculty at all levels in any area of microbiology. Come join our amazing and growing department. apply.interfolio.com/174404
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Michael Baym @baym.lol · 20/09/2025
Immigrants, particularly on H1Bs, are the lifeblood of American innovation. If you wanted to hurt US competitiveness in the next century, I can think of few more effective ways than a move like this Even when found illegal, the mere intent will have irreparably harmed our future
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Will Ratcliff @wcratcliff.bsky.social · 12/08/2025
But it does not *want* to do that. It has the personality and confidence of a 10x coder, and *absolutely lies to your face* to maintain the illusion. It races to establish huge frameworks, call up parallel agents, and build you something that gives an output.
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J. Emory Parker 🏳️‍🌈 @jaspar.bsky.social · 01/07/2025
NEW: I just observed two interesting data deletions from the CDC's website. Both having to do with vaccine surveillance in children. There's nothing about these datasets that would have tripped any "gender" flags. You can still download them from our site: www.statnews.com/2025/02/14/t...
Removed datasets: "Percent Positivity of Viral Detections Among Enrolled Children in the New Vaccine Surveillance Network (NVSN), Acute Respiratory Illnesses (ARI), 2017–Present" and "Pathogen Detections Among Enrolled Children in the New Vaccine Surveillance Network (NVSN), Acute Respiratory Illnesses (ARI), 12 Month Rolling Period"Chart showing the deletion of data from the CDC's website over time, it starts with 1,488 items last year and currently stands at 1,398 items.
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Simon Cauchemez @scauchemez.bsky.social · 23/06/2025
Just few days left to apply to one of these postdoc positions in my infectious disease modelling Unit at @pasteur.fr in Paris!
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Sarah Cobey @cobey.bsky.social · 23/06/2025
Sang Woo (Daniel) Park and I are excited to share a new preprint, "Susceptible host dynamics explain pathogen resilience to perturbations" [1/8] www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
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Nigel Goldenfeld @nigelgoldenfeld.bsky.social · 09/06/2025
🧪 You can sign a supporting letter in solidarity with the NIH scientists here: www.standupforscience.net/bethesda-dec...
standupforscience.net
Bethesda Declaration — STAND UP FOR SCIENCE
Support NIH Staff Now!
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Sam Wang @samwang.bsky.social · 07/06/2025
More of this, please: a class action lawsuit by UC Berkeley researchers to restore illegally cut federal grants. www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news...
nbcnews.com
UC Berkeley researchers team up for first-of-its-kind lawsuit over Trump funding cuts
University of California staff members hope to use a class action lawsuit to restore their research funding.
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Joshua Weitz @joshuasweitz.bsky.social · 31/05/2025
How bad will it be? Catastrophic. Proposed cuts to #NSF, #NIH, and #NASA will set the US R&D landscape back 25 yrs+, cause economic and job loss now, and undermine innovations to come. But, this is the WH's *proposed* budget. Speak up now before it is too late. (inflation adjusted $-s below)
NSF, NASA and NIH budgets per year, inflation adjusted from 2000-2025 along with the proposed cuts. NSF includes research component only. Massive cuts across all sectors, well below support spanning 25 years.
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Tulio de Oliveira @tuliodna.bsky.social · 23/05/2025
A not very happy Friday. CERI had 6 NIH grants canceled, which will impact operations, surveillance and response to epidemics. We are working to try to minimize disturbance but not easy with 6 grants terminated at the same moment. A crisis is unfolding in SA www.news24.com/southafrica/...
news24.com
SA universities face funding crisis as US federal agencies freeze research grants | News24
An investigation into the impact of the US aid freeze on research funding to South African universities has found that 44 programmes worth R2.5 billion were affected.
