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Isabel

@isabelott.bsky.social

11K followers 2.1K following 1.6K posts

Evolutionary & population biology of vector-borne viral disease systems. 🦟 genetics PhD student in NC. Arbovirologist & orthobunyavirus wonk. Public health advocate. 80s mosquito. Archives enthusiast. Coaster-sized earrings. Opinions own. (she/her) 🏳️‍🌈

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Isabel @isabelott.bsky.social · Jun 11

The Athens (GA) Immigrants Rights Coalition, which I volunteered with for several years, is currently fundraising for their Support for Immigrant Families in Crisis fund. 98.5% of donations go straight to families in need. Please boost & contribute if you can!
www.athensimmigrantrights.org/donate

SUPPORT FOR IMMIGRANT
FAMILIES IN CRISIS
SPRING 2025
ABOUT SIFIC
Support for Immigrant Families in Crisis (SIFIC) provides emergency assistance to local immigrant families who have limited access to resources, due to their documentation or economic status. SIFIC funds are used to help cover essential needs such as rent, utilities, food, medical expenses, attorney fees and legal fees. We are currently facing a deportation crisis that is separating families and the need for these kinds of support has escalated. Please help us to raise 25K this Spring, so that we can continue to help families in crisis! Thank you, Friend.

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American Society for Virology @amersocvirology.bsky.social · 8h

ASV is a proud sponsor of #BiM2025 #BlackInMicro

Check out the awesome events happening this week!

Black Microbiologists Assoc (Black In Micro) @blackinmicro.bsky.social · 8h

🌟 Don't miss CAREERS & RESEARCH Day on Oct 15. Hear highlights from Dr. Lauryn Alexander, Dr. Shanna Ashley, and Dr. Corey Reynolds. Secure your spot now by pre-registering: linktr.ee/BlackInMicro. Show your support by donating here: tinyurl.com/GiveBiM (links in bio) #BlackInMicro #BiM2025

Black in Microbiology Week 2025 Panel: Navigating Careers in Microbiology – Careers & Research. Event time: 2–3 PM EST, Oct. 15, 2025. Speakers: Lauryn Alexander, PhD (Law Student, West Virginia University), Shanna Ashley, PhD (Medical Science Liaison, AbbVie), and Corey Reynolds, PhD (Regional Medical Scientific Director, Merck).

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Isabel @isabelott.bsky.social · 59m

i’d pick up my direct tin can line to its three remaining employees if i were to witness such villainy in the wild 🫡

Isabel @isabelott.bsky.social · 1h

it’s tummy tuesday

an extremely conked out tuxedo tort with her splotchy fluffy tummy on display

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Jennifer Molidor @jennifermolidor.bsky.social · 4d

Hanging onto every bit of good news

The river has come alive in the Klamath with wild Chinook salmon. The wider ecosystem is healing.

This most powerful story of Indigenous-led #rewilding after the largest dam removal in US history keeps getting better.

lostcoastoutpost.com/2025/oct/9/o...

One Year After Klamath Dam Removal, 'There's Just Fish Jumping All Over the Place': Scientists Describe Improvements to Water Quality and Wildlife

lostcoastoutpost.com

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Isabel @isabelott.bsky.social · 1h

no :) hope that helps

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Joseph Marcus @josephmarcusid.medsky.social · 3h

The Maldives 🇲🇻 became the first country in the world to eliminate mother to child transmission of:
-HBV
-HIV
-Syphilis

#IDSky

www.who.int/news/item/13...

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HELLody SchreiBOO @melodyschreiber.com · 3h

I really like this clear messaging on vaccine safety. I would caution, though, that 25% of Americans don't have a primary doctor. So there needs to be other ways people can get information.

Governor JB Pritzker @govpritzker.illinois.gov · 4h

Vaccines are safe and effective.

Autism isn't caused by vaccines, and autistic people and their families deserve our support.

When you want information, ask your doctor.

It's more important than ever for all of us to speak plainly, truthfully, and directly about public health.

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Joshua Weitz @joshuasweitz.bsky.social · 1d

My longer form take on what this means...

"With Malice Toward All and Charity for None"
substack.com/home/post/p-...

