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David Miles

@variolator.bsky.social

41 followers 30 following 70 posts

Once an immunologist who went to interesting places to do interesting things. Now an author who writes about people who went to interesting places to do interesting things. https://www.variolator.com/

www.variolator.com

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David Miles @variolator.bsky.social · Jun 11

How did a slave, a witchfinder, an aeronautical pioneer, a tanner's son and countless scientists save our lives? Answers between the covers:
www.littlebrown.co.uk/titles/david...

How Vaccines Work

Vaccines are a debate, whether we want them to be or not. Now more than ever, it's easy to feel overwhelmed by the accusations and arguments that bloom acros...

www.littlebrown.co.uk

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David Miles @variolator.bsky.social · 4d

Always a good plan. Preferably a respirator (FFP2 or N95 ) with loops that go round the back of the head instead of the ears.

David Miles @variolator.bsky.social · 5d

"I remember when children were sent home from school with headlice. Now, they’re encouraged to attend school with a dangerous virus."

A child's 2nd infection is more likely to cause long covid than their 1st. The 3rd, 4th, 5th, etc don't bear thinking about.
www.thelancet.com/journals/lan...

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David Miles @variolator.bsky.social · 12d

I'd say it's even less logical than that. We'll do a lot to protect children from outdoor air pollution but indoors, anything goes. Buildings so damp the air is full of mould spores? No problem. Lock 'em in with airborne viruses? Bring it on.

Then we wonder why so many kids miss so much school.

David Miles @variolator.bsky.social · 13d

It's almost as if outsourcing late-stage pharmaceutical development to the private sector doesn't lead to the best outcomes for public health.

I wonder if we'll ever learn.

David Miles @variolator.bsky.social · 14d

Please don't take this seriously. The functional unit of a vaccine is the antigen. A child can handle up to a million at a time. Each bacterium living in the human gut has several thousand. No vaccination has more than 200.

This is a man who has never taken his own children to be vaccinated.

Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · 15d

Trump: "It's too much liquid. Too many different things are going into that baby at too big a number. The size of this thing when you look at it. It's like 80 different vaccines and beyond vaccines."

David Miles @variolator.bsky.social · 14d

Been in the game for a while myself but I don't have the fortitude to listen to this sort of political drivel. Thank you for your perseverence.

David Miles @variolator.bsky.social · 14d

I just read that literally and inevitably thought of Trump's best dead friend.

Thank you for putting yourself through this. You must have a strong stomach.

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David Miles @variolator.bsky.social · 14d

Trump's fortune is built on the life insurance payout his father got when his grandfather died in the 1918 influenza pandemic. If there was a halfway decent vaccine available, none of us would ever have heard of him.

No wonder he hates vaccines.

David Miles @variolator.bsky.social · 19d

So glad someone said it. You can't prove an outcome is zero with a zero confidence interval. That doesn't mean that you can't prove something isn't true because the scientific method involves defining thresholds for '+ve' and '-ve' results.

Obviously over-simplifying for 240 characters here!

David Miles @variolator.bsky.social · 19d

Do we need a reverse Turing test?

Now 'AI' can imitate humans, at least in very constrained situations, we need to know if someone's using a human actor to exaggerate their AI's capabilities.

I have a horrible feeling that inventing that test will only be the first of many layers of it.

David Miles @variolator.bsky.social · 19d

The word 'most' is doing a lot of heavy lifting there. Most infectious diseases are fatal or life changing in less than half the people who catch them.

But then, Most people who play Russian roulette keep their brains. Doesn't make it a good idea.

David Miles @variolator.bsky.social · 22d

Another issue is that infected mothers infect children at birth, establishing chronic infections that infect the child's children then cause cirrhosis and cancer in middle age. That wasn't well known in 1990.

Vaccinating at birth breaks the cycle.

Listening to RFK jr risks restarting it.

David Miles @variolator.bsky.social · Sep 7

I suppose I should be happy that the emergency test actually worked this time but why did it need to come in the voice of Elon Musk's robot girlfriend?

