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matthewdhealy.bsky.social
Matt Healy
@matthewdhealy.bsky.social
410 followers 610 following 1.8K posts
Techbio, Virology, Drug Discovery, Data, Midwest, Engineering, NLP, science, theology, history of science

https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6439-5038
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matthewdhealy.bsky.social
Iowa River winter scene Iowa River winter scene Iowa River winter scene Iowa River winter scene
December 18, 2025 at 6:43 AM
matthewdhealy.bsky.social
Matthew Healy December 17, 2022. Matthew @MatthewDavidH I've said over and over that masks, ventilation, HEPA filters, and vaccine boosters are HOW TO GET what everybody says they want. Jon Levy @jonlevyBU. 2m While we are at it, can we acknowledge that calling for masks in schools for a few weeks is NOT the same as asking to close the schools? Everything is so polarized that we cannot operate in shades of grey, which is where we need to operate during a pandemic. Show this thread 12:57 PM Dec 17, 2022 ...
December 18, 2025 at 6:02 AM
matthewdhealy.bsky.social
A painterly composite image combining healthcare, data, and symbolic elements. At center, an elderly male patient sits on a hospital bed while a physician and a nurse stand close, engaged attentively with him. To the right, a person sits at a laptop displaying charts and a spreadsheet, focused on data analysis. Surrounding and partially overlaid are scientific plots and graphs, including dose–response curves and scatter plots, integrated into the background. Above the figures appear several symbols: a Christian cross, an Islamic crescent with star, a Star of David, a yin-yang symbol, and a stylized DNA double helix. The overall image has a soft painted texture, visually unifying human care, scientific evidence, analytical work, and multiple religious traditions into a single scene.
December 18, 2025 at 3:51 AM
matthewdhealy.bsky.social
DEMS appear to be better for the economy than the GOP.

Don’t take my word for it!

Spend 15 minutes on the website where you manage your IRA or 401(k), these websites all have oodles of research tools. Look at multiple economic indicators under DEM vs. GOP presidents over the past century.
DEMS appear to be better for the economy than the GOP. Don’t take my word for it! Spend 15 minutes on the website where you manage your IRA or 401(k), these websites all have oodles of research tools. Look at multiple economic indicators under Democratic vs. Republican presidents over the past century. Who controls Congress doesn't seem to matter as much: for some reason, the correlation is with the Presidential party. This correlation is very strong and durable: growth, jobs, and markets have tend to do better under Democratic administrations. Whatever the cause (and reasonable people can debate that), the data do not support the claim that Republican Presidents are generally “better for the economy” or more “pro-business.” And remember: the business community employs lots of economists. If there were credible evidence that these durable correlations are misleading and that GOP leadership is actually better for business, they would certainly have wanted to show that to the world. They haven't.
December 17, 2025 at 8:44 PM
matthewdhealy.bsky.social
From a long NY Times article
From NY Times: In his first two decades of business, we found that Epstein was less a financial genius than a prodigious manipulator and liar. Abundant conspiracy theories hold that Epstein worked for spy services or ran a lucrative blackmail operation, but we found a more prosaic explanation for how he built a fortune. A relentless scammer, he abused expense accounts, engineered inside deals and demonstrated a remarkable knack for separating seemingly sophisticated investors and businessmen from their money. He started small, testing his tactics and seeing what he could get away with. His early successes laid the foundation for more ambitious ploys down the road. Again and again, he proved willing to operate on the edge of criminality and burn bridges in his pursuit of wealth and power.
December 16, 2025 at 8:44 PM
matthewdhealy.bsky.social
Be skeptical of claims that Trump “stole” the 2024 election in the literal, technical sense.

