iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Reposted by Andrew Wehrman

Joanne Freeman @jbf1755.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

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Andrew Wehrman @profwehrman.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Another strange thing about this article in the CDC’s peer-reviewed journal is that because the author used chatgpt to research it, it does not cite the CDC’s own research on smallpox and instead pulls random numbers from my book and some other odd sources.

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Andrew Wehrman @profwehrman.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

I’d like to be flattered for being cited so extensively in the cover story for the most recent issue of the CDC’s journal Emerging Infectious Diseases, which features an article on George Washington’s decision to inoculate the Continental Army. wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/...

wwwnc.cdc.gov

Smallpox Military Policy and Decisive Actions of George Washington

About the Cover

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Andrew Wehrman @profwehrman.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

I could go on and on, but the piece does perhaps surprisingly fully endorse government efforts to inoculate citizens, writing that “[Washington’s order] was an effective, organized public health intervention, demonstrating the capacity of centralized authority to manage disease on a large scale.”

A screenshot from the article highlighting the passage I quoted above. The footnote references my book The Contagion of Liberty.

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Andrew Wehrman @profwehrman.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

It also likely shows the politics of the current CDC because it does not mention that inoculation was introduced in America by an enslaved Black man named Onesimus. Instead it cites me as it credits Cotton Mather. My book mentions Mather but credits Onesimus.

The text of the article that says “variolation was first promoted in the New World by Puritan minister Cotton Mather.

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Andrew Wehrman @profwehrman.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

But the article is very odd. For one it acknowledges that the author used chatgpt to research it (why not reach out to me and have me or another expert write it?)

A screenshot shot from the article showing the acknowledgment of the author that he used ChatGPT “in a nongenerative capacity for locating references in writing this essay.”

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Andrew Wehrman @profwehrman.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

wwwnc.cdc.gov

Smallpox Military Policy and Decisive Actions of George Washington

About the Cover

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Gyrfalcon (jeer-falcon) @gyrfalcon05.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

recently read The Contagion of Liberty, about smallpox inoculation in revolutionary America. people who don't like vaccines don't remember that for smallpox, the founding fathers would have expected the town to build a fence around your home and post guards if you had it. that was liberty to them!

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Mar Hicks @histoftech.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

This is the outcome of the “you do you” approach to public health that so many people favor

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Andrew Wehrman @profwehrman.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

Sprite to the rescue! (His favorite thing right now is this empty first aid kit box)

A shaggy black and white cavapoo gripping the handle of a first aid kit in his teeth)

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Andrew Wehrman @profwehrman.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

The Gideons are on campus today. Even as professors have cut readings and moved away from print books, the Gideons are still out here pushing tiny hard-to-read print New Testaments into students’ hands.

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Andrew Wehrman @profwehrman.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

My buddy Josh (we were both on the University of Arkansas quizbowl team way back when) is on Jeopardy again (it’s not a rerun if you haven’t seen it) tonight in one of the more spectacular finishes in Jeopardy! history.

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Henry Snow @henrys.now · 27/08/2026

Love ye your neighbours?—let that love be shown Risk not their children while you guard your own -Robert Bloomfield, 1804, "Good Tidings, Or, News from the Farm," a tribute to smallpox vaccination

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Josh 🐯 Hill @joshtigerhill.bsky.social · 25/08/2026

The most common mnemonic for the Great Lakes is HOMES. If Trump renames Lake Ontario to Lake America, that mnemonic becomes SHAME. Yep, that checks out.

A screenshot of a Wikipedia page featuring a map entitled "Great Lakes of North America".

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Dr Surekha Davies, Historical Monster Consultant (she/her) @drsurekhadavies.bsky.social · 13/08/2026

No room here for a novella on how I define being functionally literate, but anyone who thinks that a slop summary is the equivalent of reading a book isn't functionally literate. A related essay of mine on what historical research is like: 3/ buttondown.com/surekhadavie...

buttondown.com

Basement adventures showed me why ChatGPT can only ever be garbage.

In The British Library. Photo by Surekha Davies. Hallo readers, First, a news flash: Join me for a virtual book launch for HUMANS: A MONSTROUS HISTORY...

