Maryn McKenna @marynmck Twitter profile | Pikagi

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Maryn McKenna

@marynmck

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journalist | AMR, fungi, public health, food | 2023 Cohn Prize | prof @EmoryCSHH | books | @marynmck everywhere | Fluctuat nec mergitur

often on the 45th parallel

https://t.co/NJW01YTMf0

Joined August 2008

Don't wanna be here? Send us removal request.

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@marynmck

Maryn McKenna

5 months

Some personal news, as they say: I’ve been a senior writer at @WIRED since 2020 (and part-time for 3 years before that), leading Covid coverage and writing about public health, AMR, fungi, food and ag, med history and health policy. I was laid off Monday alongside ~20 colleagues.

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@pownutrition

@ArnoldJay_11

@DVSA_HelpMe

@klyo94

@marynmck

Maryn McKenna

4 years

The chief executive of a MA hospital, outbid for PPE by the feds multiple times, cut a deal, paid extra, hired the trucks — and then was interrogated by the FBI and had to get his Congressperson to intervene to keep DHS from heisting the shipment.

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Maryn McKenna

2 years

Journalists covering demonstrations in from of Alito’s house are being given wine and cheese by neighors (and key lime pie, in another post) and funny how the neighbors respect the legal right to peaceful protest more than the legal people do.

@taliaotg

Talia Jane

2 years

Neighbors are giving me wine and cheese

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Maryn McKenna

2 years

Announcement by the CDC and the WHO that enough poliovirus has been found circulating in NY, with enough genetic changes, to cause the US to be added to the list of countries with active circulation of vaccine-derived virus. A remarkable, disturbing moment.

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Maryn McKenna

3 years

Janitorial and environmental-services crews are the ignored, crucial heroes of hospital infection control. This is lovely and entirely appropriate.

@JasonWhitely

Jason Whitely

3 years

VACCINATED: The first of 5,850 #CovidVaccine doses at @MethodistDallas went to Teresa Mata, 51, who cleans rooms in the ER. She's a mother of four and wants to protect her family. More than 100 COVID-19 vaccines will be given here today.

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Maryn McKenna

2 years

An exhausting week and I am low on bandwidth and thus I am going to let the tiniest amount of frustration leak: Public health advice that settles on “talk to your doctor” shows remarkably little knowledge about the state of US healthcare 1) in pandemic year 3 and 2) ever.

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Maryn McKenna

2 months

Nauseated by the memory-holing so: 4 years ago I was not only prototyping masks to keep loved ones safe, I was scavenging wire from COFFEE BAGS (in image) to make them work. (Tried florist wire too.) Thousands of people scrambled like this, in the richest nation in the world.

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Maryn McKenna

2 years

@SaltyEMNY Now I’m recalling an overnight ER shift that involved a stainless ring, a ring cracker, bolt cutters, and — after it was all over — an attending leaning down to tell the patient: “Are you listening? Only rubber rings from now. OK?” The ring was not on a finger.

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@marynmck

Maryn McKenna

4 years

"I, a Black man, cannot walk into a store with a bandana covering the greater part of my face if I also expect to walk out of that store. The situation isn’t safe.” Yet another way in which self-protection from #covid19 is a function of privilege.

Why I don’t feel safe wearing a face mask - The Boston Globe

As a Black man, I cannot walk into a store with a bandana covering the greater part of my face if I also expect to walk out that store.

www.bostonglobe.com

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Maryn McKenna

8 months

@lpolgreen Or maybe not random when you consider that this show was in Denver and this mass shooting happened inside a theatre in a Denver suburb

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2012 Aurora theater shooting - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

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Maryn McKenna

3 years

Dr.Anthony Fauci on @LateNightSeth and — wait, there on the desk — oh my god, it's my book. <muffled shriek>

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Maryn McKenna

4 years

@joshtpm I thought he knew it was a pandemic before it was a pandemic?

