American College of Physicians condemns CDC rollback on surveillance of infectious disease

Leaves hospitals and doctors to "fly blind"

By American College of Physicians

Edited by Sadie Harley, reviewed by Robert Egan

An audit of U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) public databases found that nearly half of routinely updated federal health surveillance systems had stopped or delayed updates in 2025, raising concerns that gaps in data, particularly on vaccinations and respiratory diseases, could undermine clinical guidance, public health policy, and public trust.

The findings are published in Annals of Internal Medicine.

Researchers from Vanderbilt University, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and Boston University School of Law aimed to identify which CDC databases had unexplained pauses in updates and evaluate how common such pauses were among frequently updated CDC databases.

They reviewed the CDC's public data catalog in October 2025, examining more than 1,300 listed databases and focusing on those that had previously been updated at least monthly.

Using each database's stated update schedule, they classified whether updates were current or paused. Of the 82 databases that met inclusion criteria, 46% had halted updates, most for more than six months. The majority of paused databases tracked vaccination-related information, while others covered respiratory diseases and drug overdose deaths.

Winter storms don’t have to be deadly

Winter is not over - be prepared for the next big storm

Brett Robertson, University of South Carolina

A powerful winter storm that left hundreds of thousands of people across the U.S. without power for days in freezing temperatures in late January 2026 has been linked to more than 80 deaths, and the cold weather is forecast to continue into February. Several East Coast states are also facing a new winter storm, forecast to bring several inches of snow the weekend of Jan. 31.

The causes of the deaths and injuries have varied. Some people died from exposure to cold inside their homes. Others fell outside or suffered heart attacks while shoveling snow. Three young brothers died after falling through ice on a Texas pond. Dozens of children were treated for carbon monoxide poisoning from improperly used generators or heaters.

These tragedies and others share a common theme: Winter storms pose multiple dangers at once, and people often underestimate how quickly conditions can become life-threatening.

I’m the associate director of the Hazards Vulnerability and Resilience Institute at the University of South Carolina, where we work on ways to improve emergency preparedness and response. Here is what people need to know to reduce their risk of injury during severe winter weather.

Prepare before the storm arrives

Preparation makes the biggest difference when temperatures drop, and services fail. Many winter storm injuries happen after power outages knock out heat, lighting or medical equipment.

Start by assembling a basic emergency kit. The Federal Emergency Management Agency recommends having water, food that does not require cooking, a flashlight, a battery-powered radio, extra batteries and a first-aid kit, at minimum.

In addition to these basics, a winter emergency kit should have plenty of warm clothes and snacks to provide energy to produce body heat. National Institute of Aging

In wintertime, you’ll also need warm clothing, blankets, hats and gloves. When you go out, even in a vehicle, make sure you dress for the weather. Keep a blanket in the car in case you get stranded, as hundreds of people did for hours overnight on a Mississippi highway on Jan. 27 in freezing, snowy weather.

Portable phone chargers matter more than many people realize. During emergencies, phones become lifelines for updates, help and contact with family. Keep devices charged ahead of the storm and conserve battery power once the storm begins.

If anyone in your home depends on electrically powered medical equipment, make a plan now. Know where you can go if the power goes out for an extended period. Contact your utility provider in advance to ask about outage planning, including whether they offer priority restoration or guidance for customers who rely on powered medical equipment.

Racist Trump Denounced for Sharing Vile Video Depicting Obamas as Monkeys

Trump is truly FUBAR

Brad Reed

A screenshot of the video Trump shared

Donald Trump, a documented racist, drew swift condemnation on Friday night after he posted a video on his Truth Social account depicting former President Barack Obama and first lady Michelle Obama as monkeys.

As reported by The Guardian, the racist depiction of the Obamas was part of a longer video that featured “false and disproven claims that ballot-counting company Dominion Voting Systems helped steal the 2020 presidential election” from Trump.

The outrage over the post was immediate, even as Trump’s racism is well known and documented over many years.

“The most foundational racist idea is likening Black people to apes,” said Howard University historian Ibram X. Kendi in a social media post. “Since humans evolved from an ape-like ancestor, racist ideas cast white people as the most evolved people and the furthest away on the evolutionary scale from apes. Racist ideas cast Black people as the least evolved people and the closest on the evolutionary scale to apes. Almost all racist ideas build on this foundational one expressed by Trump.”