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Andrew Wehrman @profwehrman.bsky.social · 11/08/2026

All the Founders would be aghast J. Adams: “To disarm the Small Pox of its contagion [via vaccine] is an enterprize worthy of a Hercules in medicine.” T. Jefferson: “every friend of humanity must look with pleasure on this discovery, by which one evil is withdrawn from the condition of man.”

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Andrew Wehrman @profwehrman.bsky.social · 11/08/2026

After calling for the inoculation of the Continental Army, Washington wrote: “I shudder when ever I reflect upon the difficulties of keeping [smallpox] out [without inoculation].”

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Andrew Wehrman @profwehrman.bsky.social · 11/08/2026

As bad as this is for science and for health, it’s also fundamentally unamerican to be opposed to vaccination and vaccination research. George Washington called for "a Law to compell the Masters of Families to inoculate every Child born within a certain limitted time under severe Penalties."

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Andrew Wehrman @profwehrman.bsky.social · 10/08/2026

We’re so lucky public health officials eradicated it before Trump and RFK got into politics.

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Andrew Wehrman @profwehrman.bsky.social · 10/08/2026

Time to open up the Ol’ internet to see if there’s any news that might interest a historian of vaccination…. Oh no. Ohhh no no no. Why did I look?

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Andrew Wehrman @profwehrman.bsky.social · 07/08/2026

Sure, but even in the contested Republican gubernatorial primary in Wayne county there were only 76,000 Republican votes total. El-Sayed got 133,000 against Stevens (150,000) in Wayne County. Are you suggesting he won’t decisively win Wayne County? That the Stevens voters will vote Rogers?

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Andrew Wehrman @profwehrman.bsky.social · 07/08/2026

True, but he did still get nearly twice as many votes as Mike Rogers did in Wayne County.

Wayne county primary election results: Stevens: 150,593 votes, El-Sayed, 133,292 votes; Roger’s 72,819 votes.

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Andrew Wehrman @profwehrman.bsky.social · 06/08/2026

Eww, teacher submitted multiple choice questions!

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Andrew Wehrman @profwehrman.bsky.social · 06/08/2026

The historian in me couldn’t leave this alone. Here’s another article from 1986 (“CHS chilli chatter!”) describing the format of northern Missouri quiz bowls. Still no idea why they mentioned 20,000 questions, ha

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Andrew Wehrman @profwehrman.bsky.social · 06/08/2026

Quizbowl coaches used to swap questions a lot. The top teams had big question libraries. I remember that we always stayed to the end and collected packets from the host. I wonder if that’s what he’s talking about—that they have amassed that many (recycled) questions from old tournaments.

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Andrew Wehrman @profwehrman.bsky.social · 06/08/2026

I played Chillicothe in quizbowl in the 90s but this tournament was extinct by then.

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Andrew Wehrman @profwehrman.bsky.social · 06/08/2026

Even 20,000 one-liners is crazy! I also wish they listed the schools instead of the made-up team names.

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Kathleen Bachynski @bachynski.bsky.social · 05/08/2026

Congratulations Abdul!!!! I can’t believe I know a Democratic nominee for Senate! Or that this picture was 11 years ago. The idea of Abdul being in the Senate advocating for public health and access to health care, especially at a time when RFKJ is in charge at HHS, is incredible to contemplate.

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Andrew Wehrman @profwehrman.bsky.social · 04/08/2026

If Abdul El-Sayed wins the primary in Michigan today and goes on to win in November, he will be the first Democratic Senator to hold and medical degree and be a public health expert since Sen. Royal Copeland (former NYC health commissioner) died in 1938.

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Andrew Wehrman @profwehrman.bsky.social · 04/08/2026

And, I should note, I was featured on El-Sayed’s podcast America Dissected back in 2023 to talk about my book. El-Sayed certainly understands that public health has been and should be a primary duty of government dating back to the founding of the country. crooked.com/podcast/the-...

crooked.com

The Contagion of Liberty with Prof Andrew Wehrman | Crooked Media

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Andrew Wehrman @profwehrman.bsky.social · 04/08/2026

*You might say, "AHA! Wehrman doesn't know what he's talking about! What about Senator Ernest Gruening (1959-1969)?” Well, Gruening did graduate from Harvard Medical School in 1912, but he never practiced medicine or served in a health department and instead made his career in journalism.

