Laura McCall
equibotanica.bsky.social
Laura McCall
@equibotanica.bsky.social
Motto should be: 'No post without a typo'. 'Like' =|= agree. Vaccine equity is in everyone's interest.
avatar image:
@BruegelBot from the other place

Not super active here ... yet
Reposted by Laura McCall
1. COVID is only starting as a crisis of chronic illness. You cannot talk in the past tense

“For so many NHS staff, in many ways covid never really left… There’s been no pause, no time to heal, just a relentless push forward in a system permanently stuck in crisis mode”
Our first blog is live!

Our Ops & Comms Officer @samanthajwathen.bsky.social says:

"We need systemic change, resilience isn’t about pushing through until you break but about having the space, the tools, & the support to keep going safely, sustainably & with dignity"
frontline19.com/beyond-crisi...
The Silent Collapse of NHS Wellbeing | Frontline 19
It’s 5 years since Covid hit our shores, 5 years since we all experienced something most of us would rather forget.
frontline19.com
May 1, 2025 at 11:39 PM
Reposted by Laura McCall
Merci, EmmanuelMacron 💙💛

Every European will be safer if every part of Ukraine is sovereign and pro-European.

russian occupation of an independent country creates a precedent that endangers the entire continent.
April 23, 2025 at 7:11 PM
Reposted by Laura McCall
Trump day 91: First day with no decisions, Easter message about ‘millions of criminals,’ American detained 10 days for ‘illegal entry,’ Hegseth shared classified info with his wife and brother & more: reportersonline.eu/trump-day-91... #trump100
Trump day 91: No decisions, but Easter message about ‘millions of criminals,’ American detained 10 days for ‘illegal entry,’ Hegseth shared classified info with his wife and brother & more - Reporters...
New decisions from Trump, and new fallout. An overview of day 91.
reportersonline.eu
April 21, 2025 at 11:00 AM
Reposted by Laura McCall
If Jesus had focused more on kitchen table issues and less on unpopular outcasts like lepers and prostitutes, he might have won more support from white working-class Judeans.
April 20, 2025 at 2:08 AM
Reposted by Laura McCall
At least three people who are obsessed with criticizing me are being published in this book and I just want to point out that I travel and write regularly making the case for science funding and why cosmology is imporrant and these guys have had fuck all to say about science funding
Yall wanna hear something extremely embarrassing? Before Trump’s election, a bunch of academics who lumbered rightward after being criticized by the left (Pinker, Dawkins, Krauss) wrote essays for a book that is coming out in July about the threats to academia from the left.

YALL, THE TITLE!!
April 21, 2025 at 12:12 AM
Reposted by Laura McCall
It’s bad enough we have healthcare workers refusing to mask, now one admits to practicing medicine while he has measles

Does the HHS Secretary condemn this behaviour? No. He praises the doctor as an “extraordinary healer”

Measles is airborne & wildly contagious. This doctor should lose his license
Video shows doctor with measles treating kids. RFK Jr later praised him as an ‘extraordinary’ healer
A video shows a Texas doctor, who has been treating children in a measles outbreak, with a measles rash on his face in a clinic while caring for patients a week before he met with Health Secretary Rob...
apnews.com
April 19, 2025 at 9:46 AM
Reposted by Laura McCall
We need to stop making concessions to the right bc right-wingers get mad.

There’s this big effort to rewrite school closures. Even in ostensibly liberal media, we get solemnly acknowledgments that schools were closed too long.

Not bc of data, but bc right wingers screamed about it long enough.
The truth is, we never, in any systematic way, made classrooms safe, like ensuring upgraded ventilation and air purification in schools.

And COVID ripped through classrooms. Kids fueled household spread and hundreds of thousands of them lost caregivers to the virus.

But we don’t talk about THAT.
April 13, 2025 at 10:48 AM
Reposted by Laura McCall
Autism isn’t an epidemic. It's not a disease. It’s a natural variation in how people think…which, frankly, is a relief in a world where most people don't think at all.
April 19, 2025 at 7:49 PM
Reposted by Laura McCall
Can confirm that my NSF grant "How False Beliefs Form & How to Correct Them" was cancelled today because it is "not in alignment with current NSF priorities" Shocking that understanding how people are misled by false information is now a forbidden topic. Our work will continue but at a smaller scale
NSF has posted an “update on priorities.”

They’re canceling all “DEI and misinformation/disinformation” grants.

And the guidance on how to fulfill the longstanding, legally mandated Broadening Participation requirement is utterly incoherent.

www.nsf.gov/updates-on-p...
Updates on NSF Priorities
www.nsf.gov
April 18, 2025 at 10:40 PM
Reposted by Laura McCall
I hate the trope about "elites looking down their noses at rural folks lives". I lived in rural areas, and believe me, there was plenty of disdain there for the way urbanites lived *their* lives. It's not a one-way thing and in any case doesn't excuse fascism.
April 19, 2025 at 4:28 PM
Reposted by Laura McCall
EU 2024 electricity generation:

49% renewable energy
24% nuclear

Only 28% fossil fuel 👍
Unthinkable just 10 years ago:

Almost 3/4 of the EU’s electricity in 2024 was from renewable energy sources and nuclear.

