Climate epidemiologist at
@YaleEMD
, PI of
@viralemergence
, working to save what can be saved, so as to open up some kind of future. Krakoa is for all mutants.
This week, treaty negotiators are weighing a proposed
@WHO
system that would ensure global access to life-saving medicines and fund future science. Proud to share an open letter in
@Nature
from 290 scientists in 36 countries on why we support the proposal
As climate change reshapes life on earth, it may also become the single biggest upstream driver of pandemic risk. Our new study in
@Nature
simulates how 3,139 species will share viruses - and create new spillover risk hotspots - over the next 50 years.
Get ready for life in the Pandemicene. Our
@Nature
study on climate change found that bats (and their viruses) are on the move, and it's too late to stop it by cutting greenhouse gas emissions. The final (formatted) study is now online:
If, in the two years of pandemic response, you found the phrase "I am begging you to care about other people" rattling around your brain: I am as a climate scientist begging you, today, to care about other people. It feels like this report is passing by unnoticed.
A grim possibility is we'll see a global Covid decoupling, where much of Europe and Asia is mostly able to keep epidemics at bay but the U.S. can't, and sees higher and persistent infection and slower GDP growth; and has a cordon sanitaire remain imposed on us from other nations.
Climate change has killed at least four million people. I wrote this because I felt like I was the only one who had noticed. If you ever read and share anything I've written, I hope it'll be this short piece, out today in
@NatureMedicine
Today on Twitter, people will post "oh no." In 3-4 weeks, talking heads will say "everyone panicked stupidly but xyz proves you can reopen safely, people called it wrong." In 2-3 months, a preprint will attribute thousands of excess cases to this decision. Time is a flat circle.
Now that you’ve seen our
@nature
paper on how climate change will cause more pandemics, let me hit you with this: Medicare for All is climate change adaptation and a vital part of the Green New Deal for health
I'm an author on the new
#ipcc
report and I study the connections between climate change and emerging diseases. 🧵: is climate change connected to Covid? Could it cause more pandemics? Here's some of what the report says. (And also my own shameless thoughts)
People who think at-home rapid testing was the make or break of COVID-19 in the United States have never thought, for a single New York minute, about how paid sick leave works in this country
Absolutely fascinating because, among other things, absolutely all of this shit is completely and 100% made up. It's exactly as real a vision of the future as Spelljammer 5e. But, there are people who earnestly believe it, which is part of why science communication matters here
Yesterday, I attended a conference at which an influential financier shared this unpublished map. Look at it. The estimated death toll is 2-3 *billion*; the timeframe is 20-30 years (previously: 50). Segments of the elite have simply 'written off' large parts of the Global South.
I study the relationship between climate and infectious diseases for a living. I haven't even played with COVID data in my free time. I'm not touching it. This is literally what my PhD is in, and I'm not touching it. Please, please hear me on this: you aren't helping if you do
BREAKING: White House issues new policy that will require, by 2026, all federally-funded research results to be freely available to public without delay, ending longstanding ability of journals to paywall results for up to 1 year. Coverage coming on
@ScienceInsider
.
Can I talk to the public as a modeler for a second?
I've been training for something like this for 10 years. I've been doing outreach, posting, publishing and now I'm asking you:
Don't listen to modelers right now. Don't try to understand the full range of good and bad science.
Today in WaPo with my colleagues
@bansallab
,
@jdkraemer
: Based on the epidemiological data we outline, we don't see a "safe" way to reopen schools in the fall.
Reopening is important. There should be no acceptable losses when we do it. Tell your admin:
Tech / doctors are talking about how to stop collecting and storing information that makes people vulnerable to prosecution in a post-Roe world. Reminder: academic researchers also NEED to plan for this too, right now. A recent tangible example of the problem (1/5)
@NateSilver538
Nate, I'm a Georgetown professor and I will literally let you call me any hour, day or night, to discuss why this is dangerous, and why you might do some major harm by saying this. I'll literally give you my cell phone number. I'll turn off the X-Files for this. Just an offer
For weeks I've been begging folks to realize outdoor transmission is still a highly plausible risk, and people have been saying "well, there would be data." Here's your data. Here's a family tragedy.
