Beth Marie Mole (she/her)

State childhood vaccination programs face budget cuts from CDC arstechnica.com/?p=1951939&utm…

"Pregnant women in states with abortion bans are nearly three times more likely to die giving birth." At a budget hearing before the House today, @SecBecerra discussed the importance of family planning services and access to abortion and contraception.

“It literally can pulverize bones … it can provide this blast effect.” The AR-15 is the weapon of choice for many mass killers. The Post sought to illustrate the lethal force of the weapon and show in detail its catastrophic effects. wapo.st/3lF9moX

My latest: Moderna made >$37 billion from the lovely Covid vaccines that taxpayers helped fund & now they're raising prices. But this is sort of the government's fault. End the drug-pricing showdowns @BernieSanders etc. Put conditions on research funding. washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/…

Good hand hygiene has always been a smart idea. Instead of ridiculing people who are doing something, anything, to try to keep themselves and others safe, let’s devote our scorn to those leaders who have only exacerbated an epidemic that has killed >1.1 million Americans.

COVID cases are rising across America as folks gather for the holidays. That's why, starting today, every household can order 4 free COVID tests to be shipped straight to your door. Head to COVIDTests.gov to get yours.

At the Indianapolis airport, on my way for the first of two work trips this week. Vaccinated, wearing my mask, and using plenty of hand sanitizer while traveling. Covid aside, I don’t want to get flu or RSV (or any other viruses circulating) before Christmas! 😷 💉 🎅🏾

Good to see! Quack (naturopath & homeopath) who sold sham #COVID “immunization pellets” gets 3 yrs in prison arstechnica.com/?post_type=pos… @BethMarieMole "...profited from peddling unapproved remedies, stirring up false fears, & generating fake proof of vaccinations."

"[A]djustment for conventional cardiovascular risk factors eliminates entirely, or almost entirely, any association observed between hypertension during pregnancy (including preeclampsia) and cardiovascular disease." nejm.org/doi/full/10.10…

Glad to see stories on this topic. Patient education, follow-up, proactive measures are critical. But it would've been great if the article noted that adding preeclampsia to cardiovascular risk calculators doesn't actually change risk estimates.

@Solowalker @arstechnica Fixed. Thanks for reading and flagging.

@arstechnica @BethMarieMole Typo. Article says US eliminated measles in 2020. Should be 2000, according to the linked previously article on almost losing that status in 2019.

Measles outbreak jumps to 7 Ohio daycares, 1 school—all with unvaccinated kids arstechnica.com/science/2022/1… by @BethMarieMole

Insulin is WAY more expensive in the US than any other country. One of insulin’s discoverers famously said it “does not belong to me, it belongs to the world.” I imagine that concept might be a little hard for Elon to understand. (Also, he said ‘patented’-that was indeed 1923)

Good news on COVID-19 variants. The current sub-lineages BQ.1s & XBBs are not causing a deadly wave of infections in world. In South Africa, which many times see things early in Omicron evolution BQ1s & XBB low prevalence & no cause for great concern.

Core problem is this: there's no real evidence for lab origin, but due to China's obfuscation, it can't be definitively refuted either. So it become a sort of Rorschach test that hinges on your priors.

Where are we with the hygiene hypothesis? I asked an immunologist about the idea that kids need to be exposed to germs in order to develop healthy immune systems. Should we be worried about all the infections kids *didn't* get during the pandemic? caitlinrivers.substack.com/p/where-are-we…

Walmart, CVS face trial for putting sham homeopathic products next to real meds arstechnica.com/?post_type=pos… by @BethMarieMole ht @ArcheeDebunker "...homeopathy is a debunked pseudoscience that dabbles with toxic substances intended to be diluted into oblivion." #GoScience!

For those in Canada wondering if we're missing out by getting the Moderna BA.1 bivalent instead of the BA.4/5 version, @BethMarieMole has a nice write-up on an early study showing they're about equally good (in mice) and both better than the original. arstechnica.com/science/2022/0…

@apsmunro @HelenBranswell @OutbreakJake @jakescottMD Right. But in the US, there's only the BA.5 bivalent option, so worth thinking about here, no? Ideally, you'd want both strain matching and wave timing. But, in the US, we might be choosing one or the other in deciding whether to wait.

@BethMarieMole @HelenBranswell @OutbreakJake @jakescottMD In the UK the Bivalent booster is BA.1 + ancestral so not so important really No one knows what the next variant will be, everyone’s best guess is offshoot of Omicron but that’s what everyone said about Delta!

Federal health officials are urging people to get a Covid booster and a flu shot now, at the same time. If you don't mind making and keeping two appointments, getting a flu shot later will likely get you more flu protection. statnews.com/2022/09/09/dou…

@apsmunro @HelenBranswell @OutbreakJake @jakescottMD So, does the wait strategy for a BA.5 booster hinge on BA.5 sticking around? What if it's on the decline by October? Waiting now could mean waiting for the booster to become relatively unhelpful. No?

@HelenBranswell @OutbreakJake @jakescottMD Personally I’ll wait a few weeks for both, maybe longer if no sign of a surge I’ll tell others the most important thing is that they get it done, so if that means sooner is more convenient, go for it!

Big news in academic publishing!