Trump’s legal & moral unfitness for office is a separate issue from whether ballots were manipulated in Nov 2024. That's an extraordinary claim, and so far it has not been supported by credible evidence.
A quick note: be skeptical of claims that Trump “stole” the 2024 election in the literal, technical sense. Trump’s legal and moral unfitness for office is a separate issue from whether ballots were manipulated in November 2024. The latter is an extraordinary claim, and so far it has not been supported by credible evidence. If you wouldn’t accept anonymous intelligence-agency claims or unverifiable “forensic audits” when they favor Trump, you shouldn’t accept them when they favor Democrats either. Standards matter.
December 16, 2025 at 6:35 PM
matthewdhealy.bsky.social
This quote is a bit long, but I decided no partial quote can do it justice
This quote is a bit long, but I decided no partial quote can do it justice: “We are overdue for a new definition of postwar evangelicalism that reflects both what those fundamentalist men who resurrected the term in 1942 were trying to accomplish as well as the convictions of those who serve as some of Trump’s most faithful supporters. Here it is: I argue that post–World War II evangelicalism is best defined as a white, patriarchal, nationalist religious movement made up of Christians who seek power to transform American culture through conservative-leaning politics and free-market economics. Contemporary evangelicalism is the direct descendent of early twentieth-century fundamentalism, North and South. Both movements are distinct from Antebellum forms of Christianity. There is no multi-century evangelical throughline. When historians want to focus on everyday religious life in the twentieth century, and not the public and political efforts of evangelicals, we need to be specific. We can describe Pentecostal religious practices, or Southern Baptist congregational life, or splits among Presbyterians on questions of women’s ordination, or independent megachurches’ use of state-of-the-art technology, all without invoking evangelical. But when we do use the term evangelical in the modern American context, we need to recognize that we are referring to a religio-political coalition.” Matthew Avery Sutton, Redefining the History and Historiography on American Evangelicalism in the Era of the Religious Right, Journal of the American Academy of Religion, Volume 92, Issue 1, March 2024, Pages 37–60, https://doi.org/10.1093/jaarel/lfae063
December 16, 2025 at 4:04 PM
matthewdhealy.bsky.social
Simple Nativity Scene in simulated needlepoint.
December 15, 2025 at 3:40 AM
matthewdhealy.bsky.social
"Observational data are tricky to interpret properly"

GREAT TALK:

Morris, J. S. (2025, October 17). Seeing through epidemiologic fallacies: How statistics safeguards scientific communication in a polarized era [Lecture]. The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania.

Video at lnkd.in/eBnSxits
"Observational data are tricky to interpret properly. Nonrandom assignment to treatment introduces confounders, selection bias, and other methodological issues. Even highly intelligent and well-intentioned researchers can misinterpret observational data. In addition, individuals with hidden or explicit agendas may deliberately distort observational findings to promote particular narratives." Morris, J. S. (2025, October 17). Seeing through epidemiologic fallacies: How statistics safeguards scientific communication in a polarized era [Lecture]. The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania. Video at https://lnkd.in/eBnSxits
December 14, 2025 at 9:17 PM
matthewdhealy.bsky.social
I first encountered this in grad school...

SONG OF THE ICHTHYOSAURUS

THERE’s a rustling in the rushes,
  There’s a flashing in the sea;
There’s a tearful Ichthyosaurus
  Swims hither mournfully!
I first encountered this in grad school... SONG OF THE ICHTHYOSAURUS THERE’s a rustling in the rushes,   There’s a flashing in the sea; There’s a tearful Ichthyosaurus   Swims hither mournfully! He weeps o’er the modern corruption,   Compared with the good old times, And don’t know what is the matter   With the Upper Jural limés! The hoary old Plesiosaurus   Does naught but quaff and roar; And the Pterodactylus lately   Flew drunk to his own front door! The Iguanodon of the Period   Grows worse with every stratum; He kisses the Ichthyosauresses   Whenever he can get at ’em! I feel a catastrophe coming,   This epoch will soon be done; And what will become of the Jura   If such goings-on go on? The groaning Ichthyosaurus   Turns suddenly chalky pale; He sighs from his steaming nostrils,   He writhes with his dying tail! In that selfsame hour and minute   Died the whole Saurian stem: The fossil-oil in their liquor   Soon put an end to them! And the poet found their story   Which here he doth indite, In the form of a petrified album-leaf   Upon a coprolite! Translator: Rossiter Worthington Raymond (1840–1918)
December 14, 2025 at 6:54 PM
matthewdhealy.bsky.social
Libertarianism’s blind spot isn’t morality — it’s accounting.
Markets work best when costs and benefits stay with the decision-maker.

Modern infrastructure doesn’t work that way.

