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Mera L🪬

@mlicc1701.bsky.social
632 followers 881 following 360 posts

Virologist in progress. Duke University 💙😈 alumn, current Regional Biocontainment Lab research analyst. Forever repping the Sheahan Lab at CVRG (y'know, at that other blue 🩵🐏 school). Pop punk millennial. she/they. ✡️•🏳️‍🌈•🖖 Views are my own, not Duke's.

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Reposted by Mera L🪬
Elizabeth Jacobs, PhD @elizabethjacobs.bsky.social · 8h
As more people die of measles, I’m reminded of this quote from RFK Jr. appointee Kirk Milhoan: “What we’re going to have is a real-world experience of when unvaccinated people get measles. What is the new incidence of hospitalization…of death?” They are running their experiment.
theguardian.com
US committee is reconsidering all vaccine recommendations
Move is dramatic departure for advisory group under Kirk Milhoan, who says he dislikes the term ‘established science’
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The Monarch Diaries @monarchdiaries.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
Great thread, why a H5N1 mink farm outbreak is a big red alert. When the 1918 flu virus genome was recovered I asked the late Bob Lamb, an eminent virologist, if this was a terrorism hazard. His answer: “Not unless they’ve got a lot of ferrets. Or a mink farm.”
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Stand Up for Science! @standupforscience.net · 28/09/2026
The Trump admin rejected the UN Declaration on Preparing for Future Pandemics because it mentioned equity, solidarity & universal access to sexual & reproductive health care services. They're so obsessed with banning words & controlling women that they’ll risk millions of lives to do so.
The graphic displays a photo of Donald Trump and the red Stand Up for Science logo. The graphic reads: "Trump admin willing to risk millions of lives just because of their war on words and women."
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Chenxin Li, PhD @chenxinli2.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
Requiring scientists to be political neutral is to require scientists to shut up when the facts are inconvenient.
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Reposted by Mera L🪬
ASM @asm.org · 28/09/2026
ASM is launching the Detection to Protection (D2P) Initiative, bringing leading voices together to lay out a specific, expert-validated blueprint to address emerging infectious and zoonotic disease threats. Read the press release: asm.social/36D
asm.social
ASM Launches Detection to Protection Initiative
ASM is launching the Detection to Protection Initiative, bringing leading voices together to lay out a specific, expert-validated blueprint to address emerging infectious and zoonotic disease threats.
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Reposted by Mera L🪬
Stuart Neil @tetherin.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
US Gov fuckwittery and incompetence has not gotten a handle on H5N1 spreading in a mink farm - an animal through which WE KNOW the virus can acquire respiratory transmissibility and human tropism. But no - you can’t study these viruses under MAGA b/c scientists can’t be trusted….🤦 Stupid fuckers
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Nonia Pariente @npariente.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
⬇️⬇️ Important tool to identify and track #Dengue virus lineages #ViroSky 🧪
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Reposted by Mera L🪬
Nature @nature.com · 27/09/2026
AlphaFold is being upgraded to better represent some of the least known and deadliest species: viruses go.nature.com/4xGi1q5
go.nature.com
AlphaFold 'goes viral': database adds protein complexes of common viruses
Nature - AI predictions could help with pandemic preparedness, but they will need experimental confirmation.
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Reposted by Mera L🪬
Prof Gavin Yamey MD MPH @gavinyamey.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
This is why my eyes roll when anyone says “MAHA wants to do something about chronic diseases” No, it doesn’t MAHA’s leaders, RFK Jr & Jay Bhattacharya, run the US health & health research systems & they have DECIMATED chronic disease prevention What MAHA *says* is divorced from what it *does*
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Reposted by Mera L🪬
The Washington Post @washingtonpost.com · 26/09/2026
Three Florida counties have declared states of emergency as a growing outbreak of dengue has infected hundreds across the state this year.
washingtonpost.com
Florida counties declare emergency over ‘wildly unusual’ dengue outbreak
Mosquito-borne disease has infected hundreds statewide and killed one woman in Tampa.