Gas and coal electricity generation is at record low levels.
April 19, 2025 at 10:10 AM
"We have footsteps to follow, and shoulders to stand on! Fascism wins when you lose hope. To joyful persistence, my friends!"
The horrors persist but so do we. We are not the first people to be here, we aren't the first scientists to be persecuted, we aren't the first citizens to be oppressed. We have footsteps to follow, and shoulders to stand on! Fascism wins when you lose hope. To joyful persistence, my friends! ❤️‍🔥
April 19, 2025 at 9:28 AM
Reposted by Laura McCall
In the immortal words of Toni Morrison.

It applies to ableism too.
April 19, 2025 at 1:19 AM
Reposted by Laura McCall
The White House has turned COVID.gov from a public health resource into a politically charged platform promoting the lab-leak theory and attacking specific scientists and the pandemic response in general. Let’s fact check its 5 headline claims… 🧵
April 19, 2025 at 8:47 AM
No kidding
April 6, 2025 at 11:44 PM
Reposted by Laura McCall
We’re either heading for a recession or are already in one, paired with a stock market collapse, all because Trump did something real stupid that he could undo at any time. The US economy is crashing because a single dipshit *wants* to crash it, and nobody with the power to stop him will do so.
April 6, 2025 at 11:24 PM
Reposted by Laura McCall
We know masks prevent Covid & other respiratory infections

We know hospital acquired covid has a 10% mortality rate

We know patients are scared or postponing medical care because they can’t risk Covid

We know many HCWs are burned out & suffering Long Covid

So why aren’t we masking in healthcare?
We Need Mandatory Masking in Healthcare, and We Need it Now
Healthcare facilities should set the tone when it comes to masking. They should help patients protect themselves from Covid and other threats. Instead they push droplet dogma and put lives at risk.
www.disabledginger.com
March 10, 2025 at 10:58 AM
Reposted by Laura McCall
🚨 NEW: RFK Jr. Fanboys Owe You An Apology

Supporters of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. now have to face the music: RFK Jr.'s critics predicted exactly how his tenure as HHS Secretary would go, and a child is now dead of measles as the result.

👇 READ, SHARE, SUBSCRIBE: www.panaccindex.info/p/rfk-jr-fan...
RFK Jr. Fanboys Owe You An Apology
A Formal Reading of the Riot Act
www.panaccindex.info
March 10, 2025 at 5:59 PM
Reposted by Laura McCall
My latest post is now out.

I show how Trump's attacks on science and universities are neither random nor new - they fit very precisely into the authoritarian playbook.

This means we can guess what might come next and prepare - and we must!

christinapagel.substack.com/p/censor-pur...
Censor, purge, defund: how Trump following the authoritarian playbook on science and universities
I have mapped 35 of the Trump administration's attacks on science and universities to the authoritarian playbook - and consider what it means for attacks still to come
christinapagel.substack.com
March 10, 2025 at 2:58 PM
Reposted by Laura McCall
March 6, 2025 at 1:33 PM
Reposted by Laura McCall
80% of German VOTERS went for parties that promised to have nothing to do with the AFD...

MEDIA: Huge win for AFD!
February 23, 2025 at 9:50 PM
Reposted by Laura McCall
WIRED continues to lead the reporting on what's happening inside the US government right now.

A 25-year-old Musk acolyte now has admin privileges over the code that controls Social Security payments, tax returns, and more.

www.wired.com/story/elon-m...
A 25-Year-Old With Elon Musk Ties Has Direct Access to the Federal Payment System
The Bureau of the Fiscal Service is a sleepy part of the Treasury Department. It’s also where, sources say, a 25-year-old engineer tied to Elon Musk has admin privileges over the code that controls So...
www.wired.com
February 4, 2025 at 10:19 AM
Reposted by Laura McCall
This paper showing that a bunch of interventions didn't work for #longcovid is used as evidence that #longcovid is psychosomatic. But if the interventions tested didn't address the biology of the disease, they wouldn't work. See my field for another demo of this tautology.
November 29, 2024 at 12:55 AM
Reposted by Laura McCall
Stell Dir vor , Dein Kind geht zu Schule, kommt krank wieder heim und wird nie mehr gesund. Das darf einfach nicht passieren und schon gar nicht tausendfach. #BildungAberSicher www.srf.ch/wissen/gesun...
Long Covid - Hunderte von Kindern in der Schweiz kämpfen mit den Corona-Folgen
Das Corona-Virus ist nach wie vor da. Ein ernstes Problem vor allem für Menschen mit Long Covid, darunter auch Kinder.
www.srf.ch
November 26, 2024 at 4:58 AM