And can anyone tell me whether the Welsh it lapsed into was as bad as I think it was? pretty sure that's not how to pronounce 'Cymraeg'!

David Miles @variolator.bsky.social · Sep 6

“The only broadcast media at the time that was willing to talk about and get me on and report on it as a news story was GB News”.

That makes perfect sense – but not in the way he seems to think.

David Miles @variolator.bsky.social · Sep 5

"I would like to see the data. Not enough to bother looking at the data which is available online but I would like to see it and until I do, I'm going to proudly announce how little I know as if ignorance is a virtue."

It's like watching the Muppets' Government by Fever Dream.

David Miles @variolator.bsky.social · Sep 1

By 'not showing', does he mean sneakily hiding them among lots of scary words and numbers that he might need to read instead of serving them up on Fox News between KFC ads?

It's so frustrating that this sort of performative stupidity plays so well.

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David Miles @variolator.bsky.social · Aug 31

I'd also like to know how, if mercury compounds cause autism, there were so few autism diagnoses back when they were sold over the counter to treat teething pain.

But I probably shouldn't expect consistency from a man who can't be trusted with a dead whale or his children's babysitter.

David Miles @variolator.bsky.social · Aug 29

As recommended by the JCVI nearly two years ago and as the USA has been doing for about 30 years.

Better late than never.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Children offered chickenpox vaccine on NHS

All young children in England and Wales will be offered a free chickenpox vaccine by the NHS from January 2026.

www.bbc.co.uk

David Miles @variolator.bsky.social · Aug 27

Saw a copy of this in St Panras Station WH Smiths yesterday. A spectral chap called Richard kept tapping the subtitle and saying, "You mean the LATEST rise and fall of the House of York".

Then he demanded a horse.

David Miles @variolator.bsky.social · Aug 25

He'll probably be happy to let Mullis have PCR. HIV and climate change deniers are very much in favour with him and his friends.

It really was a tragedy that Henry Erlich and Randall Saiki didn't get any credit for PCR.

David Miles @variolator.bsky.social · Aug 19

If it smells like a quack, it quacks like a quack and it ducks like a quack when challenged, it's probably working for RFK Jr.

It's frustrating becauseimportant questions around autism going unanswered while these quacks pretend vaccines have anything to do with it.

www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

Opinion | The Playbook Used to ‘Prove’ Vaccines Cause Autism

Data can easily be manipulated to show causation that doesn’t exist.

www.nytimes.com

David Miles @variolator.bsky.social · Aug 17

That was Watson's version. Wasn't true. It was shared with her full knowledge and comments and her paper was published back to back with Watson's and Crick's: www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Watson thought it made him look good to pretend he stole it when he wrote his memoir. He's a wally.

What Rosalind Franklin truly contributed to the discovery of DNA’s structure

Franklin was no victim in how the DNA double helix was solved. An overlooked letter and an unpublished news article, both written in 1953, reveal that she was an equal player.

www.nature.com

David Miles @variolator.bsky.social · Aug 8

I wonder what it's going to be. I'm on tenterhooks.

Seriously, though, the only question is whether he's going to wait for a scandal that needs a distraction before he drops his AI generated report wailing about vaccines.

If only he'd stuck to chainsaws and beached whales.

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David Miles @variolator.bsky.social · Aug 6

The day the Beeb broke Betteridge's law of headlines.

Is a spade a spade? Is the pope a catholic? Is this a picture of a man who can't be trusted with a dead dolphin, his babysitter or decisions that will affect millions of people?

Same answer.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Could RFK Jr's move to pull mRNA vaccine funding be a huge miscalculation?

The US is withdrawing $500m for vaccines for diseases like flu and Covid. Health correspondent James Gallagher asks if it's the right call.

www.bbc.co.uk

David Miles @variolator.bsky.social · Aug 6

That's a question that needs to be asked for every vaccine individually but with that caveat, immunocompromise is not usually a counter-indication for either mRNA or inactivated vaccines.

Inactivation actually works well for some vaccines, eg polio. Not so well for influenza or COVID-19