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Maryn McKenna

4 years

We’re hearing about doctors and nurses on the front lines of #COVID19 and that’s appropriate. What we’re not hearing enough about: the janitors and materials managers. They are low-wage and low-status, but they make hospital care possible. Think about them.

@KiraNewmanMDPhD

Kira Newman, MD, PhD

@KiraNewmanMDPhD

4 years

The unsung heroes of all our work have been the environmental services and supply chain workers in our hospital. They keep us all healthy and are working overtime. Rooms are getting amazingly detailed cleaning. I have been so impressed by the rigor and professionalism. (8/10)

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Maryn McKenna

4 years

Herd immunity is not a policy. It’s an absence of policy.

@samstein

Sam Stein

4 years

BIG news break from @ErinBanco — Top officials adviser Trump’s COVID task force say they’ve entered a stage where they’ve begun implement herd immunity policies

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Maryn McKenna

4 years

This was a PHASE 1 trial. In EIGHT participants. By design, Phase 1 tests only for safety — whether the formula harms people — not whether the formula works. This result DOES NOT indicate that the vaccine works as intended.

@NYTScience

NYT Science

4 years

The first coronavirus vaccine to be tested in people appears to be safe and able to to stimulate an immune response against the virus, according to its maker, the company Moderna

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Maryn McKenna

4 years

When I wrote Big Chicken 2 years ago, I picked this epigraph from Camus because I thought it had a lot to say about how we unthinkingly worsened antibiotic resistance. Now I feel it has even more to say about, well, everything right now.

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Maryn McKenna

4 years

If air cargo is not allowed through, then the White House may have just substantially worsened the shortage of materials needed to conduct the coronavirus test.

@mikethemadbiol

MiketheMadBiologistWhoLikeTrumpAlsoHasBoxes

@mikethemadbiol

4 years

@marynmck Two of the three factories (the U.S. one is the smallest) that make Qiagen RNA extraction kits are in Germany & Spain. This is fine.

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Maryn McKenna

4 years

Finally someone says it.

@atrupar

Aaron Rupar

4 years

Dr Jonathan Reiner: "I think POTUS was infected with coronavirus for at least a week before he was admitted to the hospital...I think he's the superspreader. And I think the reason the WH will not have the CDC do a formal check...is they're concerned patient zero might be POTUS."

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Maryn McKenna

3 years

Hello, I have news! For 18 mos, I’ve been a part-time “Covid correspondent” for @WIRED @WIREDScience . Extremely thrilled to say I'm now joining the @WIRED staff as senior writer for health, expanding my beat to all aspects of public health, global health, medicine and disease.

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Maryn McKenna

3 years

A student twice refused to wear a mask properly in a class. The school has no mask mandate. The professor walked out and resigned. Hero.

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Maryn McKenna

2 years

Guys, I’m not sure, but I think the NYT just discovered social determinants. And nutrition. <squints> Maybe epigenetics too.

@nytimes

The New York Times

2 years

Breaking News: Cash payments for low-income mothers increased brain function in babies, a study found, with potential implications for U.S. safety net policy.

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Maryn McKenna

2 years

The discovery of the Omicron variant in Africa demonstrates we should be striving to get vaccine to the whole world. But it also demonstrates that where vaccines already are available, we should use them. The traveler who brought Omicron from Egypt to Belgium was not vaccinated.

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Maryn McKenna

2 years

The instant the White House said rapid tests would be reimbursable but not free, people in healthcare said: Insurance companies will not bear this cost; they will make it too hard to apply. Here’s testimony one company is doing exactly that. A predictable policy fail.

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Maryn McKenna

3 years

Everyone should read this urgent, blunt and excruciatingly important warning: The health care system has collapsed. Not *is almost* collapsing. Not *is on the brink of.* Nonfunctional. Collapsed. Done.

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Just Say It: The Health Care System Has Collapsed

Delta hasn't brought us to the brink or the edge. We're way past that.