Social distancing and masks still matter outside. This was foreseeable.
The next coronavirus is here. 🦠🚨
We're learning today that alphacoronavirus 1, previously not known to be zoonotic, jumped from dogs to humans > a year ago. Key lessons for where COVID-19 has been pointing us the wrong direction 🧵
Love Hank but I think this is an early warning sign of something being ported over from Covid twitter: non-scientists engaging in discourse about why a graph looks a way it does, believing causation to be fuzzy and subjective (it is WAY less so in climate work)
Massively under-reported science story because there's so much going on right now but...it turns out that we might have figured out what's causing this very scary spike.
Quick thread, on how WE'VE BEEN ACCIDENTALLY GEOENGINEERING FOR DECADES...but then we stopped:
The idea that "monkeypox spillback into rodents will prevent it from ever being eliminated" seems to be taking hold lately in some people's fears. At this stage, it's scientifically incorrect 🧵
Today I'm pleased to announce the Viral Emergence Research Initiative (VERENA), a consortium of virologists, ecologists, and data scientists working to predict which viruses could infect humans, which animals host them, and where they could emerge.
Good lord - vaccine-derived polio is a low-level baseline thing that happens around the world. Importations to eliminated areas are rare but non-zero. This isn’t the U.S. health system in meltdown. Many *public health accounts* are tweeting incredibly irresponsibly about this.
Today I learned that there is nothing - absolutely nothing on earth - that can prepare you for the gripping existential fear of seeing one of your git commit messages unexpectedly show up on the news
Our new study found that climate change has irreparably increased the risk of another pandemic. What now?
1⃣ Hold fossil fuel companies accountable for the damage they've done.
2⃣ Build healthcare systems that can handle the tidal wave that's coming.
I'm beyond thrilled to announce today that Verena will become an NSF Biology Integration Institute, with a five-year $12.5m grant to continue our work on viral emergence & the science of the host-virus network, including brand-new programs in the field, the lab, and the classroom
Harvard has announced they're bringing half their students back but teaching online, so I must regrettably introduce my new invention:
The College Reopening Quadrants: A helpful tool to understand why on-campus-students, off-campus-teaching is nothing.
If - like me - you sometimes feel a bit lost when you hear climate experts talk about "transformative social change," I have a bit of a theory about why. Heartfelt thoughts from a scientist who worked on the new
#ipcc
report 🧵
Step 0⃣. Remember that today's report is only 1/3 of the sixth Assessment Report (AR6).
✅Aug '21: how the climate is changing + it's us
🌟Feb '22: what are the impacts? how can we adapt?
🔜Mar 2022: solutions to stop climate change
And then it'll all be bundled up in Sep 2022
I've seen maybe three scientists in one week, who are being criticized for shoddy or irresponsible practices, respond with "All models are wrong but some are useful" and... I'm starting to think that might've not been the only epistemology we should've given an entire discipline
Hey, public health people - if you log on here and say “vote” right now, you’re atomizing people’s helplessness into individual behavioral solutions they were already doing that didn’t prevent the outcome. You (recently!) know better. Power building + push for policy action.
The geology, hydrology, ecology of this is 99% fabricated in service of an extremely real and consequential politic that imagines a second great era of colonialism. "Doomerism" isn't having a tired moment reading the newspaper: it's this specific accelerationist imaginary
In the last week, faculty have started publicly fighting reopening; U. Southern California already changed course. Your school could next.
Change is possible. Use your voice now. It's health justice; it's fighting the pandemic; it's what tenure is for.
What can we do now? Here's a starting point: a Pandemic Treaty that acknowledges climate change as a pandemic driver, supports One Health surveillance workforce, and charts out a smoother response when the next pandemic starts. That's worth fighting for.
A new
#SciencePolicyForum
identifies 12 elements for a cohesive, transformative, and evidence-based
#pandemic
treaty that could move global health governance beyond the limited scope of international health regulations that exist today.
