Every journey has a beginning. And every hero, an end.
Tag Archives: #announcement
Merry Christmas
There have not been many opportunities for me to post on the blog. I’m back in the nation’s capital for a special assignment, and it’s taking more of my time than I had originally planned. Still, I wanted to thank you (yes, you) for reading this year. Here’s hoping that 2016 brings with it new opportunities for us to continue to spread the Good News about science, evidence, reason, and all those good things that moves us forward as a species. And here’s also hoping that the anti-vaccine activists, militants, and their minions come around to join us in the light.
If they don’t, it’s not because we didn’t try.
Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.
Welcome, minions!
Well, well, well. It seems that this old blog got some sort of an enormous boost over the last 48 hours. As a result, I want to take a moment and welcome all the new readers. Now, most of you are here because you are interested in my blog post about one Dr. Peter Doshi, PhD. However, if you look around the blog, you’ll see that I cover a whole range of other issues, 99% of them having to do with science denialism and its consequences. The other 1% is just me on a rant.
There is something for everyone here, from abortion to male circumcision to one of our favorite subjects: vaccines.
So thank you for stopping by and boosting the number of views. I mean, come on, look at this:
250 posts later, and this is where we are?
I was going to write this really long and detailed post about how it feels to have written 250 posts so far on this blog and how great it all was… But then a friend posted this on Facebook:
What the f*ck, right? Continue reading
This has nothing to do with anti-vaxxers
A couple of posts ago, I wrote about how a (probably) anti-vaccine activist called the DC Department of Health and complained that someone was impersonating an epidemiologist. In case said person is reading, nothing happened. I am an epidemiologist. Several of us write blogs. It’s a fact of live that we’re going to refute your lies and misinformation. Live with it.
That said, I’ve been applying to several jobs over the last few months. I don’t have a lot to tie me to the capital area, except my friends. I love my friends, some of them more than others. But it is time for a change, and that time is coming up soon. I’ve lined up several interviews from here in town to up in Baltimore, to all the way up in New York City. (NEW YORK CITY?!) Some of those job leads are very promising, and I’d be doing work overseas.
Of course, the anti-vaccine crowd is going to say that this is a direct result of them calling DC DOH and complaining. They’ve always been very bad about association and causation, so why would this be any different?
On a lighter, more encouraging note, my post on Dr. Peter Doshi and his influenza shenanigans has gotten this blog a lot of attention. Rational people who can tell that we live in the real world have been using my post to refute anti-vaccine talking points that use his version of epidemiology to discredit the need for the influenza vaccine. Even concerned grandparents have been using them to try and talk some rationality to their anti-vaccine children:
I hope it doesn’t all fall on deaf ears.
So, as you can see, dear anti-vaccine advocates, I’m not going away any time soon. I will continue to counter the lies and misinformation that your side continuously spews for whatever messed-up reason. I may change jobs, but my work will remain the same.
I’ll let you know what happens, and when I start the new job.
(It’s ironic that the anti-vaccine person in the screen capture above would call herself “Roma5:8” in reference to a passage in the Bible about self-sacrifice. They seem to be perfectly okay with Jesus dying for their sins, but God forbid (pun intended) they take a vaccine for their community.)
Go read my friend’s blog
What are you doing reading this? Go read Ren’s declaration of a new “forever war,” and his subsequent post about depression. Mental Health is something that we in public health don’t think about often, but it influences a lot of what we do. If a person is not of sound mind, how can we expect them to make the right health decisions for themselves and their community?
I do hope Ren keeps at it on the mental health aspects of public health. I’ll do the lifting with quackery and the anti-vax crowd. (Well, not just me. There are others. We are many.)
Congrats to a friend
A close friend of the blog has been accepted into a doctoral program at an institution of higher learning on the east coast. I’d like to give you all the details, but there are lurkers about who would like nothing more than to bother or bully him about it. If you know who I’m talking about, then you’ll know where to find him and congratulate him.
That’s all. Carry on. Nothing else to see here, for now.
The Poxes Blog 