THREAD 1/5: I know this is not very nice just a couple of days before Christmas but I have to say I'm concerned about the CDC press release today, and the status our virus genomics surveillance program SPHERE
THREAD 2/5: Here's the statement: "Given the small fraction of US infections that have been sequenced, the variant could already be in the United States without having been detected"
THREAD 3/5: And this one: "The VOC 202012/01 variant has not been identified through sequencing efforts in the United States, although viruses have only been sequenced from about 51,000 of the 17 million US cases"
THREAD 4/5: By comparison the UK program for a much smaller country says it has sequenced 157,000 genomes, roughly that means we're performing at about 1/10th the capacity of the UK program?
THREAD 5/5: So not only are we missing the UK variant, but there may be other US homegrown variants that we're totally missing? How can this be, 10 months into the pandemic, still such terrible inefficiencies?
THREAD 6/5: Here are the links highlighted above from US and UK
1/n Trump admin set to tie Tylenol to autism risk, officials say…but my view: the published evidence is not very compelling with largest study finding no association, and a systematic review showing some studies linking it other not. This needs reframing washingtonpost.com/health/2025/09…
2/n before I start, here’s a large study of 2 million Swedish kids done at the renowned @karolinskainst showing no association in @JAMA_current jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/…
@karolinskainst @JAMA_current 3/n here’s my way of thinking about this, which I wrote about in a previous book after my in depth discussions with RFK Jr back in 2017
1/n Watching more Dept HHS wellness/influencer autism pseudoscience infiltrate RFK Jr’s public remarks + the recent tragic and fact-free White House press conference. Most of this I debunked in a previous book, written during/after a year of unproductive discussions with the guy
2/n the major points:
1. We have a good understanding of the neurodevelopmental basis of autism operating through dozens of autism genes (including Rachel’s) active in early pregnancy .sciencedirect.com/science/articl…
2. This doesn’t mean there is no environmental influence, on the contrary multiple environmental triggers have been identified all operating by interacting with autism genes in early pregnancy nejm.org/doi/full/10.10…
1/n When you actually bother to read the HHSBARDA statement you realize how untethered from reality he has become, MAHA pseudoscience. For instance this statement below touting benefits of whole inactivated virus vaccines for serious respiratory infections hhs.gov/press-room/hhs…
2/n so instead of mRNA which can be quickly adapted to emerging pandemic threats he’s going to combine multiple whole inactivated viruses and load them up with TLR agonists as adjuvants. What will that do? Well first it’s unreliable bc you never know what viruses will grow in…
3/n will grow in eggs or cell lines. You need a high titer of virus. Second two of our nation’s most troubling adverse vaccine reactions occurred using this approach. In early 1960s with formalin inactivated RSV and later in 1976 with swine flu causing GBS.
They’re wrong. Vaccines don’t cause autism. They just don’t. As the book about my daughter details: 1. Extensive published scientific evidence showing no link 2. Lack of plausibility based on the autism genes in early fetal brain development 3. Brain assembloid studies
Watch out for antivaccine activists. They don't care about you. They don't care about your family. They have another agenda.
There are a few known environmental exposures linked to autism. They occur through their interactions with autism genes in early pregnancy. I've detailed them for Bobby and wrote about them in my book. He chooses to ignore them. That was 8 years ago, presumably we have more...
1/n The reality: since Mr. Kennedy became HHS Secretary he/staff have waged a war of antivaccine disinformation against the American people on a frequent/regular basis. He did this as U.S. experienced its worse measles epidemic in years, showing zero concern for our health/safety
2/n Here I will list what I consider are some of his worst public statements and acts, it may take me a day or so to get through it all, I hope it’s a useful reference.
3/n first regarding the MMR vaccine vs measles in our pandemic now in 4 states in the Southern Great Plains
1/n My articles and interviews on the overlap between antiscience and antisemitism, accelerating during the pandemic but going back to the 14th century