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Daniel Westreich

@epidbydesign.bsky.social
5.1K followers 631 following 775 posts

Epidemiologist, writer, bon vivant. Professor @UNC (opinions my own); co-PI of STAR Cohort; "Morpheus of the Table 2 Fallacy.” He/him.

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Daniel Westreich @epidbydesign.bsky.social · 11h
Let’s define it. Past tense of yap?
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Rachel Fairbank @sweetsciencewriter.bsky.social · 11/10/2026
“The children who are randomly selected not to receive the birth dose of the vaccine, those who “lost the lottery”, face in their earliest days the risk of contracting hepatitis B, which can cause irreversible lifelong damage.” No words. I am speechless. This violates all ethical boundaries.
theguardian.com
Controversial vaccine trial touted by RFK Jr gets go-ahead in Guinea-Bissau
Recommended dose of hepatitis B vaccine will be withheld from thousands of newborns by Danish researchers
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Gregg Gonsalves @gregggonsalves.bsky.social · 16h
The Danish government and the EU should be looking into this and into Syddansk Universitet - University of Southern Denmark, which has condoned this so-called research. 1/ www.theguardian.com/society/2026...
theguardian.com
Controversial vaccine trial touted by RFK Jr gets go-ahead in Guinea-Bissau
Recommended dose of hepatitis B vaccine will be withheld from thousands of newborns by Danish researchers
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Daniel Westreich @epidbydesign.bsky.social · 09/10/2026
Genuinely wonder whether he has even talked to Putin about this yet. Like, probably, but wouldn't put it past him to not have mentioned it.
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Lindsay Beyerstein @beyerstein.bsky.social · 08/10/2026
This is horrifying Tuskegee-level shit.
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Daniel Westreich @epidbydesign.bsky.social · 05/10/2026
Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, the original traumatizing edition.
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Daniel Westreich @epidbydesign.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
Ah got it! Did you pursue? Did you figure anything out about the angle?
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Daniel Westreich @epidbydesign.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
Sorry, not following?
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Daniel Westreich @epidbydesign.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
Hmm I guess I can imagine this being an angle if I'd kept talking with them? Maybe so!
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Daniel Westreich @epidbydesign.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
Nothing yet - maybe I'm not playing along for long enough? It seems like a lot of trouble (several emails, a customized job listing specific to me, a fake gmail account) to get information that is (sadly) almost certainly available for a modest fee on the dark web.
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Daniel Westreich @epidbydesign.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
For what, though, and how much? I have trouble imagining a pitch along the lines of "hey, listen, we just need $1000 from you" that anyone would go for. <shrug>
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Daniel Westreich @epidbydesign.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
Hey scientists - has anyone else gotten email from purported headhunters trying to recruit you to a too-good-to-be-true job? (I've now gotten 2 for jobs that do not exist. Clearly genAI-produced content, clearly SOME kind of scam - but I can't figure out the angle.)
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Daniel Westreich @epidbydesign.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
Someone please drop a link to her legal defense gofundme.
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Kate Manne @katemanne.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
I wrote for @thecut.com about the Cornell case and what it says that, at my institution and many others like it, protesters are often punished more harshly than sexual assailants www.thecut.com/article/what...
thecut.com
What It Feels Like at Cornell Right Now
As a professor at the Ivy League school, Kate Manne has known many, many victims. There’s a palpable feeling on campus, she writes, that this is big.
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Daniel Westreich @epidbydesign.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
People, not an “agent” are ultimately responsible for that illegal act, and people can and should be held responsible for it.
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Leah McElrath @leahmcelrath.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
AP Stylebook warns against anthropomorphizing AI systems: “Avoid language that gives them human characteristics… Instead, explain what a system does, how well it performs, who built it and who could be affected by it.”
APStylebook @APStylebook
X.com
Artificial intelligence systems do not think, feel, want or understand. Avoid language that gives them human characteristics. This is called anthropomorphizing, when we ascribe human traits, emotions or behaviors to non-human things, such as animals or inanimate objects.