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Maryn McKenna

4 years

Nick Cordero was famous, much-awarded, and adored by his wife and family. He was also 41, healthy, and in Broadway shape. #Covid19 took his leg, took his lungs, then killed him. The least you could do in his memory is wear a mask. #RIPNickCordero

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Maryn McKenna

2 years

It's already known that breathing wildfire smoke is bad for us. But new research shows smoke may be dangerous not just for ash and small particulates, but because it carries viable fungi that can cause grave infections. Me, cheery as always, in @WIRED :

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Wildfire Smoke May Carry Deadly Fungi Long Distances

Pathogens in soil are a danger to firefighters, but smoke may transport spores that cause valley fever and other infections into cities too.

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Maryn McKenna

3 years

Arizona “risks a catastrophe on the scale of the worst natural disaster the state has ever experienced."

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Maryn McKenna

3 years

The chances are very good that, whenever you get the Covid vaccine, you’ll be down for 48 hours with fever, fatigue and aches. This is normal. We are late in telling people what to expect. Alarmists and bad actors are going to fill that void.

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Vaccines Are Here. We Have to Talk About Side Effects

Disinformation could thwart distribution before government messages have a chance to push back. Debunking might turn out to be everyone’s job.

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Maryn McKenna

4 years

Combine in a bowl: ⅔-cup rubbing alcohol (99% isopropyl alcohol) ⅓-cup aloe vera gel. Stir. Decant into a clean soap or pump bottle. That's it, that's the recipe. Originates with a 2019 post by biomedical PhD @azareal :

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Maryn McKenna

4 years

“Karen of the clan MacKaren” Don’t mind me I’m just over here being dead

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Maryn McKenna

4 years

If you take the time to watch the full 6-min video, you can see that the hiker approached the cougar's cubs. She is chasing him away from them. Her posturing isn't, "I'm going to eat you," it's "Go away."

@kslnewsradio

KSL NewsRadio

4 years

WATCH: "C'mon dude! I don't feel like dying today!" A cougar stalked a man for over 6 minutes during his run through Slate Canyon near Provo.

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Maryn McKenna

4 years

@choo_ek Any reporter who's interviewed him (e.g., me, forget how often) can tell you, he speaks 50% faster than any other human and always in complete complex-compound sentences and with rigorous logical flow. (You only try to take handwritten notes on him once. Ever after, you record.)

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Maryn McKenna

2 years

I see people are asking about vaccine-derived poliovirus; here's a story I wrote last month that explains the situation. (I'll spare you the dozens of other stories I've written about polio over years... 🥺)

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Polio Is Back in the US and UK. Here’s How That Happened

For every person paralyzed, hundreds or thousands could be infected. It’s a setback for the long-overdue plan to eradicate the virus from the world.

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Maryn McKenna

3 years

of course Billie is amazing, but truly the night belongs to Caftan Photog whoever they are #MetGala

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Maryn McKenna

3 years

Oh for fuck's sake.

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Maryn McKenna

3 years

The lesson here is not actually Bad Messaging About The Vaccine. The lesson is paid sick leave for everyone, no exceptions.

@washingtonpost

The Washington Post

@washingtonpost

3 years

Nearly half of adults in the U.S. who have not received a coronavirus vaccine are concerned about missing work as a result of side effects from the shot, according to a Kaiser Family Foundation poll released this month.

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Maryn McKenna

4 years

Following @jayrosen_nyu and @froomkin ’s comments earlier, a plea. NEWSROOMS: FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, CENTER YOUR HEALTH AND SCIENCE WRITERS ON #COVID19 . If they're too busy to do all the stories, at least run your copy by them. Your mistakes are misleading the public. Thread:

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Maryn McKenna

4 years

Philadelphia: Not fucking around since 1682.

