Richard M. Carpiano

Richard M. Carpiano, PhD, MPH

@rmcarpiano.medsky.social

13K followers 5.6K following 5.8K posts

Professor, University of California, Riverside School of Public Policy. Public health scientist & sociologist keen on population health & community issues. Sometimes in the news, often for troubling and frustrating topics. Opinions my own. 🇺🇸 🇨🇦 .. more

Videos

Public Health 27%

Medicine 20%

Posts Replies Media Videos

Pinned

Richard M. Carpiano, PhD, MPH @rmcarpiano.medsky.social · Nov 9

Welcome new followers! About me beyond my profile: I post on a range of public health, sociological, & policy topics in my expertise areas (e.g., vaccinations, misinformation, health disparities) & other stuff I find important, intriguing, or fun/funny. Journalists: happy to chat (part of my job).

Reposted by Silvia Secchi

Richard M. Carpiano, PhD, MPH @rmcarpiano.medsky.social · 1d

Quite a story: "A South Park writer anticipated President Donald Trump would rename the John F. Kennedy Center for Performing Arts after himself, so he bought domain names connected to the Trump-Kennedy Center."

www.newsnationnow.com

Reposted by Richard M. Carpiano

Mrs. Betty Bowers @mrsbettybowers.bsky.social · 1d

Christian Nationalist without the boring nice Jesus parts.

Richard M. Carpiano, PhD, MPH @rmcarpiano.medsky.social · 1d

👇🏼👇🏼👇🏼👇🏼

Yoel Roth @yoyoel.com · 1d

There’s a lesson here about writing in the age of weaponized lies: Always precede false claims with giant red text, ideally wrapped in a <blink> tag, that says “THIS IS A LIE I AM REFUTING!!”

But also, why is a book that makes this kind of lazy, bad-faith argumentation getting any accolades at all?

Richard M. Carpiano, PhD, MPH @rmcarpiano.medsky.social · 1d

👇🏼👇🏼👇🏼👇🏼🛟 polisky Medsky 😷🧪 sociology health policy

Yoel Roth @yoyoel.com · 1d

A small (personal) example of this book’s intellectual dishonesty:

My father-in-law is reading In Covid’s Wake, and excitedly told me he found a passage where I’m quoted. The quote in question is me saying the FBI worked to censor speech on social media.

Huh? When did I say that?!

Reposted by Richard M. Carpiano, Farah Mendlesohn

Mark Cuban @mcuban.bsky.social · 1d

I'm here willing to read anything someone puts together that details how we can get from here to there

I'm all for universal healthcare. Tell me how we get there.

Richard M. Carpiano, PhD, MPH @rmcarpiano.medsky.social · 1d

www.medpagetoday.com/opinion/faus...

Opinion | FDA Vax Chief Jumped the Gun on Claims of Kid Deaths From COVID Shots

Vinay Prasad's conclusions overshot what the agency's analysts ultimately found

www.medpagetoday.com

Reposted by Kate Starbird, Richard M. Carpiano, Dan Immergluck

Yoel Roth @yoyoel.com · 1d

Reposted by Kate Starbird, Richard M. Carpiano, Nathan P. Kalmoe , and 1 more Kate Starbird, Richard M. Carpiano, Nathan P. Kalmoe, Dan Immergluck

Yoel Roth @yoyoel.com · 1d

And yet, In Covid’s Wake quotes me as saying that “the FBI went beyond strategic information sharing and made direct moderation demands” — literally the opposite of what I argue — to buttress their claim that the government was too busy censoring speech to adequately deal with the pandemic.

Reposted by Richard M. Carpiano

Yoel Roth @yoyoel.com · 1d

One such refutation appears in my paper under the heading “The FBI went beyond strategic information sharing and made direct moderation demands.” I spend several hundred words explaining that that didn’t happen.

The FBI went beyond strategic information sharing and made direct moderation demands
In the Fifth Circuit's analysis, the line between permissible information sharing and threat alerting and coercive moderation demands is a porous one. If representatives of the government share indicators of compromise (IOCs) with private sector entities, is a coercive demand to take some kind of action implicit in that sharing? The Fifth Circuit takes this to be the case:
... we do find the FBI's requests came with the backing of clear authority over the plattorms.
Atter all, content moderation requests "might be inherently coercive if sent by ... [al law enforcement officer."
... although the FBI's communications did not plainly reference adverse consequences, an actor need not express a threat aloud so long as, given the circumstances, the message intimates that some form of punishment will follow noncompliance.®
The implications of this argument are striking. The Fifth Circuit appears to hold that any information-sharing from the FBI to platforms is de facto coercive, simply by virtue of who it originated with.
Even in situations where platforms actively solicit information from the government-as was regularly the case on election security matters between platforms and the FBI-the resulting
communications are taken to be coercive because of the FBI's standing as a law enforcement entity.