Freedom without responsibility scales into catastrophe.
Libertarianism’s blind spot isn’t morality — it’s accounting. Markets work best when costs and benefits stay with the decision-maker. Modern infrastructure doesn’t work that way. Rail networks, cloud platforms, health-care IT, AI deployment, financial plumbing — their failures spill outward. Profits are private; risks are shared. That’s called an externality. And when externalities dominate, “just let the market decide” stops being a philosophy and starts being a refusal to do the math. Freedom without responsibility scales into catastrophe.
December 13, 2025 at 7:34 PM
matthewdhealy.bsky.social
Like the electoral-vote.com bloggers, I've never before posted about Nuzzi, because like them I'm not interested in the sex lives of people I don't know & don't want to know.
As an expert on Infectious Diseases, I'm deeply disgusted by what RFK Jr. is doing to public health, which IS killing people.
This is the very first time we have so much as mentioned Nuzzi's name on this site, and the reason is that we could not see the relevance of this story, even given the massive coverage it's gotten. Nuzzi has been an attention-seeker, and someone looking to gain wealth and fame through whatever path presents itself, for years. RFK Jr. is a sleazeball extraordinaire who has inherited the family habit of cheating on romantic partners left, right and center. Whatever he did or did not do with Nuzzi, he's done with many women who were not his wife. And speaking of that wife, Cheryl Hines, she has... accepted (?) his infidelities, we guess. By that we mean, she did not leave him, but she DID move to Washington, so she could keep an eye on him. We only provide this information so all readers are on the same page. We really don't care about the sex lives of any of these people, as that's their business, and they can swing in whatever way they want to swing. We do get some unpleasant she's-being-brainwashed vibes from Hines, but even if it was enough to be actionable, it's not like there's anything we could do about it. What we do deplore, however, is the public behavior of these people. RFK Jr.'s willingness to profit off of his loony, conspiratorial ideas about health, and his willingness to let people die in service of his MAHA agenda, are reprehensible. Hines' recent whiny book, in which she blames all of her problems on the Democrats, is not a great look either. And, of course, we disdain Nuzzi's unethical behavior in reporting on a political campaign in which she was personally involved with one of the candidates. We also disdain her lightning-quick move to cash in on the whole scandal, with an I'm-a-martyr book entitled American Canto that was published this week. In view of our less-than-warm feelings about Nuzzi's professional behavior, we most certainly feel some schadenfreude over the fact that the volume landed with an absolute thud. The publisher, Simon & Sch…
December 13, 2025 at 11:47 AM
matthewdhealy.bsky.social
What strikes me about this passage in NY Times is the simple fact that I do not recognize a single name mentioned.
NY Times passage mentioning a number of "globally famous" bands of the 1990s, none of which I recognize.
December 13, 2025 at 11:20 AM
matthewdhealy.bsky.social
Hundreds quarantined due to measles in SC. Public Health officials say vaccination rates too low in the area.

