NEWSROOM

There's been some media hype about viruses generated by AI. While that needs attention, virologist and DPH Coordinating Committee member James Alwine notes that right now by far the biggest danger is naturally-occurring viruses that could jump from animals to people. Unfortunately, U.S. leaders have crippled our ability to detect and respond to these threats.

Coordinating Committee member Bruce Mirken explains why he's a public health voter in a syndicated column that ran all over the U.S.: "Millions of Americans have lost or will soon be losing their coverage. Some of our pioneering, life-saving institutions have been so badly damaged that some epidemiologists say it will take decades to rebuild them. And people have rightly lost trust in the health information dispersed by federal officials, as medical mis- and disinformation have already led to many preventable deaths."

DPH member Benedicte Callan was interviewed on the Pacifica Evening News, aired on stations in the San Francisco Bay Area, Los Angeles and Fresno, about RFK Jr.'s new effort to "study" vaccine injuries. Callan pointed out that a robust system has long been in place to assess benefits and risks of vaccines (her segment starts at about 26:45)

DPH member David Goldberg takes on RFK Jr.'s proposed changes to Head Start, writing, "The proposed rules will undermine Head Start’s educational standards, intensity of caring adult interactions with children, attention to child health and development and parental engagement and support."

Infectious diseases can spread rapidly on college campuses. Urging all involved to make vaccination of students a priority, DPH members Donna A. Gaffney and Teri Mills write, "Students and their parents might not realize how a decision to forgo a measles vaccination could result in missing classes and even exclusion from campus and their dorms during a quarantine period."

As HHS Secretary Kennedy launches a new drive to document vaccine injuries, DPH Coordinating Committee member Elizabeth Jacobs comments that Kennedy "has once again created a solution to a problem that doesn't exist. It's more window dressing to advance his anti-vaccine agenda and will only serve to create more confusion and doubt in public health."

Immunologist and DPH member Gigi Kwik Gronvall discusses the recent scare over an apparent Russian case of pneumonic plague, noting the many ways that Trump and RFK Jr. have weakened our ability to understand and respond to disease outbreaks: withdrawing from the WHO, dismantling USAID, cuts to infectious disease research and mass of CDC staff who monitor outbreaks, among others.

The recent rise in U.S. measles cases has now been joined by new outbreaks of mumps, another viral disease covered by the MMR vaccine that HHS Secretary Kennedy has been sowing doubts about and wants to split into three separate doses. Forbes outlines the problem of waning immunity and how Kennedy's record of falsehoods as documented by our Whoppers only makes things worse.

In this hour-long podcast episode, Gigi Kwik Gronvall, an immunologist, Fort Detrick veteran researcher and professor at Johns Hopkins University discusses what biosecurity really means and how policy by vibes -- including the nonsense promulgated by RFK Jr. -- leaves us less safe. At about 47:00 she gives a brief shout-out to Defend Public Health as an organization fighting back that people need to support.

DPH member Benedicte Callan writes, "If you think having accurate information about your health matters, then the U.S. has a problem. I know, because I've spent the last year working with a team to track Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s distortions, deceptions, and flat-out falsehoods, and analyze what we found. The results were shocking."