Receiving and acting on external reports is a core function of plattorm content moderation teams, and the essential nature of this work is an independent evaluation of reported content under the platform's own policies. The fact, cited in Missouri v. Biden, that platforms only acted on approximately half of reports from the FBI shows clearly that the standards platforms applied were not wholly, or even mostly, the government's.
Finally, it does not withstand factual scrutiny that platforms were so petrified of adverse consequences from the FBI that they uncritically accepted and acted on information sent to them by the government. The Twitter Files themselves document clearly at least two instances in which, presented with low-quality information or questionable demands, Twitter pushed back on the FBI's requests. In one case, the FBI passes on a request-seemingly from the NSA-that Twitter "revis[e] its terms of service" to allow an open-source intelligence vendor to collect data from the Twitter APIs to inform the NSA's activities. This request is arguably as close to jawboning as any interaction between Twitter and the FBI gets; yet, in response, I summarily dismissed not only the request for a meeting to discuss the topic, but the entire premise of the request, writing, "The best path for NSA, or any part of government, to request information about Twitter users or their content is in accordance with valid legal process." The question was not raised again.

Reposted by Richard M. Carpiano

Yoel Roth @yoyoel.com · 1d

The authors quote from an article I wrote in 2023, refuting false claims about government jawboning of social media platforms. One of the claims I directly push back against is the persistent lie that the FBI demanded Twitter censor online speech.

knightcolumbia.org/blog/getting...

Getting the Facts Straight: Some Observations on the Fifth Circuit Ruling in Missouri v. Biden

knightcolumbia.org

Yoel Roth @yoyoel.com · 1d

A passage from the book In Covid’s Wake, with a highlighted sentence reading: “Yoel Roth, the former head of trust and safety at Twitter, states that "the FBI went beyond strategic information sharing and made direct moderation demands," including demands involving domestic speech.”

Richard M. Carpiano, PhD, MPH @rmcarpiano.medsky.social · 1d

This commentary offers policy alternatives to implementing state medical-exemption-only school vaccination mandates (e.g., CA, NY, CT) a la Am Acad of Pediatric's rec's, given political realities. Good to discuss, but I have difficulty seeing how most ideas here are any more feasible to implement. 🛟

Vaccine Policy and Eliminating Nonmedical Exemptions

This Viewpoint describes strategies to reduce the increasing rate of nonmedical exemptions to vaccination while maintaining trust, reducing opposition to vaccination, and preserving community immunity...

jamanetwork.com

Richard M. Carpiano, PhD, MPH @rmcarpiano.medsky.social · 1d

(cont'd) As always with preprints I rarely post, I post this with the caveat that, as a preprint, it hasn't been peer reviewed. Hopefully it will soon.

Richard M. Carpiano, PhD, MPH @rmcarpiano.medsky.social · 1d

Preprint cost-benefit analysis estimates the potential impact of changes to the Hepatitis B child vaccination policy. Nothing good but not terribly surprising given what we know with past history, US disparities in risk & access to care, etc.
🛟 Medsky 😷📈 sociology demography health policy

Economic evaluation of delaying the infant hepatitis B vaccination schedule

Introduction Children who acquire hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection in early childhood through perinatal, household or community exposures are at highest risk of all age groups for experiencing chroni...

doi.org

Richard M. Carpiano, PhD, MPH @rmcarpiano.medsky.social · 2d

(cont'd)
See for example...

joshuasweitz.substack.com/p/revisionis...

www.bostonreview.net/forum/how-di...

podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/i...

Revisionism in the Wake of Covid

A dialogue confronting the premise of revisionist efforts to diminish the pandemic's severity and dismantle public health institutions.

joshuasweitz.substack.com

Richard M. Carpiano, PhD, MPH @rmcarpiano.medsky.social · 2d

Lol! SMH. This book was rightfully and extensively panned by the scientific community... 🤦🤦🤦🤦

Walker Bragman @walkerbragman.bsky.social · 2d

This is sickening. A conspiracy-forward book airing out right-wing business grievances with the pandemic response.

The authors should be drummed out of academia.

Princeton University Press @princetonupress.bsky.social · 3d

Congratulations to Stephen Macedo & Frances Lee, whose book In Covid's Wake has been recognized as:

⭐ A @newyorker.com Best Book of the Year
⭐ An @economist.com Book of the Year
⭐ A @wsj.com Best Book of the Year

Learn more about this eye-opening book: press.princeton.edu/books/hardco...

Reposted by Richard M. Carpiano

J. Offir, PhD @joffirphd.bsky.social · 2d

3/ call the patient ombudsman at your area hospital and tell them this isn't proper infection control for vulnerable patients during surges of community illness. People who get flu or covid as in-patients are far more likely to die than are folks who get sick out in the community.

Reposted by Richard M. Carpiano

J. Offir, PhD @joffirphd.bsky.social · 2d

2/ including coughing, fever, chills, headache, vomiting, sore throat, muscle aches or diarrhea" to stay home - as if adults symptomatic with airborne viruses should *ever* be visiting folks in the hospital (& breathing on staff & patients' roommates, too).