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URI researchers launching local stone wall study

Natural Resources Science faculty hope to examine the environmental legacy of New England’s iconic stone walls

Kristen Curry 

An iconic New England landscape feature is now the subject of focus for URI researchers, launching a study of local stone walls. (URI Photo / Amy Mayer)

This year’s snowy winter makes New England’s iconic stone walls look even more picturesque. The sturdy markers dot our local landscape, a backdrop to yards, property lines, photos and views. But what else do they do?

Photo by Will Collette

Kathleen Carroll and Shelby Rinehart in the University of Rhode Island’s Department of Natural Resources Science are asking that question and have launched a project examining the effects of stone walls on biodiversity and ecosystem processes across New England to better understand their biological importance. They hope to solicit public interest, support and participation for this effort.

“Growing up, stone walls were all around me,” says Rinehart, a new assistant professor of watershed ecology at URI, who grew up in rural Connecticut. Rinehart runs URI’s Watershed Bio(diversity)-Funk(tion) Lab, which studies how plant and animal biodiversity can support local efforts to conserve, manage, and restore important ecosystems, like salt marshes.

New postdoctoral researcher Jamie Bucholz is working with him on this new project, looking to understand the ecosystem of stone walls. Bucholz will use what she learns about stone walls to better understand the genetic biodiversity of the species that call them home. 

New to New England, she is beginning her work by examining stone walls found across the region by utilizing RIGIS environmental data provided by URI’s Jason Parent and Elliot Vosburgh ’18 ’24. The pair created a rich data set, the Rhode Island Stone Wall Mapping Project, showing where all of Rhode Island’s stone walls exist.

Foulkes blasts McKee over Rhode Island bridge safety

From “cooking the books” to threats from Alviti

Campaign Blasts McKee Administration for Removing Bridges from Safety Reporting

Providence, RI — In response to WPRI reporting that the McKee administration cooked the books by removing more than 700 state bridges from the list to try to claim it met its safety and inspection goals, Helena Buonanno Foulkes issued the following statement:

“The McKee Administration has a pattern of putting politics over competence, and this is just the latest example,” said Helena. “You can’t cook the books and then gaslight the people of Rhode Island; Governor McKee has failed Rhode Islanders, and his dishonesty only makes it worse.

Foulkes Campaign Not Worried About “Hearing Forcefully” From Resigned McKee Admin Transportation Director

Providence, RI — Yesterday, after announcing his resignation and cooking the books to make it look like he met RIDOT’s bridge safety goal, RIDOT Director Peter Alviti posted a bizarre “open letter” on the taxpayer-funded RIDOT website. After claiming over and over again that he wasn’t fired, he ended the letter stating: “And if anyone lies or misrepresents the facts for personal gain, they will be hearing forcefully from me."

In reply, Foulkes campaign communications director Angelika Pellegrino released the following statement:

“Empty threats aside, Mr. Alviti should know there is no need to misrepresent any facts to point out that Dan McKee caused months of delay when he bungled the bid process to repair the Washington Bridge, that Director Alviti couldn’t remember the name of the safety inspector in his own agency when under oath last fall, and that Rhode Islanders have to sit in traffic daily—and will have to do so for years to come—because of the McKee Administration’s failures. ”

Most COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy linked to concerns that can be overcome, study suggests

Vaccines work, are safe and can save your life

Why not protect yourself against preventable disease?

By Lancet

Edited by Sadie Harley, reviewed by Robert Egan

Most COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy is rooted in concerns that can be addressed and effectively reduced over time, according to a new study following more than 1.1 million people in England between January 2021 and March 2022 during the COVID-19 pandemic, published in The Lancet.

The study, led by researchers from Imperial College London, found that of the participants initially hesitant about getting a COVID-19 vaccine, 65% went on to get vaccinated at least once.

The findings offer a novel perspective on the main types of vaccine hesitancy during the COVID-19 pandemic. Their potential to be reversed may help inform the targeting and messaging for future roll-outs of novel vaccines.

While vaccine hesitancy is not a new phenomenon, with WHO naming vaccine hesitancy as one of the top 10 global health threats in 2019, reduced uptake of various vaccines, including childhood vaccinations against measles and pertussis (whooping cough), remains a major public health concern.

COVID-19 vaccination roll-out began in the UK on 8th December 2020, with a phased strategy that prioritized vaccines on the basis of age and clinical need.

"We wanted to look at COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy in more depth to identify groups with more persistent forms of hesitancy and their main concerns. Understanding these drivers is critical to address vaccine uptake and better control disease spread," explained lead author Professor Marc Chadeau-Hyam from Imperial College London, UK.