It's 👏 not 👏 a 👏 laboratory 👏 unless 👏 you 👏 were 👏 working 👏 there 👏 late 👏 one 👏 night 👏 when 👏 your 👏 eyes 👏 beheld 👏 an 👏 eerie 👏 sight 👏 for 👏 your 👏 monster 👏 from 👏 his 👏 slab 👏 began 👏 to 👏 rise 👏 and 👏 suddenly 👏 to 👏 your 👏 surprise 👏 he
We passed a million confirmed cases today. This is still early. There might never be anything as dangerous as this, ever again.
Stay inside. Follow the rules. Wash your hands. Look out for your loved ones & your community, and do your best to keep COVID from spreading. Keep on.
Step 2⃣. Read the headline statements - the 3,675 pages boiled down into 2 minutes of reading. This is what you would tell the President if you found yourself on an elevator ride together.
Two days ago I drafted and deleted a joke tweet about ecologists making a COVID niche model to feel helpful.
I can't believe this needs to be said, let alone to a field leader. The replies speak for themselves - this, epidemiologically, means nothing.
Irresponsible.
Good morning! There remains no scientific evidence, published or anecdotal, that indicates SARS-CoV-2 made the jump to humans in the wildlife trade. None.
Step 3⃣. Read the summary for policymakers (37 pages). It's not as technical as it sounds. Think of it as what scientists would tell the President's staff over an afternoon briefing - e.g., where do we see which impacts, and how strong is the evidence?
Step 1⃣. Hear about the report from the scientists and global leaders themselves in today's press conference (if you weren't up at 6am sipping coffee at your standing desk in the dark)
If you want to make a difference in the climate crisis, but you feel powerless as a scientist (especially if you're just getting started! students, I'm talking to you!), I wanted to share one story with you from my time working on the
#ipcc
report
Out of Office Responder: No, I Don't Think My Epidemiological Models Will Resolve The Difficult Intersection Of Competing Value Systems In A Way That Removes Moral Dilemmas In Your COVID-19 Response
The John Green situation is escalating. We are on the verge of the first disease eradication achieved through Posting. Hearing rumors they might “just let the guy write the treaty while he’s at it.” We are monitoring this situation very closely
Do I know anyone with $100,000,000 who wants to be remembered for catalyzing a revolution in treating (and curing!) the world's deadliest infectious disease?
(The world's deadliest infectious disease is tuberculosis. It is curable. But we need to GET THE CURE to actual people.)
Universities need to start pouring millions into building some more global change PhD programs that give people a strong quant grounding and train them to see the whole board with an interdisciplinary tilt (including env, health, policy, security)
NEW: Millions will probably be invested in tracing the wildlife origins of SARS-CoV-2. In our new preprint, we use machine learning and ecology to predict possible undiscovered mammal hosts of betacoronaviruses - including ~300 species of bats. (1/3)
Imagine if, instead of 20 years debating the precise level of gloom allowed in accurate science communication, we explicitly defined doomerism from day one as a pseudoscience dream of Global North military-industrial supremacy dreamed by people who don't know where Polynesia is
What you should know:
1⃣ Animals (esp. bats) will bring viruses to new places
2⃣ Southeast Asia is a hotspot, but risk is global
3⃣ The process is probably well underway in 2020...
4⃣ ...and worse, won't be stopped by reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
A little news to end the year: I could not possibly be more excited, nervous, humbled, or starstruck to say that next July, I'll be starting a tenure track position as an Assistant Professor in
@YaleEMD
, alongside some of the public health experts who I look up to most.
Fuck Greg Abbott and fuck this. Not one single person should comply with this. (Also, this is, among many other vile things, an attack on public health - if you've built a platform on public health in the last two years, speak up for trans kids.)
Greg Abbot has officially directed Family and Protective Services to begin investigating all trans children in Texas and prosecuting their parents as child abusers.
He has also instructed all teachers, doctors, and caregivers to begin reporting any trans students they see.
The phrases / tweets / articles that will go viral today will be similar to what you already know about climate change: it's us, it's here, action is urgent. But this
#ipcc
report is AMAZINGLY granular, esp. in terms of (1) regionality, (2) real-time impacts, and (3) adaptation
We all know the DHS rule change is a way of forcing universities to fully reopen. But I need you to hear this:
Forcing all our students, faculty, and staff into high risk - including the people the rule affects - isn't better.
The rule has to go. We have to beat it.