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Claus Wilke @clauswilke.com · 21/05/2025
I was working on a proposal in response to one of these calls. Submission deadline next week. The proposal was 95% done, and I only learned about the cancellation from this post. 🤷‍♂️
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Michael Baym @baym.lol · 15/05/2025
Yes, that’s exactly what they are doing. They are trying to hurt Harvard by destroying my research
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Jeffrey Mervis @policyhound.bsky.social · 09/05/2025
Things are going from bad to worse at NSF; www.science.org/content/arti...
science.org
Exclusive: NSF faces radical shake-up as officials abolish its 37 divisions
Changes seen as a response to presidential directives on what research to fund
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Adam Kucharski @adamjkucharski.bsky.social · 06/05/2025
But it seems disingenuous to bluntly and severely penalise researchers (and with zero advance notice) for focusing on issues that you’ve built your own career on.
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Sarah Cobey @cobey.bsky.social · 02/05/2025
This is disastrous for many scientific fields and labs.
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Sarah Cobey @cobey.bsky.social · 27/04/2025
I received a surprising and disturbing request from NIH on Friday. They wrote to cancel a subaward to Hong Kong on one of my grants. (This was disturbing but not surprising.) They also ordered us not to interact with our collaborators in Hong Kong on any work under the award:
Screenshot of email stating "The subaward and the associated amounts listed above will need to be removed from the current and future year awards, and any other amounts budgeted for activities related to the Hong Kong research must also be removed. No rebudgeting of these funds is permitted, and no involvement or collaboration with researchers in Hong Kong or China is permitted in connection with the activities of this award, regardless of whether any funds are transferred," with the "no involvement" clause highlighted.
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ID Chief @ UMich @adamlauring.bsky.social · 23/04/2025
Really excited to be a part of this study and see it published today! Efficacy of Baloxavir Treatment in Preventing Transmission of Influenza | New England Journal of Medicine www.nejm.org/doi/full/10....
nejm.org
Efficacy of Baloxavir Treatment in Preventing Transmission of Influenza | NEJM
Baloxavir marboxil (baloxavir) rapidly reduces influenza virus shedding, which suggests that it may reduce transmission. Studies of treatment with neuraminidase inhibitors have not shown sufficient...
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Max Kozlov @maxkozlov.bsky.social · 18/04/2025
Per source, NIH has been instructed to hold off from issuing ALL awards to Harvard, Cornell, Columbia, Brown, and Northwestern (including med schools) Agency staff have also been instructed to not speak about this funding freeze to grantees and applicants
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Dave Baltrus 🦦 @surtlab.bsky.social · 18/04/2025
We’re in the bad place
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Kevin Hall @kevinh-phd.bsky.social · 16/04/2025
Specifically, I experienced censorship in the reporting of our research because of agency concerns that it did not appear to fully support preconceived narratives of my agency’s leadership about ultra-processed food addiction.
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BK. Titanji @boghuma.bsky.social · 14/04/2025
This is horrible and maybe now academics in the global north who have always traveled freely without the added worry of visa and immigration concerns will have some empathy for academics from the global South for whom this is actually the norm i.e. harassment at borders and visa denials.
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Science Magazine @science.org · 11/04/2025
Exclusive: Kathleen Neuzil, an infectious disease and vaccine specialist who was head of the Fogarty International Center, received an e-mail notice today from the Department of Health and Human Services that immediately put her on administrative leave.
scim.ag
Chief of NIH’s international center is latest director to lose job under Trump
Kathleen Neuzil had led the Fogarty International Center for less than 1 year
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Scott Delaney @scott-delaney.bsky.social · 04/04/2025
An important point getting overlooked: When NIH cancels "diversity" grants (e.g., diversity supplements, Fs, Ks, etc), they aren't canceling the grants based on *what* the grant studies. They're cancelling them based on *who* is doing the research. And that disallowed "who" is anyone not white.
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Apoorva Mandavilli @apoorvanyt.bsky.social · 04/04/2025
Drug-resistant gonorrhea, a form of the widespread sexually transmitted infection, is considered an urgent health threat worldwide. The US has just lost its ability to detect it. www.nytimes.com/2025/04/04/h...
nytimes.com
A Federal Lab That Tracked Rising S.T.I.s Has Been Shuttered (Gift Article)
The United States can no longer keep tabs on drug-resistant gonorrhea, among other infections, scientists said.