Instead, explain what a system does, how well it performs, who built it and who could be affected by it.
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Daniel Westreich @epidbydesign.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
Judge Dredd spinoff incoming.
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Abdul El-Sayed @abdulelsayed.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
This is about one thing and one thing alone. Steering our research dollars for cancer, heart disease, and new infectious diseases to Trump’s political allies and friends.
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Daniel Westreich @epidbydesign.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
Ending the series on a high note with Tiamat.
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Peter Tennant @pwgtennant.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
"Why epidemiology should not be automated: the case for slow epidemiology" Read my new letter with @haidonglu.bsky.social and @epidbydesign.bsky.social in @intjepidemiol.bsky.social explaining the limits of generative AI for epidemiological research! academic.oup.com/ije/article/...
"Bann et al. pose the question, ‘why can’t epidemiology be automated (yet)?’, as though the automation of epidemiology is both inevitable and desirable [1]. They describe a future of ‘1-click reviews’ and ‘end-to-end automation’ that will ‘[boost] the efficiency of current practice and … [create] new opportunities for’. But scientific discovery requires far more than increased efficiency. In epidemiology, new knowledge comes from critical reasoning about data, about context, and about the limits of our existing understanding. Such reasoning, in turn, demands deep thought, scholarship, and diligence. All are threatened by automation..."
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Daniel Westreich @epidbydesign.bsky.social · 13/09/2026
Hall and Oats
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Daniel Westreich @epidbydesign.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
I think she was trying to punch my face and missed 😂
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gamera obscura october edition @ohrobin.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
Every new Fetterman pants-shitting is treated as evidence that he is now a bad person. But long before this & long before his stroke, he chased an unarmed Black jogger in his truck, detained him with a shotgun, and continued to insist he had done the right thing. That somehow wasn’t disqualifying.
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Daniel Westreich @epidbydesign.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
You are publishing this on the same day that the Silicon Valley people are saying in plain language that SV is deliberately building technology that *they think* has a high probability of ending human life, soon. So should the “party of the future” support that tech? Or *are the tech guys lying*?
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Daniel Westreich @epidbydesign.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
I went to see Morrissey as a 15 year old (circa 1991) and got punched in the ear by a very drunk woman in her 20s, much to the embarrassment of the people she was with.
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Timnit Gebru @timnitgebru.blacksky.app · 09/09/2026
Do you think all this is happening right before IPOs just by coincidence?
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Daniel Westreich @epidbydesign.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
If the deal is dead, perhaps they put the hearse before Decart.
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Brad Lander @bradlander.bsky.social · 07/09/2026
Gender-affirming care saves lives, respects the rights of patients, and reflects that healthcare is supposed to be between providers and patients, not between providers and the Trump Administration. (1/3)
gothamist.com
Mount Sinai reaches deal with Trump DOJ to end gender-affirming care for minors
Mount Sinai is the latest in a string of U.S. hospitals to reach similar agreements with the Trump administration.
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Daniel Westreich @epidbydesign.bsky.social · 06/09/2026
All the spiders in my house are named “Brandon.”
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Robert Reich @rbreich.bsky.social · 05/09/2026
Federal minimum wage in: 2009: $7.25 2010: $7.25 2011: $7.25 2012: $7.25 2013: $7.25 2014: $7.25 2015: $7.25 2016: $7.25 2017: $7.25 2018: $7.25 2019: $7.25 2020: $7.25 2021: $7.25 2022: $7.25 2023: $7.25 2024: $7.25 2025: $7.25 2026: $7.25 Folks, it's time to raise the damn wage already.
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Max Kozlov @maxkozlov.bsky.social · 04/09/2026
🚨 The NIH is moving to transfer hundreds of millions of dollars in infectious-disease research projects to the DOD under a secret 10-year pact. Here’s what’s happening inside “Operation Prevailing Edge” 🧵👇 www.nature.com/articles/d41...
nature.com
Revealed: inside the US military's plan to tap huge sums from the NIH
An agreement paves the way for hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of projects to be transferred from the NIH’s institute for infectious diseases to the Department of Defense.