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Oni Blackstock, MD MHS @oniblackstock.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
Today is National Gay Men’s HIV/AIDS Awareness Day. In 2023, gay and bisexual men were 66% of new HIV diagnoses. From 2008 to 2023, diagnoses fell 34% for white, just 5% for Black, and rose 52% for Latino MSM (AIDSVu). To find HIV testing & PrEP services, visit iamhivpossible.org #IAmHIVPossible
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tomwellborn3rd @wellborn.net · 24/08/2026
Congress funded the CDC's Alzheimer's work, the sickle cell and epilepsy data programs and a rape prevention unit, and Vought simply will not release the money. Grassley told him to his face he lacks the authority. The pocket rescission alone took 4.9 billion.
alternet.org
Republicans furious as Trump’s budget director goes 'rogue'
The director of the Office of Management and Budget is infuriating Republican lawmakers by "going rogue" on what appropriations were approved by the House and Senate.
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Bobby Kogan @bbkogan.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
Russ Vought just sent a rescissions request to Congress, signaling he intends to illegally impound funds. The $810 million highlighted in this “request” (but this is a pretext to just illegally impound the funds) is not the exhaustive list of many billions of dollars he’s impounding this year.
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Madhu Pai, MD, PhD @madhupai.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
This is not good www.reuters.com/business/hea...
reuters.com
Mpox case confirmed in northeastern Congolese city at center of Ebola outbreak
A laboratory-confirmed case of mpox was identified in the northeastern Congolese city of Bunia, the director of a local hospital and ​two health officials said, raising concerns about a resurgence of ...
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Jenna Norton @jenna-m-norton.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
Bhattacharya has done far more to undermine health disparities research than to contribute to it.
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Reposted by Mera L🪬
Jenna Norton @jenna-m-norton.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
Plz read: on how monied interests have installed academics to defend profit over public health: “Climate and energy research are primary targets because evidence-based climate policy threatens the fossil-fuel interests historically at the center of this capture. Faculty are a critical counterforce.”
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Greg Folkers @gregfolkers.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
SF Chron: San Francisco reports record-low number of new HIV cases by Erin Allday bit.ly/4jnDO27
bit.ly
San Francisco reports record-low number of new HIV cases
San Francisco saw a remarkably low number of new HIV infections last year, especially compared to the worst years of the epidemic in the 1990s. But there is still a ways to go.
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Reposted by Mera L🪬
Blue Heron Farm @blueheronfarm.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
Why doesn't he rely on in his body's natural defenses?
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Greg Folkers @gregfolkers.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
The Nation: Trump Is Destroying Public Health. Democrats Need to Fight Back If they win in the midterms, the party must move quickly and aggressively to undo the harm Trump and his cronies have caused by Gregg Gonsalves @thenation.com @gregggonsalves.bsky.social bit.ly/4yWxRxF
bit.ly
Trump Is Destroying Public Health. Democrats Need to Fight Back.
If they win in the midterms, the party must move quickly and aggressively to undo the harm Trump and his cronies have caused.
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Reposted by Mera L🪬
Colin Carlson @colincarlson.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
Oh, you can listen to the Morning Edition story on our new Nature article! www.npr.org/2026/09/24/n...
npr.org
New research suggests human actions could be driving increase in disease outbreaks
Infectious disease outbreaks are on the rise worldwide. A new analysis finds human actions, from deforestation to climate change, are partly responsible.
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Garnet Henderson @garnethenderson.com · 24/09/2026
FDA made that change based on ample data showing telehealth prescriptions of mifepristone are safe, fwiw. But this is yet another signal that, if confirmed, we will likely see Overton and the FDA restrict mifepristone after the conclusion of the agency's sham safety "review."
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Amy Maxmen, PhD @amymaxmen.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
RFK Jr's HHS is essentially withholding Covid vaccines from children from poorer backgrounds, amid a Covid wave. Important story from @melodyschreiber.com www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026...
theguardian.com
Delays in Covid shots for kids is latest bid by Trump officials to restrict vaccines
Administration is holding back Covid vaccines for all children in at least 11 states and one US territory
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Joshua Weitz @joshuasweitz.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
Public pushback matters. This latest reporting is not conclusive but suggests that Trump and Vought are less likely to seize control of NIH funding decisions. What seems clear: this is hardly their last effort to consolidate ideological control over science. www.semafor.com/article/09/2...
semafor.com
Exclusive: Trump administration backing off NIH grant order amid pushback
The proposal, which would have given President Donald Trump greater influence over health grant decisionmaking, could still advance in a new form.