@nowthisimpact

NowThis Impact

4 years

Philly Mayor Kenney: ‘I think what the president needs to do is, frankly, put his big boy pants on. He needs to acknowledge the fact that he lost. And he needs to congratulate the winner, just as Jimmy Carter did, just as George H.W. Bush did, and frankly, just as Al Gore did’

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Maryn McKenna

3 years

Energy nerds: The Texas blackouts show that we always knew a threat was coming someday but we never spent the $$ to prepare systems for when it arrives. All of public health at once: COME OVER HERE AND SIT BY ME.

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Maryn McKenna

4 years

In early April, in lockdown, I reported out the story of the last *two* times the US tried to rush a vaccine, in 1976 and 2009, and how it badly that went. Grateful to my @WIRED editors who let us run with deep history and unexpected angles every day.

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We Need a Covid-19 Vaccine—Let’s Get It Right the First Time

The flu shot campaigns of 1976 and 2009 offer key lessons for how (and how not) to distribute, monitor, and communicate about vaccines. But will anyone listen?

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Maryn McKenna

4 years

In a still-cresting pandemic, in an epidemic by far the worst in the world, the White House releases opposition research — the kind of portfolio you compile to undermine a political opponent — on its own chief scientist.

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Maryn McKenna

3 years

Very very much this. Lawns are a resource-sucking pollinator-starving fever dream reenactment of 18th-c colonialist consumption. Rip them out. Put in gardens and groundcovers and food. Plant some trees.

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Death to America’s Manicured Lawns

Nevada’s legislature is considering banning decorative grass. But really we should be banning most lawns in the country.

newrepublic.com

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Maryn McKenna

2 years

The end of the Roe protection of abortion will have so many ripple effects through society. It didn't only guarantee safe legal abortion: It also allowed women to go to college, build careers, and marry (or not) at the time of their choosing.

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Roe Stood for 49 Years. It Revolutionized Life for Women

The national right to abortion pushed back the age of childbearing, increased college and workforce participation, and created economically stable families.

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Maryn McKenna

2 years

Problem, explorations, solutions: @WIRED is about the future and how we get there. Global editorial director and big boss @glichfield talks to @paulwrblanchard about the demands of cultural change:

@mediamasters_fm

Media Masters podcast

@mediamasters_fm

2 years

New podcast! 🎉 @glichfield on the “dizzying speed of cultural change” - driving demand for an “authority on tomorrow” 🎧 Listen:

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Maryn McKenna

3 years

If you read the problematic NYT column yesterday about decision-making around Thanksgiving, or even if you didn’t, I urge you to read this @tcarmody essay, which illuminates the deep issues so clearly and beautifully. Stay to the end.

The Moral Calculus of COVID-19

COVID-19 has required all of us to scrutinize our actions and sacrifice our desires and even our obligations in order to keep ourselves and those around us safe. I want to examine two cases where...

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Maryn McKenna

4 years

When #COVID19 began, I talked to a US mask manufacturer who had been warning for YEARS that offshoring mask-making was a mistake. Colleague @parismartineau revisits him today. He’s ramped up production 400% and turns away orders for millions daily. Great story, terrible times.

@parismartineau

paris martineau

@parismartineau

4 years

the biggest US mask manufacturer gets 200+ calls & emails a day from desperate hospitals, fearful elderly people & parents of immunocompromised kids, & wannabe price gougers it used to make 250K masks a day. now it makes 1M it still turns down 100M+/day

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Maryn McKenna

3 years

In Orange County, CA, hospitals are sending ambulances away before they arrive, and EMTs are having to hold patients in ambulances for hours. (Did you hear that? HOURS.) The county’s emergency-medical director: “The EMS system may collapse.” #COVID19

@AndrewNoymer

Andrew Noymer 🇺🇦

3 years

"At the current rate of deterioration, the EMS system may collapse unless emergency directives are implemented now." 👀

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Maryn McKenna

4 years

@aetiology I’ve said this in interviews already, but: In all the stories I did over YEARS on the likelihood of a pandemic someday, and the multiple possible scenarios, the one scenario I never imagined was that the CDC would be absent and the White House would be hostile to the whole idea.