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Kent Lind @camasonian.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
Blue state AGs should be warning postal officials that they will face felony prosecution for election interference for any legal ballots diverted and not delivered. Separate felony counts for every single ballot mishandled and not delivered. We would expect no less if private citizens stole ballots
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Daniel Westreich @epidbydesign.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
It is qwhite a mystery!
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Arrianna Marie Planey, PhD MA @arrianna-planey.bsky.social · 02/09/2026
What could possibly go wrong? For one, bias propagation, reflecting clinicians' habit of copying forward notes in EHR, which may contain stereotypes based on race, ethnicity, gender, etc
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Cheryl Lynn Eaton @cheryllynneaton.bsky.social · 02/09/2026
You cannot say this and remain in office. He has to go. And Democrats have to make an enormous deal out of threats to exterminate an entire group of people.
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Kevin M. Kruse @kevinmkruse.bsky.social · 02/09/2026
So many of the supposed divides in the Democratic caucus simply boil down to "this one will fight for all of us, this one will not" and for the past two years Team Fight is sweeping the board.
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Daniel Westreich @epidbydesign.bsky.social · 31/08/2026
Really enjoyed this book and/but need to discuss it!
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Daniel Westreich @epidbydesign.bsky.social · 31/08/2026
Very very out of touch, apparently: 3.
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Daniel Westreich @epidbydesign.bsky.social · 31/08/2026
Real “may I mambo dogface to the banana patch” vibes (complimentary) here!
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Daniel Westreich @epidbydesign.bsky.social · 28/08/2026
This is gravy slander.
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Anat Shenker-Osorio @anatosaurus.bsky.social · 26/08/2026
Perhaps it would be better morally & electorally to make the people you're running against, who are assaulting, abducting, murdering, stealing, putting kids into concentration camps, starting wars & destroying our lives, your opposition. Instead of some streamer dude voters have never heard of.
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Daniel Westreich @epidbydesign.bsky.social · 26/08/2026
I have one of these too!
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Heather D Hill @hdhill.bsky.social · 23/08/2026
🚨 This is a huge deal: bad science used for an anti-democratic project in the name of our most reliable government statistical agency. Thanks @crampell.bsky.social for the reporting.
thebulwark.com
Trump’s War on Reality Comes for the Census
One of America’s most trusted institutions just put its name on a totally bogus voter-fraud report.
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Seth Abramson @sethabramson.bsky.social · 24/08/2026
When America is gone, remember NYT headlines like this and never again ask what role corporate media played in normalizing the most dangerous man on Earth
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Daniel Westreich @epidbydesign.bsky.social · 24/08/2026
I feel like that’s first image is not making the point you want it to?
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ᴢᴇɴ sɪᴍᴍᴏɴs @killlthehype.blacksky.app · 23/08/2026
16 months ago: Never forget how it started.
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Daniel Westreich @epidbydesign.bsky.social · 21/08/2026
And broadly if you want to teach a class out of my textbook and want advice / to brainstorm, please get in touch!
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Daniel Westreich @epidbydesign.bsky.social · 21/08/2026
Reminder as fall semester is starting that teaching materials (including lectures + exercises etc.) for my textbook EPIDEMIOLOGY BY DESIGN are available FOR FREE at epidemiologybydesign.com as well as by request to me (including additional, non-public materials if you're a teacher!)
epidemiologybydesign.com
Epidemiology By Design
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Benjamin Riley @benjaminjriley.bsky.social · 20/08/2026
So we know AI helped a negligible number of students. But how many did it harm? I've crunched the raw data provided by the lead researcher, and what I've found is that ~9,500 students using AI studied less than even the *least* studious, non-AI using student. This should shock the conscience.
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Kim Lane Scheppele @kimlanelaw.bsky.social · 20/08/2026
Zero new NSF grants in sociology, anthropology, political science and economics. The agenda of this US govt is to stop documenting the society in which we live while they are destroying it. We will find other ways to track and explain our times and fight to restore our research funding.
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