It’s crazy that
@mbeisen
deleted all the other journals than eLife and is holding them hostage and the only way he’ll release them is if enough of us are rude or outright hostile to him online, but I guess that’s how it is sometimes in this big crazy rollercoaster we call science
You probably know that wildlife trade, agriculture, and deforestation are all driving disease emergence. But the new
#ipcc
impacts report shows that climate change is the backdrop for all of that. (Ch. 2, p. 41)
Now would be a great time for a lot of the folks who’ve established themselves as the new intelligencia of American public health to reaffirm that access to safe and legal abortion is a vital and non-negotiable institution not just for civil rights but also healthcare
If you're wondering how COVID-19 is affecting peer review *on papers about coronaviruses*, we just got a paper rejected with a shotgun of wild reviewer comments including, verbatim, "What is a immunological research?"
It's okay to be overwhelmed by the scope of this report. There's 34,000 scientific studies' worth of information presented in it, and you don't need to know all of it. Think of it like a climate almanac: look up the parts you care about, not just today but any time you're curious
Geoengineering is often framed as a tool for climate justice. Today, our new study in
@NatureComms
challenges that idea, showing that solar geoengineering would create regional tradeoffs and potentially increases in malaria risk worldwide. (1/4)
Big news: I'm honored to announce we received an NSF Biology Integration Institute design award to start mapping out a possible Emerging Virus Institute for Georgetown! Huge thanks to my wonderful co-PI
@taddallas
and our amazing
@viralemergence
team: this is an absolute dream
34-fold increase in mortality. This is a crisis for public health. Don't just speak as a citizen in the coming days - if you have a public health platform, use it. Abortion is healthcare; it always will be.
👋 I'm one of those 675
#ipcc
WGII contributing authors. I'm also part of a small-ish community of scientists who study the links between climate change and disease emergence, incl. pandemic threats. I'll be tweeting about the report + related research for the rest of the week.
New COVID-19 comment: Species distribution models are a great tool, but wrong for a respiratory virus. Here's an explainer of where ecologists went wrong, and why we have to stop right now, before people get killed.
New in Nature Ecology and Evolution:
⚠️🦠 We know frighteningly little about climate change impacts on infectious diseases. New in
@GlobalChangeBio
: we find that since 1950, as the western United States heats up, the risk of plague in both wildlife and humans has steadily increased🔓
Do you ever think about how 99.9% of papers documenting climate change impacts on ecosystems and agriculture are using a set of 19 variables that were invented by (checks notes) a snake field guide
Absolutely floored that our study on climate change and viral emergence was not only
@CarbonBrief
's most-discussed paper of 2022 but... ever. Gives me a lot of hope about where we're headed in terms of tackling the root drivers of both crises head-on
You should know that tomorrow's IPCC climate report is actually just the first part of three:
1⃣✅: What's the science? How much has changed already? How much will it change?
2⃣⚠️: Who's it impacting? Are we adapting? (Feb 2022)
3⃣⚠️: How do we take steps to stop it? (Mar 2022)
Today, the U.S. extended a program, defunded last year, to stop pandemics by studying wildlife viruses.
For today's very first issue of Lancet Microbe, I've written about USAID PREDICT, why it was important, and why it wasn't enough to stop COVID-19:
Just got my flu shot at CVS! If you're like me, and you always put off vaccines until you're trapped in a shame-procrastination loop, this is me telling you it's absolutely not too late! The CDC flu map is literally new unprecedented colors! Get your flu shot!
Happy May Day! One scientific study estimated that unionized workforces caused a 30% relative drop of Covid-19 mortality in nursing homes. The union makes us strong - and safe!
This report isn't the same as the one that came out a few months ago. It isn't the same as every other report. This is a huge moment for understanding the scale of loss of life that's coming. I need you to look at the stereogram just for five minutes until you see the shape
Just to throw this out there:
We missed our window to talk about Medicare For All during the first wave of Covid in 2020.
We shouldn't miss it when Omicron pushes us to whatever new level of hospital crisis care, medical debt, and loss that's coming.