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Mark Histed @markhisted.org · 04/04/2025
"NIH is given till April 8 ... for a 35% cut in services." This isn't entirely correct, and it matters enormously for getting NIH science done. A quick 🧵: 1/ - NIH has many scientists, many senior, who work as contract employees. www.statnews.com/202... 🧪
statnews.com
Trump administration orders NIH to eliminate $2.6 billion in federal contracts
At a chaotic time, the NIH is given a deadline of April 8 to make a 35% cut in services that may include specimen storage, genetic counseling, and administration.
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Pleuni Pennings @pleunipennings.bsky.social · 01/04/2025
So many students in my lab and my department have been supported by the NIH MARC and U-RISE training grants! These grants help students who are interested in research, but who cannot afford to volunteer their time to get extensive research experience. @sfsu.bsky.social @sfstatebio.bsky.social 😢😡
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Michael Hobbes @michaelhobbes.bsky.social · 01/04/2025
I am going to lose my mind. Every previous coronavirus spilled over from animals. A novel virus has never leaked from a lab. Peak Ted Talk Brain to suggest that something *which has never happened* is the occam's razor explanation. www.nytimes.com/2024/06/14/b...
The case for a lab leak
1. Follow the lab.

If historical logic points to natural transmission, a different concept arguably points to a lab leak: Occam’s razor.
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Dave Levitan @davelevitan.bsky.social · 01/04/2025
The sheer volume of time and energy being spent by thousands of university-based researchers in *every* field right now to figure out if their funding will exist next month or next year, if their careers can even continue… just citing dollar values doesn’t do it justice, it is full-scale upheaval.
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James Lindley Wilson @jameslwilson.bsky.social · 29/03/2025
A good indication that your framework is pretty shallow is citing this idea from Mill without pointing out that Mill thinks it's perfectly valid to "remonstrate" with people who have objectionable ideas, and to refuse to associate with them.
A screenshot from the op-ed, reading "John Stuart Mill, a progressive hero, observed that the 'moral coercion of public opinion' was a powerful tool of censorship.
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Drug Monkey @drugmonkey.bsky.social · 21/03/2025
This is the clear reveal. It is about eliminating qualified competition from brown people. If it were about a supposed non-meritorious leg up, they would just prevent programmatic selection from using any measures to enhance diversity.
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Prof Stephen Serjeant @stephenserjeant.bsky.social · 19/03/2025
This horrific story has been confirmed to me by a colleague at the same institute as this scientist. The US is not a safe place to run an academic conference. @theguardian.com have an English language version of this story: www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025... 🔭🧪
theguardian.com
French scientist denied US entry after phone messages critical of Trump found
France’s research minister said the scientist was traveling to Houston for a conference when his phone was searched
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Stacey Schultz-Cherry @ssclabquips.bsky.social · 19/03/2025
We are excited to announce the next Journal of Virology seminar series will be live streamed on March 28 at 11 am Central Time. The paper to be presented is journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/... by Dr. Christine Marizzi and her group asm.org/Biographies/...
journals.asm.org
Detection of clade 2.3.4.4b highly pathogenic H5N1 influenza virus in New York City | Journal of Virology
While surveillance programs for avian influenza viruses are often focused on migratory routes and their associated stop-over locations or commercial poultry operations, many bird species—including mig...
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Hensley Lab @scottehensley.bsky.social · 13/03/2025
Today @natmedicine.bsky.social published our study showing the older individuals born prior to 1968 have more antibodies that cross-react to #H5N1 relative to younger individuals. If H5N1 causes a pandemic, children will likely be the most susceptible. 1/2 www.nature.com/articles/s41...
nature.com
Immune history shapes human antibody responses to H5N1 influenza viruses - Nature Medicine
H5N1 strain-specific antibodies are higher in older individuals and correlate more with birth year than with age, suggesting that younger individuals are potentially more likely to benefit from H5N1 v...
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Jeremy Berg @jeremymberg.bsky.social · 11/03/2025
You want my thoughts? I'll give you my thoughts...🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬 Oh, you want my understanding of why this is happening? There is no reasonable justification not to have these scheduled at this point. Even if they need to sort out dealing with applications that include "forbidden" topics, schedule now.
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