Lots of media coverage, BUT few mention the BIGGEST danger: measles erases immune memory so kids have WAY higher risk of other diseases for YEARS after measles itself is over.
https://asm.org/articles/2019/may/measles-and-immune-amnesia
December 12, 2025 at 9:43 PM
matthewdhealy.bsky.social
Painted abstraction of chromatic flower like curves in a rectangular grid. Digital abstraction of chromatic elliptical curves in a rectangular grid. Needlepoint texture image with kaleidoscopic geometry Needlepoint artwork depicting a Midwestern winter scene: fall leaves in foreground on top of snow, curved path going up a hill, tree with bare snow covered branches on left, bell tower top right, some other vegetation and distant hills.
December 12, 2025 at 5:01 AM
matthewdhealy.bsky.social
Way to Win now says Kamala could have won by being more Progressive. Other Democratic factions have said she could have won by being more moderate, or more populist, or more tough on immigration—always, miraculously, exactly what they wanted her to say. I think they might all be wrong. Look globally: almost no democratically elected government that governed through the pandemic is still in power. Maybe this was bigger than any candidate or message. If a group actually has solid evidence for what Kamala “should” have done, their report should open with: “Here are the ways the data show we were wrong.” When someone can say that, I’ll start believing they’ve found something real.
December 12, 2025 at 12:10 AM
matthewdhealy.bsky.social
Effective altruism, without the self-serving theatrics or the disdain for Chesterton’s fence, is simply this: Do the most good you can, but never assume you’re smarter than the accumulated wisdom of people who solved hard problems before you. Real altruism doesn’t begin by tearing down guardrails built from past disasters. It begins by understanding why the guardrails exist — and then working within that knowledge to help others without repeating old mistakes
December 11, 2025 at 6:34 PM
matthewdhealy.bsky.social
Across medicine, engineering, and public policy, one truth returns again and again: desperate hope can never replace evidence. Every generation has to learn that anew. In drug development, we remember TGN1412, when a “promising” immune agonist nearly killed six healthy volunteers within minutes — a disaster that reshaped first-in-human trial design. In oncology, we remember the era of high-dose chemotherapy with bone marrow transplant for breast cancer — a treatment adopted under public and political pressure before the data existed, only to learn it offered no benefit and caused real harm. And in engineering, we remember Feynman’s warning to NASA after the Challenger investigation: when schedule, optimism, and institutional belief override physics, “nature cannot be fooled.” Different fields, same pattern. The hard lessons aren’t abstract: they are written in blood and in ruined lives. That’s why oversight exists — and why bypassing it is never just a procedural shortcut, but a bet against history.
December 11, 2025 at 6:17 PM
matthewdhealy.bsky.social
Hamlet he ain't
The My Pillow Guy is running for MN Governor… MICHAEL OF LINDENDELL (solus): O bitter wind, why smitest thou my brow And set’st my mustache trembling like a leaf? I stand upon this frozen Minnesota plain To cry of rigged machines and stolen fate— A candle guttering in snowy prairie winds.
December 11, 2025 at 6:01 PM
matthewdhealy.bsky.social
Much commentary about Trump’s proposed White House ballroom has focused on historic preservation, on how he is imposing his taste on future generations, and on his refusal to follow the normal process every previous president has respected. But there is also a huge and underappreciated safety issue. When I was an electrical engineer, my boss once said — holding up the National Electrical Code — “For every paragraph, somebody died.” Skipping oversight isn’t just politics; it’s gambling with life-safety systems that only matter when they’re suddenly the difference between survival and catastrophe. That’s why I was glad to see a fire-service article about the Ballroom project warn: “Code compliance begins at the design stage … A nonpolitical takeaway: Codes are written in blood.” https://www.firerescue1.com/fire-safety-codes/what-president-trumps-white-house-ballroom-project-can-teach-us-about-building-codes-and-fire-sprinklers
December 11, 2025 at 3:53 PM
matthewdhealy.bsky.social
Healthy vaccinee bias is real — but it doesn’t explain the huge benefit from COVID vaccines Vaccination rates do correlate with social and demographic factors (“healthy vaccinee bias”), which is why serious studies account for it — including the large new French COVID vaccine study. The key value of that study is not showing that vaccines saved lives (we already knew that), but showing that among 28 million relatively young people, side effects were largely those already known, not new ones. The strongest evidence for vaccine effectiveness comes from timing, especially in the U.S. Before COVID, per-capita mortality was already higher in Republican-voting counties, reflecting long-standing demographic differences. During the pandemic, before vaccines were widely available, every U.S. county saw excess deaths. During this phase, studies found little or no correlation between voting patterns and excess mortality. If demographics alone explained COVID mortality, the divergence should already have appeared. It didn’t. Once vaccines were widely available, the pattern changed starkly. Excess deaths fell everywhere — but much more in Democratic-voting counties. Every U.S. county-level or individual-level study since has found a strong link between vaccination, voting patterns, and mortality. By the numbers, roughly 500,000 U.S. deaths could likely have been prevented had vaccination rates in GOP Counties equaled rates in DEM Counties. A clean international comparison reinforces this: Hong Kong and Singapore both suppressed COVID and vaccinated widely, but only Hong Kong — with many unvaccinated older adults — suffered a devastating mortality surge. Demographics explain baseline risk. Vaccines explain the divergence.
December 10, 2025 at 10:06 PM
matthewdhealy.bsky.social
Enveda’s press release today hit me differently than a typical pipeline update. ENV-294 is now in two Phase 2a trials — real patients, real signals, real stakes. That’s noteworthy for any young biotech, but especially meaningful to me. Earlier in my career, I was lucky enough to help put five drugs on the market — medicines that continue to save lives. Enveda was a leap into something new: learning from nature’s chemistry rather than inventing everything from scratch. I was the first U.S. employee, joining a small team already running the lab in India, and got to help shape the scientific scaffolding before the pipeline existed. Seeing a first-in-class molecule from that platform enter truly substantive clinical testing feels quietly validating. Not as personal credit, but because the science we believed in might actually reach patients. Phase 2 is always the real test, but this is the first moment where the possibility stops being theoretical. And for me, that’s the part that matters.
December 9, 2025 at 11:15 PM
matthewdhealy.bsky.social
Basically every SF story with FTL travel misses the elephant in the room. Civilization survived globalization only because microbes were slower than jets. COVID proved how thin that margin was even with transit time, incubation periods, and some epidemiological friction. Take away that constraint and epidemiology stops being a side issue. It becomes the price of having a galaxy at all. Interstellar travel wouldn’t be about engines and hulls. It would be about biosurveillance, quarantine, and deciding how much freedom of movement you can afford before biology pushes back. Most SF quietly assumes this problem away.
December 9, 2025 at 4:50 PM
matthewdhealy.bsky.social
Truly scary oral arguments over Unitary Executive Theory, as SCOTUS tries to figure out a kludge to shield the Fed from the wrecking ball it has unleashed. It’s not even duct tape anymore. If they find a way out, it will be law held together just long enough to look presentable under bright lights — lingerie tape jurisprudence. When a constitutional theory can’t survive contact with the Federal Reserve, the Court isn’t doing jurisprudence. It’s saving appearances with Ptolemaic epicycles. As Justice Kagan put it in oral argument: “Once you’re down this road, it’s a little bit hard to see how you stop.”
December 9, 2025 at 4:20 PM
matthewdhealy.bsky.social
Dedham, MA nativity scene.
Dedham, MA nativity scene. With missing people and ICE WAS HERE sign.
December 9, 2025 at 12:21 PM