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Maryn McKenna

4 years

Good morning. That coffee you’re drinking right now: It might not be around long. A plant fungus called rust is destroying current crops, and climate change is undermining the wild relatives we could use to breed back resilience.

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Coffee Rust Is Going to Ruin Your Morning

Coffee plants were supposed to be safe on this side of the Atlantic. But the fungus found them.

www.theatlantic.com

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Maryn McKenna

3 years

I think @TimAlberta ’s praise of the unpowerful but moral Republican who stopped the Trump election chaos is worth republishing widely.

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Maryn McKenna

3 years

The South is so overwhelmed with the delta variant of COVID that hospitals in Tennessee and Florida are seeking to transfer patients to Minnesota.

@ERistagno

Elizabeth Ristagno MD, MSc 🦠 🧫🩺

3 years

MN hosp report 477 COVID-19 patients, limited beds. MN is receiving transfer req from as far away as TN and FL, b/c fast-spreading delta variant has caused a COVID-19 surge in the South that has consumed available ICU beds. Less beds for MN residents 😞

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Maryn McKenna

3 years

Yes, it happened on Christmas, and yes, no one died, but it’s still remarkable to me how little coverage of this I’ve seen in national media. These images, from a Nashville network affiliate, are jaw-dropping.

@NC5PhilWilliams

Phil Williams

@NC5PhilWilliams

3 years

NEW IMAGES: Incredible devastation on Nashville’s 2nd Ave. as a result of the #nashvillebombing

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Maryn McKenna

4 years

The governor of Georgia, where cases are spiking, has already sued Atlanta mayor @KeishaBottoms to prevent her imposing a mask mandate. Now the governor has asked the court for an emergency injunction PREVENTING THE MAYOR FROM SPEAKING about masks. Please RT tf out of this.

@KeishaBottoms

Keisha Lance Bottoms

4 years

In addition to being sued over a mask mandate and voluntary advisory guidelines on COVID-19, @GovKemp has asked for an emergency injunction to “restrain” me from issuing press statements and speaking to the press. Far more have sacrificed too much more for me to be silent.

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Maryn McKenna

4 years

This was worth coming onto Twitter just now. (OK leaving again.)

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Maryn McKenna

9 months

Fungal infections are rising: occurring more frequently, affecting more people, becoming more difficult to treat. Climate change may be teaching fungi to thrive at warmer temperatures — and for us warm humans, that doesn't bode well. Me in @WIRED :

The Battle Against the Fungal Apocalypse Is Just Beginning

Fungal infections are rising worldwide and climate change may be to blame. Medicine isn’t ready.

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Maryn McKenna

3 years

An important, detailed, factual, evidence-packed indictment of Gov. Brian Kemp's persistent failure to lead and protect his state. The home state of the CDC is nearing pandemic peaks in deaths, and near the bottom of state vaccination rankings. Teachers are dying. It's grim here.

@joshuasweitz

Joshua Weitz

3 years

As Georgia deaths/day approach pandemic peaks, a grim reminder of the consequences of inaction, misinformation and policy failures. a 🧵

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Maryn McKenna

2 years

I’ve never been so envious in my life.

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Maryn McKenna

4 years

IDK who needs to hear this, but if you are making yourself paranoid looking for sold-out hand sanitizer, it might be empowering to know you can DIY your own from a drugstore. Not that you have to! But in case it helps to know you can if you need to, recipe follows:

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Maryn McKenna

3 years

One year ago today, one minute before midnight, the low-tech volunteer-run list @ProMED_mail published a report on a few cases of unexplained pneumonia in the Chinese city of Wuhan. It was the rest of the world’s first glimpse of what was coming.

