Amy Maxmen

@amymaxmen.bsky.social

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Award-winning science reporter with words at Nature, New York Times, Washington Post & more. Health, medicine, inequality & pandemics. www.amymaxmen.com

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EXCLUSIVE: Farmers & vets recount the first months of bird flu H5N1 in Texas. Their words hold clues. “People tend to think that an outbreak starts at Monday at 9 a.m. with a sign saying, ‘Outbreak has started,’” WHO's Jeremy Farrar said. “It’s rarely like that.” kffhealthnews.org/news/article...

Clues From Bird Flu’s Ground Zero on Dairy Farms in the Texas Panhandle - KFF Health Newskffhealthnews.org Dairy farmers and veterinarians in northern Texas furiously investigated a mysterious illness among cattle before the government got involved. Their observations are telling.

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4 ways vaccine skeptics mislead you on measles & more www.cbsnews.com/news/measles... me & @amymaxmen.bsky.social for @cbsnews.bsky.social The "no-big-deal" trope The "you never know" trope The "too-much-too-soon" trope "They don't want you to know" trope

4 ways vaccine skeptics mislead you on measles and morewww.cbsnews.com Vaccine scare tactics haven't shifted, but more parents are falling for them. Here's what the rhetoric gets wrong and how it endangers children.

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🧪 “Clues From Bird Flu’s Ground Zero on Dairy Farms in the Texas Panhandle” from @amymaxmen.bsky.social #HPAI #infuenza kffhealthnews.org/news/article...

On this anniversary of the pandemic's start, I revisited horrors of early 2020. My hope is fading bc I don't see *any* big changes to protect us. My latest piece on the CDC suggests the next pandemic will be worse. www.nbcnews.com/health/healt...

My latest story is on how anti-vaxxers have gained ground by fusing with the parents' rights movement. Doctors have had to turn away social workers and foster parents hoping to get their babies vaccinated for measles, etc. in Tennessee bc of a new "consent" law. www.nbcnews.com/health/healt...

"Do we have blue blood & do others have red blood?" This is what a Congolese researcher asked me when trying to understand why one of the world's worst crises gets so little attention. Please read & share my new longread on the Central African Republic. undark.org/2024/01/24/c...

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"The team’s perilous study has mainly been met by silence. “In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, in Somalia, in the Central African Republic, in South Sudan, we wonder, are we so different?” he said. “Do we have blue blood and do others have red blood?”" @amymaxmen.bsky.social

How the World’s Deadliest Crises Go Unseenundark.org In the Central African Republic, researchers found an astronomical death rate. Could a major emergency be invisible?

Like climate change denial, the movement against public health has moved from fringe to mainstream -- with dire repercussions. Already, we're seeing the lowest measles vaccine rates in a decade & outbreaks. My latest www.cbsnews.com/news/anti-va...

Despite outbreaks of norovirus & coronavirus, people have returned to cruises en masse. Turns out the ships are also great at environmental damage, generating 2x greenhouse gases as flying (more if you include flying to the cruise) ⚓ by @kendrawrites.bsky.social www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

My latest: In the early 2000s, Brazil proved that all people could be treated for HIV, not just those in rich countries. But the power of Big Pharma has become entrenched since then through trade rules & lawsuits. Prices went up. So has HIV. www.bloomberg.com/news/feature...

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Powerful front page of tomorrow's edition of The Daily Tar Heel, UNC's student newspaper. From text messages sent and received by UNC students yesterday.

The workers who feed & house our country are paying the price of climate change, while business lobbyists & Congress stall on regulations to protect them from illness & death in heat waves. My latest @kffhealthnews.bsky.social @cbs.bsky.social www.cbsnews.com/news/heat-os...

Wow. Unbelievable to witness the OPPOSITE of pandemic preparedness after all we've been through. This is a major milestone in that pathetic erosion. ProMED Mail's daily drumbeat of outbreak reports, signaling the 1st Covid cases to me & many others, cannot sustain. See asks:

Why has public opinion in favor of a lab leak grown? Spillover author David Quammen writes "What's tilting the scales is cynicism & narrative appeal...This is not a contest now, in the public domain, between bodies of evidence, this is a contest between stories.”

The Ongoing Mystery of Covid’s Originwww.nytimes.com We still don’t know how the pandemic started. Here's what we do know — and why it matters.

“You can’t depend on others when the world is competing for a resource.” Demand for Covid vaccines is down but global south researchers want to free themselves from a dangerous dependency on the West. They're pressing ahead w/ mRNA vaccine development for disease X. My latest @washingtonpost.com

As pandemic raged, global south lacked vaccines. Never again, researchers vow.www.washingtonpost.com An initiative involving companies and institutes in 15 middle-income countries aims to give them the ability to produce messenger RNA vaccines.

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