Spencer J Fox
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foxandtheflu.bsky.social
Spencer J Fox
@foxandtheflu.bsky.social
Assistant prof at UGA in Epi/Bios, disease modeler, and data scientist. Posts are my own opinions
Reposted by Spencer J Fox
Precisely so, I look forward to convening a Wed AM panel on "Confronting Covid's Wake."

We will explore the link between COVID responses, anti-science, and misinformation… and how & why to support evidence-based inquiry to confront disease threats.

virtual.oxfordabstracts.com/event/public...
OA Virtual conferences
virtual.oxfordabstracts.com
December 3, 2025 at 12:50 AM
Reposted by Spencer J Fox
Federal government and Utah leaders are having a meeting this week to discuss co-management of national parks in Utah, setting a dangerous precedent for national parks across the nation.

Read more: www.thetravel.com/us-governmen...
U.S. Government Eyes Utah National Parks For “Dangerous” Plan That Could Spread To Parks Across The Country
The alleged meeting fears the public and environmentalists it might involve the Mighty Five.
www.thetravel.com
December 1, 2025 at 10:43 PM
Reposted by Spencer J Fox
A challenge in epidemic forecasting is that ML models overfit while mechanistic models miss changing transmission conditions. Our new JR Soc Interface paper tests whether physics-informed neural networks—which embed an epidemiological ODE system inside a neural net—can address this.
December 1, 2025 at 12:31 PM
ID folks, come find me at the poster session tonight (2.041) or dm me if you’re looking for a postdoctoral position and want to hear more about our work/group. #Epidemics10
A new postdoc position just opened in our group at NAU! We are looking for someone to lead our current forecasting activities and the development of our next generation AI/ML models! Don't hesitate to reach out to me with any questions! careers.nau.edu/jobs/postdoc...
Postdoctoral Scholar - Flagstaff, Arizona, United States
Special Information This position is an on-site position which requires the incumbent to complete their work primarily at an NAU site, campus, or facility with or without accommodation. Opportunities...
careers.nau.edu
December 1, 2025 at 11:28 PM
Reposted by Spencer J Fox
Brilliant and inspiring talk by Shweta Bansal @bansallab.bsky.social at #Epidemics10 on contact patterns at the interface of data, modelling and public health — and even across species!
December 1, 2025 at 8:16 PM
Reposted by Spencer J Fox
Good news! The Ebola outbreak in DRC has been contained
December 1, 2025 at 7:02 PM
@bansallab.bsky.social gives a tour de force of behavioral models and theory as a keynote at #epidemics10. How COVID-19 and animal behavior have helped improve our understanding of human behaviors and disease dynamics
December 1, 2025 at 6:37 PM
Reposted by Spencer J Fox
We’ve just released Epistorm-Mix, a new open dataset on how people in the U.S. mix across ages and settings in the post-COVID era.

📊 Contact-level data + contact matrices
Built for epidemic modeling & forecasting
Fully open data & code

🔗 www.epistorm.org/data/epistor...
Epistorm-Mix: Mapping Social Contact Patterns in the Post-Pandemic United States
Epistorm-Mix provides individual-level contact data and contacts patterns characterization relevant for the spread of respiratory infectious diseases within the US population.
www.epistorm.org
November 25, 2025 at 3:11 PM
This is only a few hours from Flagstaff, check out our open postdoctoral position if you're interested in being this close to these magical places: careers.nau.edu/jobs/postdoc...
November 25, 2025 at 1:21 AM
I for one am here for the 6 month predictions on measles cases that you can find on Kalshi. July 8th the average prediction was about 1.7k cases for the whole year and we are heading towards about 2k by my rough estimate. kalshi.com/markets/kxme...
Measles cases this year? | Trade on Kalshi
Track what Kalshi's markets predict for "Measles cases this year?", or trade it yourself.
kalshi.com
November 18, 2025 at 10:06 PM
Reposted by Spencer J Fox
Postdoc (Flagstaff or remote, USA)
Lead the Fox Lab's outbreak forecasting efforts in collaboration with domestic and international public health partners.
with @foxandtheflu.bsky.social
at Northern Arizona University
More details: http://iddjobs.org/jobs/2409
November 14, 2025 at 9:14 PM
Just finished writing up a quick summary of our new publication on the lab website. We developed a new method we call "epimodulation" that fixes biases in forecasts with epidemiological principles. It was really fun to work on this one! thefoxlab.wordpress.com/2025/11/12/n...
New paper – Improving outbreak forecasts through model augmentation
The Fox lab had our latest forecasting work published in PNAS a couple of weeks ago! This paper has been about 4 years in the making beginning a couple of years in to the COVID-19 pandemic when our…
thefoxlab.wordpress.com
November 12, 2025 at 10:24 PM
In the NYT today, a discussion of how Canada will lose their measles elimination status. www.nytimes.com/2025/11/06/w...