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Colin Carlson @colincarlson.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
That means approaching pandemic prevention with a mix of evidence-based ecosystem interventions where we can support them, and investment in health systems. We could stop cutting down rainforest tomorrow, and the world's poor would still suffer from spillover as a health justice issue.
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Colin Carlson @colincarlson.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
The world is a big, complicated, scary place. It would be nice if every outbreak was a morality play, and stopping the next pandemic were as simple as building parks and planting trees. But our study provides very strong evidence this is not true: instead, we have to learn to live alongside nature.
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Colin Carlson @colincarlson.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
To thread the needle on the nuance here: we detect an unequivocal, but not universal, anthropogenic fingerprint. Human activities are contributing to the emergence of different diseases in different ways, and important drivers have much narrower effects than are often claimed.
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Colin Carlson @colincarlson.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
What's behind this tidal wave of epidemics? In the largest study ever conducted on emerging infectious diseases, we show that the popular explanation - "our relationship with nature is out of balance" - doesn't hold up. Out now in Nature, after half a decade of work: www.nature.com/articles/s41...
nature.com
The anthropogenic fingerprint on emerging infectious diseases - Nature
Emerging infectious disease outbreak risks are ubiquitous worldwide, and highest in landscapes where people, livestock and fragmented natural ecosystems coexist, but detection and data ...
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Jenna Norton @jenna-m-norton.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
What. A. Day. NIH grant-making was paused for several hours today. Not sure who gave the order. But in light of the Friday night Bhattacharya-Vought feud & threatened EO to implement #ScienceDeathPanels, my money is on Russell Vought. I learned of the pause from a colleague around 11:30. 🧵
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Liz Essley Whyte @lizessleywhyte.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
NEW exclusive from me: Health officials moved money out of the Office of Minority Health to help pay for the ballooning costs of RFK Jr.'s security gift link www.wsj.com/politics/pol...
wsj.com
Exclusive | RFK Jr.’s Enhanced Security Was Funded With Money From Minority Health Office
The cost of the health secretary’s security grew from roughly $10 million in fiscal year 2025 to $17 million in fiscal year 2026.
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Stand Up for Science! @standupforscience.net · 18/09/2026
The proposed rule will allow political appointees to cancel any grant, at any time, for any reason if it doesn't "demonstrably advance the President's policy priorities". The OMB ruling implements a legal ban of words in grant applications & research that the admin deems too "woke".
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Stand Up for Science! @standupforscience.net · 18/09/2026
Your life saving clinical trail could be TERMINATED by the Trump administration. We scraped through the data and found that 50% of all clinical trials are at risk of being cancelled. It's time to talk about it and what you can do to stop this. 🧵 🧪
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Prof Gavin Yamey MD MPH @gavinyamey.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
Yup
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Colette Delawalla, PhD @cdelawalla.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
HEY. LISTEN TO ME. WE ARE ✨NOT✨MAKING JAY BHATTACHARYA INTO A HERO FOR (allegedly) REFUSING TO CUT HARVARD’S NIH FUNDING BECAUSE THE PRESIDENT TOLD HIM TO. The BARE MINIMUM of being a political appointee in the US is that you abide by the Constitution. He is NOT a hero. He did his job for once.
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Mark Histed @markhisted.org · 20/09/2026
“The arrangement would give Vought, the director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, a direct role in determining how NIH distributes its $48 billion in congressionally-appropriated money.” Bypassing the many checks and balances at NIH on grant funding decisions.
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Ryan Marino, MD @ryanmarino.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
Climate change is real and it affects your health
tampabay.com
Tampa woman is first dengue fever death recorded in Florida
This is Tampa Bay’s first fatality from the tropical disease in almost a century.
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Renee DiResta @noupside.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
Is there a formal name for the performative credulity and elite deference that respectable media just can’t seem to abandon? It is clearly illustrated in the case of RFK Jr. Everyone involved is expected to maintain a fiction that nobody knows what everybody knows.
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Joshua Weitz @joshuasweitz.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
The White House budget proposal for FY27 slash NSF funding by more than 50% and would drastically reduce support for PhDs, postdocs & investigator-initiated research. Selling something is not the same as doing something. Science is hard. This 'new golden age' won't make it easier.