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Maryn McKenna

4 years

Y’all. Y’ALL. WAFFLE HOUSES ARE CLOSING.

@WAFB

WAFB

4 years

Waffle House closes 365 locations across the U.S.

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Maryn McKenna

3 years

Disappointed in this. The really edgy stance would have been taking a position for grassfed beef and pastured poultry. They look good in carbon analyses, they need policy support to thrive, it would be pro smallholder, and people really do need help to learn how to cook them.

@epicurious

epicurious

3 years

Today we announced that Epicurious is cutting out beef. It won’t appear in new Epi recipes, articles, newsletters, or on social. This isn’t a vendetta against cows or people who eat them. It’s a shift about sustainability; not anti-beef but pro-planet.

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Maryn McKenna

4 years

What.

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Maryn McKenna

3 years

What a coincidence.

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@marynmck

Maryn McKenna

3 years

There really is no one in the US media who can brutally and joyously eviscerate public persons the way @CharlesPPierce does. It is glorious to read. (I say this as the former spouse and daughter-in-law of Fleet Streeters, who practice it in the cradle.)

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Maryn McKenna

4 years

1) 14 people are sick in 5 states from salad sprouts. This is your reminder to never eat raw sprouts. 2) The CDC estimates that 3,000 Americans a year die of foodborne illness. This is your reminder that public health infrastructure protects us from novel *and normal* illnesses.

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Maryn McKenna

2 years

1) Dehilerin isn’t a “boutique,” it’s a store where the middle-class shop. 2) $375 is approx 25% of the cost of a Sony PS5. 3) Let’s not pretend judgments about personal spending aren’t gendered. 4) This is gleefully performative and we ought to ignore it, but come on.

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Maryn McKenna

4 years

I thought I had gone down some challenging rabbit holes in the past 4 months, but then I was introduced to germ-theory truthers. [blinks]

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Maryn McKenna

2 years

The other countries on the list are overwhelmingly developing economies; the only other rich nations on it are Israel and the UK. (At least one US isolate has genetic links to one found in Israel.) List is on this page:

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Maryn McKenna

4 years

Impressive calm and persistence by @PaulaReidCBS who doesn't flinch at insults or pause when she is shouted at, but just keeps pressing her question. Brava.

@JamilSmith

Jamil Smith جميل كريم

4 years

I hope that every reporter continues asking him questions like this. @PaulaReidCBS is right—no one who actually cares about the lives he is costing with his willful incompetence wants to hear about his petty rivalries right now. (And he lied about Biden.)

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Maryn McKenna

1 year

@lingerie_addict First, "rich people cosplay" is a brilliant phrase. Second, having well-made things you keep is its own kind of luxury. They fit; you know how they'll hang and behave; they reinforce your self-concept (or you wouldn't keep them). Getting dressed feels like a trust fall.

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Maryn McKenna

2 years

@LizSzabo Good for you. I've paid for other people's food, laundry detergent. People who have the creativity to scam aren't going to scam for a Rx or a few bottles of Tide.

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Maryn McKenna

3 years

Grateful for a slew of scientists reminding us that today's shots for kids news stories are based on Pfizer PR. The company didn’t release detailed data. The Covid crisis has made journalism based on single interested sources acceptable, and someday we’ll have to deal with that.

@roby_bhatt

Roby Bhattacharyya is also @roby-b.bsky.social

3 years

Vaccine Monday returns! Pfizer press release on trial of COVID vaccine in kids age 5-11: - 1/3 of dose given to ≥12yo - Ab levels similar to 16-25yo ("immunobridge") - per CNN (not in press release), no myocarditis (in ~2000 kids) Can't wait for data.

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Maryn McKenna

4 years

You should read this, all the way to the end.

@libbyjones715

Libby

4 years

Most people who know the name Sophie Scholl know she was a 21 year old German student activist who was executed by the Nazis for distributing anti-Nazi pamphlets on her college campus. But people don’t talk about what happened leading up to her execution, or what happened after.