With Malice Toward All and Charity for None: Oct. 10-11 CDC (Un)Firing Edition

A post interpreting the Friday night firing of more than 1,000 CDC experts only to have some of these layoffs termed an ‘error’ & reversed on Saturday night.

substack.com

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Joshua Weitz @joshuasweitz.bsky.social · 1d

Friday night: ~1,250 fired in CDC, immediate pushback.

Saturday: administration says layoffs were in 'error'.

*But* does not specify how many.

Now, @axios.com reports ~600 remain RIFed by an admin that blends incompetence & malice to public health.

Mismanagement should have consequences.

Axios @axios.com · 1d

About 600 CDC staff in offices dealing with health statistics, injury and violence prevention, congressional outreach and human resources are out of work as a result of the Trump administration's mass layoffs of agency workers Friday, sources familiar said.

CDC purge hits 600 workers in key offices despite reversals

The casualties include employees working on health statistics, injury and violence prevention, congressional outreach and human resources.

www.axios.com

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Ada Palmer @adapalmer.bsky.social · 1d

The WHO has verified the elimination of both measles & rubella in all Pacific Island countries, alongside rubella elimination in Japan. The achievement follows 2 decades of coordinated immunisation campaigns, regional surveillance, and high routine vaccine coverage. buff.ly/EpFb7HK
#ShareGoodNewsToo

Rubella elimination verified in Japan, and measles and rubella elimination verified in Pacific island countries and areas

The World Health Organization (WHO) today announced that the 21 Pacific island countries and areas that are part of the WHO Western Pacific Region have collectively been verified as having eliminated…

buff.ly

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Mark Peifer (He, him) @peiferlabunc.bsky.social · 1d

I'm very excited to announce that UNC Biology has 6 faculty positions open this year! The first is for an Asst Professor who studies organismal resilience using an integrative approach 1/n
unc.peopleadmin.com/postings/307...

Poster with QR code linking to the position

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Isabel @isabelott.bsky.social · 1d

I suspect this is Katz’s Deli (one of my faves 😇) - it’s a bit outside of town (by West Rock) but absolutely worth the small pilgrimage

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Asher Hellbein @asherelbein.bsky.social · 1d

Views of the Devil's Graveyard, a stretch of Big Bend country canyonland that preserves an incredible (and highly volcanic) slice of the Eocene

A bright late morning overlook of the South Fork of the Devil's Graveyard Formation: on the left, white cliffs of ancient ash fall down into a dry creekbed lined by yellow green brush and a few old cottonwood trees. To the right, desert hills rise beneath a sky lined with skidding white clouds

A spring-fed trickle runs down the dry strembed sediment of the South Fork, below an old cottonwood.

An eocene fossil collecting site, notable for the pinkish purple layer in the white ash deposits. Volcanic rocks are everywhere.

A morning view of the Devil's Graveyard. A bright, lurid sunrise peaks over the horizon; below, banded white and red cliffs roll in a badlands around a mostly dry creek canyon

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Pavel @spavel.bsky.social · 1d

bitch what

Onedrive settings. A toggle for using AI to detect and identify faces is set to on. The caption says, you can only turn off this setting 3 times per year.

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Pavel @spavel.bsky.social · 1d

This post needs an updated re-issue because AI companies have truly come up with some incredibly novel ways to push this technology that no one wants onto people.

The AI age is the "age of no consent"

"Inevitability" means design decisions are no longer informed by user needs; now they are unilaterally imposed. The users are the ones being designed.

productpicnic.beehiiv.com

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Mike Boylan-Kolchin @mbkplus.bsky.social · 1d

We are ruled by a group of billionaires who are all somehow the most annoying and least knowledgeable guy in your freshman literature class

Sharon @sharonk.bsky.social · 1d

thiel, man, what the fuck are you talking about

He describes the plot of Watchmen, a 1986 graphic novel involving superheroes grappling with moral questions about humanity against the backdrop of impending nuclear war:

The antihero Ozymandias, the antichrist-type figure, is sort of an early-modern person. He believes this will be a timeless and eternal solution – eternal world peace. Moore is sort of a late-modern. In early modernity, you have ideal solutions, ‘perfect’ solutions to calculus. In late modernity, things are sort of probabilistic. And at some point, he asks Dr Manhattan whether the world government is going to last. And he says that ‘nothing lasts forever.’ So you embrace the antichrist and it still doesn’t work.