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Andrew Wehrman @profwehrman.bsky.social · 04/08/2026

But the Democratic Party which passed Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and Obamacare has somewhat oddly not had a physician, epidemiologist, or other public health doctor in the Senate since Royal Copeland.* Fighting RFK jr. and health misinformation seems to require real expertise in the Senate

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Andrew Wehrman @profwehrman.bsky.social · 04/08/2026

In recent decades Republicans have elected several physcians, who mostly come from backgrounds in private medical practice (Mehmet Oz, Rand Paul, Bill Cassidy, Roger Marshall, etc.) and have used their Senate careers to vote against public health initiatives and national healthcare programs.

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Andrew Wehrman @profwehrman.bsky.social · 04/08/2026

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Andrew Wehrman @profwehrman.bsky.social · 01/08/2026

Glad to see my friend and former Marietta College colleague standing up against the terrible damage fracking is causing in Southeast Ohio. I can’t tell you how many times I was gaslit when I lived there about how safe it was. www.nytimes.com/2026/07/29/c...

nytimes.com

In Ohio, Toxic Wastewater Is Bubbling Up Out of the Ground (Gift Article)

The state is a major importer of fracking wastewater, which gets pumped underground but doesn’t always stay there. The city of Marietta is fighting back.

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Andrew Wehrman @profwehrman.bsky.social · 31/07/2026

Pupdate: he had calmed considerably but is still growling softly every time he looks out a window. Those hot air balloons wrecked his confidence in nature’s laws.

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Andrew Wehrman @profwehrman.bsky.social · 31/07/2026

An hour later and he is still pacing the house and barking. This event has shaken him to his puppy core.

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Andrew Wehrman @profwehrman.bsky.social · 31/07/2026

Sprite saved us all from an invasion this morning. Our little hero…

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honor sachs @drhonor.bsky.social · 27/07/2026

This is an incredible idea.

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Adam Serwer @adamserwer.bsky.social · 25/07/2026

Conservatives in 2016: TRIGGERED LIB???? Conservatives in 2026: We are installing trigger warnings in the Smithsonian

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Kathleen Bachynski @bachynski.bsky.social · 22/07/2026

Amazingly, this is not a unique experience! “In 2003, a librarian in New Mexico opened a book and an envelope containing lesion crusts fell out of the book (Figure 3, panel C). The envelope was labeled “scabs from vaccination of W.B. Yarrington’s children,” and the book was dated 1888.”

wwwnc.cdc.gov

Poxvirus Viability and Signatures in Historical Relics

Poxvirus Viability and Signatures in Relics

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Andrew Wehrman @profwehrman.bsky.social · 22/07/2026

YIKES! I always had this worry when doing my research but fortunately never ran into anything like this. I did question how I should be handling doctors’ notebooks from a smallpox hospital that looked like they hadn’t been opened in centuries, but luckily no scabs.

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Andrew Wehrman @profwehrman.bsky.social · 18/07/2026

Just spent a week in Houghton with the kids in camp at Michigan Tech. I have plenty of recommendations if you want them!

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Katie Mack @astrokatie.com · 17/07/2026

Probably more helpful to think of them not so much as “Canadian wildfires” but rather “climate change wildfires currently consuming Canada”

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Andrew Wehrman @profwehrman.bsky.social · 14/07/2026

Sprite has announced that this game is over and it’s time for *him to play ball.

Our black and white cavapoo named Sprite climbing over the back of the couch to get my attention while the World Cup match is on the tv behind him.

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Andrew Wehrman @profwehrman.bsky.social · 07/07/2026

I hope they also took “coercive” on that vague intolerable acts question. No contemporaries called them the “intolerable acts!” And there were many groups of laws referred to by adjectives. Argh. (Despite my gripes I’m kicking myself for not signing up for this!)

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