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Maryn McKenna

4 years

"Of all face touches, 44% involved contact with a mucous membrane... Of mucous membrane touches, 36% involved the mouth, 31% involved the nose, 27% involved the eyes, and 6% were a combination." Kwok et al, Am J Inf C, 2015 That was a study of *med students.* Wash your hands.

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Maryn McKenna

4 years

Amazing infographic and explainer by the @Reuters graphics team, showing how one person in Korea who didn’t listen to her doctors (but went to brunch! and a megachurch!) exposed more than 1,000 people to #COVID19

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Maryn McKenna

3 years

I see so many parents so joyful at getting their kids vaccinated, and it reminds me that veterans of polio research told me how, on the day the polio vaccine was announced, people rushed into stores to watch on the TVs for sale, and cried.

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April 12 1955: Polio Announcement

www.youtube.com

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Maryn McKenna

2 years

@JortsTheCat I'm a reporter and I will always take your DMs seriously

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Maryn McKenna

3 years

This column makes me despair. It walks through interesting, important, revelatory data, and the conclusion it comes to, based on that data, is completely factually wrong. Given the column’s prominence, I’ll venture that it’s morally wrong as well.

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Opinion | I Traced My Covid-19 Bubble and It’s Enormous (Published 2020)

And if you have kids, yours probably is, too.

www.nytimes.com

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Maryn McKenna

2 years

Translated: In an anti-abortion state, an ectopic pregnancy cannot be removed until a woman has lost so much blood into her abdomen that her red blood cell count drops or her blood pressure crashes, sending her into shock and risking her life.

@janevandis

Jane van Dis MD 🌎

2 years

OBGYN Colleague in Missouri “We are now observing patients with ectopic pregnancy and hemoperitoneum until they have a documented falling hemoglobin or unstable vital signs” 1:50 pregnancies is ectopic

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Maryn McKenna

4 years

Nature, given the chance, is metal af.

@KlatuBaradaNiko

￮༺𓂂𓂃ᗙ 𝔐𝔞𝔯𝔱𝔦𝔫 ᗛ𓂃𓂂༻￮

@KlatuBaradaNiko

4 years

Black Mantis (Parablepharis kuhlii asiatica)

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Maryn McKenna

2 years

@UrsulaV This thread is poetry. (Also, as the author of this, I can testify it is accurate.)

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Maryn McKenna

9 months

Some personal news, as they say: I'm thrilled and honored to receive this award. The cohort of past winners are the giants of our journalistic specialty and I'm humbled to join them. Thank you, @ScienceWriting .

@ScienceWriting

CASW

@ScienceWriting

9 months

Authoritative, committed to her craft, always ahead of the curve: CASW congratulates the incomparable @marynmck of @WIRED , winner of the 2023 Victor Cohn Prize for Excellence in Medical Science Reporting /1

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Maryn McKenna

3 years

Your Most Valuable Employees Are The Ones Coming Back To The Office, Says Man Who Wants To Rent You Office Space

@WSJ

The Wall Street Journal

3 years

WeWork's CEO tells WSJ there is an easy way for companies to spot their most engaged employees: They’re the ones who want to come back to the office. “Those who are least engaged are very comfortable working from home,” he said.

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Maryn McKenna

4 years

Alternate Handwashing Instructions is the meme we need right now.

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Maryn McKenna

4 years

Are we still cosplaying The Masque of the Red Death or have we moved on to The Fall of the House of Usher now?

@ccadelago

Christopher Cadelago

4 years

More than 2,000 guests have been invited to the White House tomorrow, according to a person familiar with the event. Two thousand, with three zeros.

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Maryn McKenna

4 years

Holy crap. A Chinese pharma firm making veterinary vaccines treated its exhaust with “expired disinfectants.” Now at least 3200 people nearby and maybe 5000 have contracted highly infectious brucellosis.