Thiel later finds biblical meaning in the manga One Piece, discussing how he believes it represents a future where an antichrist-like one-world government has repressed science. He believes that the hero, Monkey D Luffy, represents a Christlike figure.

In One Piece, you are set in a fantasy world, again sort of an alternate earth, but it’s 800 years into the reign of this one-world state. Which, as the story unfolds, gradually gets darker and darker. You sort of realize, in my interpretation, who runs the world and it’s something like the antichrist. There’s Luffy, a pirate who wears a red straw hat, sort of like Christ’s crown of thorns. And then towards the end of the story, transforms into a figure who resembles Christ in Revelation.

Thiel, along with a researcher and writer at Thiel Capital, explored these ideas at greater length in an essay for the religious journal First Things earlier this month.

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Anne Lutz Fernandez @lutzfernandez.bsky.social · 1d

"And when masked men grab a parent from the school car line or the corner coffee shop, all students in that school or neighborhood are subject to trauma and made to understand: The state can make people disappear. It is to be feared."

The Assault on Children

MAGA's use of kids to consolidate authoritarianism

nobody-wants-this.ghost.io

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Alex Sundermann, DrPH @sundermannaj.bsky.social · 2d

While yes, EIS folks will be back, there will definitely be discouragement for the best of the best to apply for future cohorts of EIS that will have lasting long term effects.

Folks will have to consider to apply knowing they may get RIF’d on a whim

Sheryl Gay Stolberg @sherylnyt.bsky.social · 2d

TRUMP CDC REVERSAL: Trump administration racing to reverse some CDC layoffs. Disease detectives, measles responders, MMWR staff RIF’s are revoked. DC office still shuttered. w/ @apoorvanyt.bsky.social

www.nytimes.com/2025/10/11/h...

Trump Administration Is Bringing Back Scores of C.D.C. Experts Fired in Error

www.nytimes.com

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Dave Levitan @davelevitan.bsky.social · 2d

“We can give $20 billion to Argentina but we can’t afford the CDC’s measles experts” is a hell of an argument

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Josh Busby @busbyj2.bsky.social · 2d

No way to run a government. Fired. Not fired. Fired again. Not fired. Pants on fire.

Lena Sun @lenasun.bsky.social · 2d

BREAKING: Some of the layoffs at CDC are being REVERSED.
Here is my updated story.
www.washingtonpost.com/health/2025/...

More than 1,000 CDC staff receive layoff notices during government shutdown

Another round of mass layoffs has struck CDC. The agency had already been cut during a reorganization this year, and more employees are now being shed amid the government shutdown.

www.washingtonpost.com

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MSNBC @msnbc.com · 2d

'CDC is over': RFK Jr. lays off over 1,000 employees in Friday night massacre

"CDC is over": RFK Jr. lays off over 1,000 employees in Friday night massacre

Amid the ongoing shutdown, the HHS secretary wiped out entire offices that investigate disease outbreaks, manage infectious disease responses and collect data.

www.msnbc.com

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Catherine Rampell @crampell.bsky.social · 2d

Lots of Epidemic Intelligence Service officers ("disease detectives") gone.
In-country staff in Africa (including those helping to manage the current Ebola outbreak) are fired.

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Catherine Rampell @crampell.bsky.social · 2d

Per CDC source: At internal leadership meeting this afternoon, it was shared that 1,257 people were RIF'd at CDC. Number may not be final. Apparently, chief of staff was unaware that RIFs were going to occur so not clear who is making decisions. (Short 🧵)

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Catherine Rampell @crampell.bsky.social · 2d

Policy, comms, ethics, and science management (the people who clear science docs — determine whether they meet scientific standards) heavily hit.
Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report staff are gone.

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Kelsey Atherton @atherton.bsky.social · 2d

Picked this up at a childrens book fair, should I mail it to the HHS secretary

LET'S-READ-AND-FIND - OUT SCIENCE®
GERMS
READING
RAINBOW
Воок
MAKE ME SICK!
BY MELVIN BERGER • ILLUSTRATED BY MARYLIN HAFNER

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