Civilians Should Not Have to ‘Stand between the Powers of this World and the Most Vulnerable’

Trump says law doesn't apply to him - “My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me.”

Dr. Bandy X. Lee

It was the irony of ironies when the most critical voices of conscience of our time—mental health experts warning against a mental health pandemic—were silenced in the name of “ethics”. 

This is what happened to us at the height of our influence, when we were consulted by over fifty U.S. Congress members, who told us they were depending on us to “educate the public medically,” so that they could “intervene politically.” 

Even White House Chief of Staff General John Kelly turned out to have used our book as an “owner’s manual”—applying its principles, when nothing else worked, to stop an erratic president from waging nuclear war on North Korea!

The tremendous momentum was artificially halted when American Psychiatric Association (APA) aggressively intervened, citing its own guild rule that exclusively protects public figures—which no other mental health association or licensing board duplicates—as being more important than the public’s health, the nation’s security, or the species’ survival. 

It was nonsensical, but the public swallowed it, since it was coming from an authoritative organization. But it was later revealed that the APA distorted its own “rule” and embarked on a disinformation campaign, so as to protect its federal funding—and, for Jeffrey Lieberman who spearheaded it, his personal federal funds (and fame).

We warned in real time that such cowardice would be calamitous, permitting mental impairments in an influential figure to magnify and transmogrify, until they would become unstoppable.

Columnist David Brooks wrote recently:

Last week Minneapolis’s police chief, Brian O’Hara, said the thing he fears most is the “moment where it all explodes.” I share his worry…. it’s pretty clear that we’re headed toward some kind of crackup…. the unraveling of Trump’s mind is the primary one.

Melania: The true story

Citizens Bank protest in Westerly on Saturday

Donald wants us to move on...nothing to see here

Especially not this...

Or this:

Or this...

Not this either, although he doesn't really care, does he?

Bonus photo: Maybe the focus should be on keeping Junior away from guns. Next, he'll have the muzzle pointed in the wrong direction.

Israel bans Doctors Without Borders from Gaza because of refusal to provide staff list

Renowned medical aid agency explains why

MSF statement on sharing staff information and humanitarian operations in Palestine

Following many months of unsuccessful engagement with Israeli authorities, and in the absence of securing assurances to ensure the safety of our staff or the independent management of our operations, Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) has concluded that it will not share a list of its Palestinian and international staff with Israeli authorities in the current circumstances.

In March 2025, Israeli authorities announced that organizations seeking registration would be required to provide personal information about their staff. From the outset, MSF raised serious concerns about this request in a context where medical and humanitarian workers have been intimidated, arbitrarily detained, and attacked. Since October 2023, 1,700 health staff have been killed, as well as 15 MSF colleagues. On 30 December, Israeli authorities announced that MSF's previous registration had lapsed and was therefore expected to cease operations within 60 days.

In an effort to explore every possible option – however limited – to continue providing critical medical care, MSF informed Israeli authorities on 23 January that, as an exceptional measure, MSF would be prepared to share a defined list of Palestinian and international staff names, subject to clear parameters, with our staff safety at its core. This position was defined following consultation with our Palestinian colleagues and with the clear understanding no staff information would be shared without the express agreement of individuals concerned. 

However, despite repeated efforts, it became evident in recent days that we were unable to build engagement with Israeli authorities on the concrete assurances required. 

Saved by your nose

Where the common cold is stopped before it starts

By Cell Press

Whether you catch a cold may hinge on how fast your nasal cells react, not how aggressive the virus is. A rapid antiviral response can shut down rhinovirus early, while a slower one allows infection, inflammation, and classic cold symptoms to take hold. Credit: Shutterstock

When rhinovirus, the leading cause of the common cold, infects the lining of the nose, cells in the nasal passages immediately begin working together to defend against it. These cells activate a broad range of antiviral responses designed to limit infection. In a study published today (January 19) in the Cell Press journal Cell Press Blue, researchers show that this coordinated cellular defense plays a major role in whether a person gets sick at all and how severe their symptoms become. The findings suggest that the body’s reaction to rhinovirus, rather than the virus alone, is often what determines the outcome of infection.

“As the number one cause of common colds and a major cause of breathing problems in people with asthma and other chronic lung conditions, rhinoviruses are very important in human health,” says senior author Ellen Foxman of Yale School of Medicine. “This research allowed us to peer into the human nasal lining and see what is happening during rhinovirus infections at both the cellular and molecular levels.”