US NSF announces

"Science: A New Golden Age Summit"

Washington
Discover the frontier
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Ferric Fang, MD @fangferric.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
"The Virtual Biotech has not been vetted in the crucible of real-world drug discovery, and its predictions were not validated through experiments, let alone clinical trials... At this stage, it's impossible to know whether the tool will be helpful in real-world drug discovery."
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public health guy @publichealthguy1.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
this is why i get so annoyed when people call MAHA a movement. public health needs to stop ascribing to them power and popular support they do not have.
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Greg Folkers @gregfolkers.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
Your Local Epidemiologist: Two days left to comment on HHS's vaccine category proposal by Katelyn Jetelina, David Higgins, and Jess Steier @kkjetelina.bsky.social @drhigginsmd.bsky.social @unbiasedscipod.bsky.social bit.ly/4iCpYbR 💥
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Jenna Norton @jenna-m-norton.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
The cuts in staff across federal health agencies are staggering. Great analysis from @ourpublicservice.bsky.social. 1 in 5 people gone from NIH. More than 1 in 4 gone from CDC. Nearly 7 in 10 gone from AHRQ. ourpublicservice.org/resource/the...
ourpublicservice.org
The Cost of Cutting American Science: How Federal Cuts Diminish Public Health Capacity
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Onisillos @onisillos.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
"So, when the researchers say they reconstructed two genomes, they mean that they assembled genetic sequences computationally. They did not create physical viruses." This is a point that could do with being stressed more often. theconversation.com/can-an-ancie...
theconversation.com
Can an ancient virus be brought back to life? What 500-year-old smallpox DNA reveals
Smallpox DNA from two people buried in Chile reveals the virus’s arrival through European colonisation – but recreating it would require deliberate laboratory work.
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Claus Wilke @clauswilke.com · 15/09/2026
I wrote up my thoughts about the COVID origin. I don't plan to weigh in on the topic beyond this one post for the next five years or so. Looking into what the evidence says once or twice every decade feels like a good cadence. blog.genesmindsmachines.com/p/it-still-w...
blog.genesmindsmachines.com
It still wasn’t a lab leak
Six years in, all the evidence points in one direction
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Stand Up for Science! @standupforscience.net · 14/09/2026
The Trump admin adds another science-denier to their arsenal of public health destruction. www.nytimes.com/2026/09/04/u...
nytimes.com
Kennedy Hires Covid Vaccine Skeptic to Look at Dubious Claims of Military Deaths (Gift Article)
In a legal deposition, the doctor, Theresa Long, compared immunizing service members against Covid to Nazi doctors experimenting on concentration camp prisoners.
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Costa Samaras @costasamaras.com · 13/09/2026
This will be bad for: - the students - the research progress - the universities - the towns the universities are in - the companies hiring students - the states the universities are in - the national economy - national security - the country - the world
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Greg Folkers @gregfolkers.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
Job Posting: Chief, Virology Branch, NIAID open 9/09/2026 – 10/14/2026 bit.ly/4xL6GFP
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Kristian G. Andersen @kgandersen.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
In case you were wondering if grant making is political or merit based. arc.net/l/quote/faja... *Note, CREID had nothing to do with "biodefence" - it was a network focused on emerging infectious diseases and the threats they pose.
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Abby Dernburg @adernburg.bsky.social · 07/09/2026
Biomedical scientists - a reminder that NIH proposes to "improve" peer review by hiding impact scores from Program Officers and applicants, and binning applications into broad categories of "Most competitive,""Competitive," or "Not discussed." Please provide feedback before the October 13 deadline!
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Greg Folkers @gregfolkers.bsky.social · 07/09/2026
New NIAID Strategic plan Launched quietly I guess. Apologies if I missed the press release. No more discussion of emerging infectious diseases/pandemic preparedness. That's not good amid the many ongoing outbreaks/epidemics and the ones to come. NIH Jay Bhattacharya RFK bit.ly/4qYzkRa
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public health guy @publichealthguy1.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
it’ll make dems nervous but i really cannot emphasize this enough—there is no way to weasel out of this one—we aren’t getting american science and the economic engine it provides back if they don’t clean house and enforce the law against the ones who went hog wild
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