charleslawrence.bsky.social - Profile | ThreadSky | a Reddit-style client for Bluesky

Since the NYT Armchair Brigade is at it again, let me just share a few public quotes made in May, 2020. 1️⃣ "Even Kristian Andersen [.] first thought that COVID-19 was just as likely to have been accidentally released from a lab as it was to have come from nature" www.cidrap.umn.edu/covid-19/sci...

submitted 7 days ago • 4 comments

You know how these guys are really into the idea that any disease can be cured with a healthy diet of unprocessed foods? Doesn’t work so well when the disease is E. coli from lettuce that isn’t reported publicly because FDA isn’t competent to keep food safe. www.washingtonpost.com/health/2025/...

submitted 2 days ago • 29 comments

The effects of Covid in pregnancy are devastating and preventable by vaccination; now we have strong data from Penn Medicine that vaccines protect children and adolescents from long Covid

submitted 1 day ago • 120 comments

"England will be the first country in the world to start vaccinating people against the sexually transmitted infection #gonorrhea. The vaccine is 30-40% effective, but NHS England hopes it will reverse soaring numbers of infections." #IDSky + #MedSky. www.bbc.com/news/article...

submitted 1 day ago • 0 comments

Friday's Executive Order is part of a concerted plan. FDA head Marty Makary and his sidekick Vinay Prasad are already leveraging the language of "gold standard science" to create new and unprecedented roadblocks to vaccine approval. Last week in the NEJM they wrote: www.nejm.org/doi/full/10....

submitted 1 day ago • 9 comments

Thinking of this @propublica.org reporting today about stillbirths of unvaccinated parents during the Delta wave, before CDC had explicitly recommended COVID vaccines for pregnant people and the damage the virus did to the placentas. www.propublica.org/article/covi...

submitted 1 day ago • 16 comments

Do the vast majority of pediatricians and their representative body, the American Academy of Pediatrics, support today’s announcement on restrictions to the COVID vaccine? No. Who do you trust? Suits or your child’s doctor.

submitted 1 day ago • 26 comments

Going after medical journals is the next step it seems. Determining where science can be published limits dissemination and limits transparency www.politico.com/news/2025/05...

submitted 1 day ago • 0 comments

3 guys, none with infectious disease or pedatric expertise, just ran roughshod over normal procedures to block COVID shots for kids, pregnant people. This is so awful & insane & we should treat it as such. Reporters, you're on notice. Both sides this at your peril & watch your credibitlity evaporate

submitted 1 day ago • 27 comments

RFK Jr. wants to bar government scientists from publishing in NEJM? Interesting, given that his sidekicks Makary and Prasad published there last week. (An article laundering RFK Jr.'s "gold standard science" rhetoric as a way to restrict vaccine availability, no less.)

submitted 1 day ago • 21 comments

The process of changing COVID-19 vaccines recommendations today was strange, possibly illegal, not reflected on CDC's page and in tension with @fda.gov 's announcement last week, explains @lifehacker.com lifehacker.com/health/rfk-a...

submitted 1 day ago • 13 comments

Apropos of nothing, in 2021, I wrote a piece for the New Statesman on the importance of COVID vaccination for protecting pregnant women, and the poor messaging at the time. It was later highly commended by the Royal Statistical Society in their journalism awards.

submitted 1 day ago • 1 comment

Oh my God, it gets worse by the minute

submitted 1 day ago • 10 comments

"As ob-gyns who treat patients every day, we have seen firsthand how dangerous COVID infection can be during pregnancy & for newborns who depend on maternal antibodies… The science has not changed. It is very clear that COVID infection during pregnancy can be catastrophic & lead to major disability”

submitted 1 day ago • 1 comment

Everyone in ICUs during COVID has haunting pregnancy stories: tenuous patients, emergency intubations, crash C-sections. Even after 5 years of immunity from vaccines and past infections, COVID harms placentas and pregnancy outcomes. Undermining vaccine confidence only endangers pregnant people.

submitted 1 day ago • 4 comments

If someone has to read halfway through your story before finding out Kennedy's step on COVID vaccination today is not in alignment with the scientific evidence you are doing it wrong.

submitted 1 day ago • 6 comments

Kennedy, Makary, and Bhattacharya announced on X that they are pulling recommendations for Covid vaccines. They will no longer be part of the childhood vaccination schedule, and they're no longer recommended for pregnant people. There's a process for changing recs. It's not posting a video on X.

submitted 1 day ago • 65 comments

ACOG is deeply disappointed by HHS’s move to drop COVID-19 vaccine recommendations in pregnancy. The science is clear: COVID-19 remains dangerous in pregnancy and vaccination protects both patients and newborns. The vaccine is safe and protects families. Read our full statement: buff.ly/OGue7sO

submitted 1 day ago • 13 comments

It's quite obvious RFK.Jr has been spared the trauma of seeing pregnant people intubated in the icu with severe covid infection fighting for the lives. Pregnancy is a risk factor for severe covid. Not recommending vaccines in pregnancy is reckless and unscientific. www.nbcnews.com/health/healt...

submitted 1 day ago • 3 comments

This is one of the dumbest health policy decisions I have ever seen.