Step 4⃣. Look for the parts you care about. I work on climate change impacts on infectious disease, so I'll start with the health chapter (Ch. 7). But I also know there are regional impacts I care about in Ch. 9 (Africa) and relevant info in Ch. 8 (poverty)
Hey, if you're following Covid experts to learn about the monkeypox outbreak, you should probably know that *unlike* Covid, most of these people are not outbreak responders, and not necessarily receiving first hand information. Folks sharing data = folks doing research + response
We're only a couple months from launching a 100% open data sharing platform for wildlife disease surveillance. Want to give it a whirl? Everything's welcome, from 100 year old fish parasites to avian influenza swabs. Get in touch!
🚨 NEW: Scientists have started to trace deaths back to greenhouse gas emissions, and the results are staggering. Climate change has killed hundreds of thousands of people, a loss of life equivalent to US$ trillions. Only ~1 in 8 deaths is being counted.
Let's say that after COVID-19, you wanted to discover every single animal virus that can make a person sick, from Aichi to Zika.
How many are there?
How long would it take?
A little thread for a quiet night.
I was one of those 20%. I took on ~20k total of loan debt to feed myself / scrape rent together at Berkeley. Without it, I would’ve also experienced homelessness at multiple points. People don’t talk about it once they’re faculty, but the UC system *is really that unlivable.*
Right now most can only afford grad school if they have rich parents, go deeper into debt, work side gigs, have long commutes, are food insecure (20% are), or even homeless (5% are). All that's before many face an uncertain future in the academy as tenure track hiring declines
For some reason, the last 24 hours have been this weird outpouring of comments on my tweets and now DMs with people saying if I have so many opinions, I should be backing it up with work. I haven't slept in five months because of COVID. Every second of my life is this. Stop.
Congratulations to our colleague at the Business school, with an incredible response to our perspective "Reopening universities will cause preventable, on-campus death of students, staff, and faculty" with his own, sensu allium, "No it won't"
I'm speaking to everyone but especially public health folks. I feel utterly seasick at the idea that tomorrow I'll have to scroll through hundreds of Covid and Ukraine tweets to find the odd climate change one. I am begging you to listen. Dear god.
Aside from the fact that there’s a risk you’ll get things wrong, @ general biologists doing COVID scicomm outside their area: now isn’t the right time to cloud boundaries of who can be an expert on what based on a little reading up. Amplify some virologists and outbreak experts!
Even infectious disease epidemiologists who are new to climate: I promise you have not thought about this more than me. I live and breathe this topic. It's the core of what I do. And I'm not doing any work on this.
Not censorship or desk drawer-ing: harm reduction.
No acceptable losses. No reopening mid-pandemic.
Proud to be your friend
@AstroKatie
. If more folks (including pre-tenure folks like us) start raising their voices like this, it'll be safer for each of us in turn.
My university is one of many planning to hold in-person classes this fall. I wrote a letter to our administration explaining my concerns about this plan, and why the proposed COVID mitigation isn't enough. Here's the letter, in case it's useful to others:
It's scientists' and journalists' job now to help translate all of those 34,000 studies to policymakers and the public, but it never hurts to be curious about the science. Maybe reading this report will spark a question that you can study and answer for the next report!
What caused the 100 biggest outbreaks of zoonotic disease? This new study by
@UGAEcology
scientists is a really nice reference for (1) how hard attribution actually is, and (2) how closing one window (e.g., bushmeat) doesn't seal the house. 🔓👇
Since April, I've been begging people to actively counteract this narrative about a protective effect of summer. Overwhelmingly frustrating to now see people saying "how could this happen." We can still clarify though:
Summer isn't reducing the risk you get the virus.
Out now, the National Academies panel's guidance on COVID and weather. This passage in particular should put to rest all of the efforts to contextualize temperature-transmission curves. Even if they exist, they're not the priority, based on history.
No matter what your study finds - positive result, negative result, significant but minuscule effect size. It's not what policymakers or the public need right now. Sit it out.
Universities are meeting the challenge with wellness apps, liability waivers, backup plans for replacement instructors if you die mid-semester. They're taking away student health insurance. There will not be a bigger political fight than this. Say it with me: no acceptable losses
Imagine logging onto this free website to do a non-mandatory post where you volunteer the belief grad students aren't experiencing "real enough" financial hardship