If you live in Dayton, you may wanna...

Reposted by Richard M. Carpiano

J. Offir, PhD @joffirphd.bsky.social · 2d

This is shameful.

Dayton, Ohio hospitals are implementing "visitor restrictions" due to high levels of flu, covid, & other seasonal viruses - but they aren't requiring masking. They're just saying no kids, & are asking adults "with any respiratory symptoms...

🧵1/3

share.google/7NV1VilYfwiS...

Hospitals to temporarily implement visitor restrictions amid increase in respiratory illness

Visitor restrictions are temporary and will be reviewed regularly.

share.google

Reposted by Richard M. Carpiano

Walker Bragman @walkerbragman.bsky.social · 2d

This is sickening. A conspiracy-forward book airing out right-wing business grievances with the pandemic response.

The authors should be drummed out of academia.

Princeton University Press @princetonupress.bsky.social · 3d

In Covid's Wake: How Our Politics Failed Us by Stephen Macedo and Frances Lee. A New Yorker Best Book of the Year; An Economist Best Book of the Year; A Wall Street Journal Best Book of the Year

Richard M. Carpiano, PhD, MPH @rmcarpiano.medsky.social · 2d

Skin as thin as a snowflake.

Richard M. Carpiano, PhD, MPH @rmcarpiano.medsky.social · 2d

Here are mine:
Bread
Puddle of Mudd
Korn
Staind
White Lion
Warrant
Budgie
Better than Ezra
The The

Reposted by Roger A. Pielke, John McLaren, Philip N. Cohen , and 11 more Roger A. Pielke, John McLaren, Philip N. Cohen, Paul E. Johnson, Juan Cole, Alan Richardson, David R. Miller, Els Torreele, Brian Keegan, Aurélien Mondon, Mark Rice, Richard M. Carpiano, Nathan P. Kalmoe, Dan Immergluck

Michael Hobbes @michaelhobbes.bsky.social · 2d

This is genuinely horrifying. Fact-free far-right agitprop given accolades by credible media across the political spectrum.

Princeton University Press @princetonupress.bsky.social · 3d

Reposted by Tom Clark, Philip Nel, Richard M. Carpiano , and 2 more Tom Clark, Philip Nel, Richard M. Carpiano, Eric J. Segall, Nathan P. Kalmoe

Adam Parkhomenko @adamparkhomenko.bsky.social · 2d

That’s not how GDP works. But it is how propaganda works.

Reposted by Rita Rubin, Richard M. Carpiano

Alt-NIHscience4ALL @alt-nihscience4all.altgov.info · 2d

1/n: More leadership changes at NIH, with institute director positions likely to start being filled soon. Too many good people are leaving.

www.science.org/content/arti...

NIH official resigns after flap over risks of seasonal flu virus study

Agency may be expanding list of pathogens subject to dangerous “gain-of-function” regulations

www.science.org

Richard M. Carpiano, PhD, MPH @rmcarpiano.medsky.social · 2d

Indeed. And for his family: his wife suffered a stroke not too long ago.

David Darmofal @daviddarmofal.bsky.social · 2d

Prayers for Ben Sasse. 🙏

Yashar Ali 🐘 @yasharali.bsky.social · 2d

Former Nebraska Senator Ben Sasse says he doesn’t have much time left.

Sasse is just 53 years old.

Reposted by Richard M. Carpiano

Jonathan Howard @joho.bsky.social · 2d

Podcast Jay is launching devastating takedowns of journalists who accurately quote him.

Bhattacharya says Science Magazine is fake news

Richard M. Carpiano, PhD, MPH @rmcarpiano.medsky.social · 2d

Will be fascinating to see how this rolls out in the US in terms of access and uptake.
Sociology demography 😷🛟 📈 Medsky health policy

The Weight-Loss Drug Wegovy Now Comes in a Pill

Novo Nordisk’s popular weight-loss drug, Wegovy, became the first oral GLP-1 approved by the FDA.

time.com

Reposted by Richard M. Carpiano

Boze the Library Owl @sketchesbyboze.bsky.social · 2d

Some of you have forgotten that only three years ago you were perfectly capable of writing a text, writing an email, telling a bedtime story to a child, and it should worry you that powerful companies have convinced us we can’t do things we’ve been doing since the dawn of time.

Reposted by Diane Ravitch, Sanford F. Schram, Gerald Friedman , and 2 more Diane Ravitch, Sanford F. Schram, Gerald Friedman, Lones Smith, Richard M. Carpiano

Mrs. Betty Bowers @mrsbettybowers.bsky.social · 2d

Having to watch a bootlegged copy of a video from another country because my country censored it is making me feel as if I'm living in 1980s Eastern Germany.

Add to Home Screen

Light up
your news

Add to Home Screen

Light upyour news

Sign in to Lightnews

Sign up to start reading

Connect Bluesky

Connect with Bluesky

Light up
your news