submitted 1 day ago • 11 comments

Reduced immune response to SARS-CoV-2 infection in the elderly after 6 months Note: "elderly". There is a reason why there is an annual booster, against influenza this provided at the start of the viral season for those over a particular age. www.frontiersin.org/... 1/10

submitted 1 day ago • 4 comments

Eh? No. All inflammations, thus infections, trauma and also vaccines, can result in myocarditis. This is a very low risk for vaccines, much lower than infections, and the mRNA vaccines have not a particular high risk. The FDA asks for an upodate. 1/3

submitted 5 days ago • 3 comments

No, it is just another variant. We do not panic, just as we do not for variants and mutations in OC43, 229E, HKU.1, NL63, RSV, seasonalç Influenza strains, etc. These are panic accounts that spread fear for clicks.

submitted 3 days ago • 3 comments

Regular Reminder: Organisms mutate. Bacteria and viruses do that quickly. Especially RNA viruses can mutate fast. Mutations are random, selection is not. For respiratory viruses, much selection is on reducing early capture when they try to infect a new host. 1/8

submitted 4 days ago • 1 comment

I really think that not enough attention is devoted to this point about the pandemic (timestamp in link). Were there failures of communication and messaging throughout the pandemic that contributed to loss of trust? Absolutely. But hardly ever are the bad actors who actively sought to put out...

submitted 2 days ago • 4 comments

Still waiting on a statement from RFK Jr and Children’s Health Defense (formerly World Mercury Project), which RFK Jr. founded, condemning the GOP Congress for increasing mercury exposure in children. #MAHA

submitted 5 days ago • 5 comments

The spread of Mpox in Sierra Leone is unlike anything we have ever seen - and we have been keeping an eye on this bug in the region for >15 years. Given geographical spread, 50/50 men vs women, this is no "sexual network". This could be the next one. clt.npha.gov.sl/outbreak.aspx

submitted 6 days ago • 29 comments

🆕 NHS England and local government have announced the world’s first #Gonorrhoea vaccine programme for eligible patients, with support from UKHSA. The vaccine, already used for meningococcal B, could protect against gonorrhoea by up to 40% and help fight #AntibioticResistance.

submitted 7 days ago • 2 comments

According to reports by @maxkozlov.bsky.social at @nature.com, #RachelRiley, a former #McKinsey consultant, #WoffordCollege grad, #RhodesScholar at @ox.ac.uk is the #DOGE flunkie who is responsible for killing many NIH grants. Not sure how she sleeps at night. www.nature.com/articles/d41...

submitted 6 days ago • 0 comments

Interesting preclinical data from Moderna for the VRBPAC meeting considering strain updates. There does seem to be a meaningful difference in protection between KP.2 vs. LP.8.1 for naive, but not experienced mice. www.fda.gov/media/186595...

submitted 6 days ago • 2 comments

Proximal Origin wasn’t a coverup. It was Kristian et al’s scientific opinion based on limited data (but held up well). Scientists have a right to freely express their opinions, on Slack & in papers. This isn’t “bad behavior.” It was scientists collaboratively examining the evidence. IOW, their jobs

submitted 6 days ago • 4 comments

The US doesn’t have universal health insurance for all citizens like every other country. Let’s do that before cutting access to life-saving vaccines. If you don’t have insurance you might have undiagnosed diabetes or hypertension, and so won’t be eligible when you should be eligible for vaccine

submitted 8 days ago • 3 comments

I need every single journalist covering vaccine stuff at the FDA to be explicit about this. Thank you @katherinejwu.com. www.theatlantic.com/health/archi... There is a genuine open question regarding the degree of benefit for otherwise healthy kids to get seasonal COVID-19 boosters.

submitted 7 days ago • 10 comments

Do not underestimate RFK Jr.'s determination to eliminate all vaccines, as he was lying through his teeth when he said he didn't want to take away anyone's vaccines. He will find ways to eliminate them. First, he will try to delicense specific vaccines, likely starting with HPV or hep B.

submitted 12 days ago • 41 comments

Makary and Prasad have a sounding board piece written in NEJM about the future of COVID-19 vaccine regulation at the FDA. Some thoughts:

submitted 8 days ago • 18 comments

Immunogenicity and Safety of Influenza and COVID-19 Multicomponent Vaccine in Adults ≥50 Years A Randomized Clinical Trial Combi vaccine outperformed each individual vaccine against Flu and COVID-19 jamanetwork.com/jour... 1/4

submitted 10 days ago • 1 comment

This is such an important shift. For many years the catholic church withheld support for HPV vaccination which prevents cervical cancer. 119,000 women die from this cancer in Africa every year. This full throated support of the HPV vaxx by the church will help uptake. nation.africa/kenya/health...

submitted 12 days ago • 18 comments

I had covid in my third trimester with my first born and ended up with critical oligohydramnios and an urgent c section with decreased fetal movement Amniotic fluid was totally normal literally the week before I had covid. It was only caught bc my doc didn’t like that I had lost weight

submitted 12 days ago • 1 comment

#RSV rates in infants are falling. Hospitalizations are down 28 % and 43 % for infants less than 7 months in two different networks, as reported in this week's MMWR. This is real world evidence that maternal immunization and MAbs are protecting this vulnerable populations - #MedSky.

submitted 20 days ago • 3 comments