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Maryn McKenna

1 year

Gonorrhea isn't like Covid, a novel pathogen that took us by surprise. It's a known old foe with a known pattern of gaining antibiotic resistance. And yet, we let it get ahead of us, and now we're losing the last drug useful against it. Me at @WIRED :

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The Last Drug That Can Fight Gonorrhea Is Starting to Falter

Data gaps, funding cuts, and shyness about sex let gonorrhea gain drug resistance. There are no new treatments yet.

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Maryn McKenna

2 years

We have come, in less than a week, to a moment where a state that backs women’s healthcare has to create legislation to protects its licensed healthcare workers from being extradited to another state to be prosecuted for the performance of women’s healthcare.

@ErinInTheMorn

Erin Reed

2 years

New York files S09077 which would protect abortion providers from being extradited to states where abortions are illegal if they provide abortions to refugees from those states. This is VERY similar to S08842 which would protect trans refugees from criminalizing statse.

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Maryn McKenna

3 years

Dr. John Snow would like a word.

@UNC

UNC-Chapel Hill

3 years

First sips ✔️ #UNC

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Maryn McKenna

2 years

@jeffbcraven If she's responsible for today, she's a genius.

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Maryn McKenna

4 years

The unionized workers of the US Postal Service, the American Postal Workers Union, are asking for followers to get out the message of what is happening to the mail. They are at @APWUnational . The USPS is protected by the Constitution and is under threat. I recommend a follow.

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Maryn McKenna

4 years

And a follow-up to my last tweet. It is within the decision-making process of every news organization and especially every video and cable to evaluate what they are putting out there, and whose agenda they are serving. It is possible not to be stenographers and copy machines.

@BrettLoGiurato

Brett LoGiurato

@BrettLoGiurato

4 years

Dear editors: You do not have to, and should not, use the photo the president deployed tear gas to get

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Maryn McKenna

4 years

Two days before #RayshardBrooks was killed, Georgia cops responded to a violated no-contact order. The man they were looking for SHOT AT THE COPS TWICE, hitting their vehicle while they sheltered behind it. Yet he’s sitting alive in jail today. Here’s his photo.

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Maryn McKenna

3 years

We haven't settled exactly which animals #COVID19 spilled over from — but we need to start thinking seriously about how it will spill *back* into the animal world, how it will evolve there, and how we should track that. Me at @WIRED :

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Covid Spilled From Animals to Humans. Now It’s Spilling Back

Bats likely gave it to a mystery animal that then gave it to people. We passed it on to minks. Where does it go from there—and could it come back to us?

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Maryn McKenna

4 years

Always grateful for people who say the quiet part out loud.

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Maryn McKenna

3 years

Good morning especially to the megaship #EVERGIVEN , which as of a few minutes ago, is still stuck sideways in the Suez Canal, and is also the metaphor we need for life in 2021.

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Maryn McKenna

3 years

We need a national messaging campaign about the minor, predictable side effects of the #COVID19 vaccine, before weaponized disinformation rushes in to frighten people away from taking it. Me at @WIRED :

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Vaccines Are Here. We Have to Talk About Side Effects

Disinformation could thwart distribution before government messages have a chance to push back. Debunking might turn out to be everyone’s job.

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Maryn McKenna

3 years

When journalists teach writing we’re expected to recommend Fowler and Zinsser and Strunk and White and Hart et al. All worthy, but me, I go straight for @ANNELAMOTT :

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Maryn McKenna

4 years

110% this. And come on, journalists repeating these results uncritically: We should not be researchers' stenographers.

@Atul_Gawande

Atul Gawande

4 years

It will be great news if dexamethasone, a cheap steroid, really does cut deaths by 1/3 in ventilated patients with COVID19, but after all the retractions and walk backs, it is unacceptable to tout study results by press release without releasing the paper.

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Maryn McKenna

4 years

What, and I can't stress this enough, TF. ()

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