CATEGORY / COVID-19

Why RFK Jr’s Cancellation of Moderna’s Pandemic Flu Vaccine is Nonsensical

A version of this article has been published by The Ottawa Citizen on June 2, 2025, under the title, “Cancelling funding for mRNA vaccine is both risky and foolish

 

With Donald Trump’s second administration, disruptive news seems to arise on a daily basis. Most concerning for clinicians and health scientists around the world was Trump’s appointment of anti-vaccination zealot Robert Kennedy Jr to the enormously influential position of Secretary of Health and Human Services. Kennedy’s ideological dismantling of the US’s vaunted health research apparatus has been at speeds surprising even to his most ardent critics. But his recent decision to cancel a nearly $600 million contract with vaccine manufacturer Moderna might be among his most shortsighted and destructive moves. (more…)

The Next Pandemic Will Be Boring — And That’s the Danger

I submitted this op-ed to the Canadian Science Policy Centre. They may or may not accept it. But because I’m a stickler for archivism, I’m also publishing it here:


 

For policymakers, journalists, and the public alike, the word “pandemic” conjures images of chaos: overwhelmed hospitals, press conferences, and nightly graphs of surging death tolls. Of the many lessons that COVID-19 taught the general public, among them was the erroneous belief that a pandemic is necessarily a novel, shocking, and newsworthy thing. Makeshift morgues to accommodate the overflow of dead, burly security men positioned in front of grocery stores to limit the number of shoppers, nightly news shows dominated by nerdy epidemiologists expressing their latest analyses –these are the hallmarks of pandemic, as the public has been taught to recognize them.

But, in truth, the next pandemic might not look like that at all. It might unfold slowly, with low mortality but high disruption, gradually eroding health systems, supply chains, and trust in public institutions. It might be “boring”, and that’s precisely what makes it dangerous. Policymakers, health administrators, and journalists must be made aware of this possibility. (more…)

Resist the Randomized Controlled Trials Fetish

The article below has been published in the Canadian Medical Education Journal (CMEJ). But it’s not written in very technical language, so I thought I’d amplify its reach by reproducing it here, as well.  I think it’s pretty important and timely, given the amount of noise in public discourse about the sacrosanct nature of randomized controlled trials (RCTs), and how much that noise impacts public perception of public health policies.

If you want to cite his article, though, please use the CMEJ citation:

Deonandan R. Resist the Randomized Controlled Trials fetish: different questions require different pyramids of evidence. Can. Med. Ed. J [Internet]. 2025 Feb. 24 [cited 2025 Feb. 28];16(1):126-7.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.36834/cmej.80355

(more…)

Memories of 2020

On Aug 1, 2020, I wrote a Facebook post that went a little bit viral. Remember, this was the 5th or 6th month of the acknowledged COVID pandemic, and still four months away from an authorized vaccine, and almost a year away from widespread vaccination.

I wanted to revisit this post, as it listed 33 thoughts about the pandemic, which I had just expressed as the guest speaker on a popular video podcast called, “Dave’s Digital Cafe.”

I’m curious about whether readers think any of this is relevant today. Back then, it’s clear I was concerned about IP issues constraining vaccine development, and the zoonotic extent of the virus. Neither of those has emerged as something we think about a lot today.

On the other hand, I think my observations about political tribalism, the failure of communication, and the importance of infrastructure investment are even more poignant now than they were at the start of the pandemic.

Hideous AI-generated image based on prompt, “create an image called ‘memories of 2020′”

In any case, let me know in the comments what you think.

Here are the 33 thoughts, reposted verbatim from four years ago: (more…)


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