This was predictable and preventable, something Amy Winter and I discussed in our disease watch piece 4 months ago: www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Canada Is About to Lose Its Status as Having Eliminated Measles
www.nytimes.com
November 6, 2025 at 3:32 PM
Reposted by Spencer J Fox
Multi-model approach to understand and predict past and future dengue epidemic dynamics

royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/...

Brilliant work by @cathalmills.bsky.social + many others
November 5, 2025 at 2:28 PM
A new postdoc position just opened in our group at NAU! We are looking for someone to lead our current forecasting activities and the development of our next generation AI/ML models! Don't hesitate to reach out to me with any questions! careers.nau.edu/jobs/postdoc...
Postdoctoral Scholar - Flagstaff, Arizona, United States
Special Information This position is an on-site position which requires the incumbent to complete their work primarily at an NAU site, campus, or facility with or without accommodation. Opportunities...
careers.nau.edu
November 4, 2025 at 9:46 PM
Reposted by Spencer J Fox
Check out our new paper @nejm.org. RSV, COVID-19 & Influenza vaccines continue to show consistent effectiveness & safety based on a review & synthesis of 500+ research studies👇! We worked hard to evaluate the evidence so you can be confident about getting vaccinated this fall!
Even as the anti-vax lobby erodes public trust, new evidence confirms that "immunizations against Covid-19, RSV, and influenza have shown consistent effectiveness & safety and are associated with a substantially reduced risk of hospitalization & severe disease"

www.nejm.org/doi/full/10....
October 31, 2025 at 2:54 PM
Reposted by Spencer J Fox
1/5: Interested in basketball? Disease ecology? Epidemics?

5 years ago, the NBA embarked on a great experiment in infection control: "The NBA Bubble." In a new preprint led by Dr. Yun Tao + Dr. Nita Bharti, we examine it's underlying disease ecology principles.

www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1...
Pandemic-era sports league operations as a new paradigm for local epidemic resilience
Strategic, coordinated, and rapid responses are essential when pathogens emerge, yet these responses are often mishandled during epidemics due to myriad factors, including entrenched socioeconomic and...
www.medrxiv.org
October 31, 2025 at 11:56 AM
Took some time to update the lab website with a couple new posts and lab news! Check it out to hear about some lab changes and recent fun things we've been up to! thefoxlab.wordpress.com
The Fox Lab
Statistical and computational epidemiology
thefoxlab.wordpress.com
October 29, 2025 at 8:27 PM
Just published! Our new work on a method to add epi info to any forecast model. We showed that it improved the performance of all forecast models we tested including ensembles. Now we hope to deploy it in real-time to see how well it works: www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...
PNAS
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), a peer reviewed journal of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) - an authoritative source of high-impact, original research that broadly spans...
www.pnas.org
October 27, 2025 at 5:58 PM
Reposted by Spencer J Fox
A new approach called “epimodulation” — developed by UT Austin researchers & collaborators — predicts epidemic peaks better than current models and could boost health care preparations in future outbreaks.

#Epidemiology #PublicHealth @texas-ib.bsky.social
cns.utexas.edu/news/researc...
A New Tool for Healthcare Gives Better Outbreak Forecasts
Pinpointing an outbreak’s peak, the approach can boost health systems’ preparedness and risk communication.
cns.utexas.edu
October 27, 2025 at 3:03 PM
Why has H5N1 not been as deadly as we were expecting so far? Really liked this summary of the evidence and possible explanations by @jdrakephd.bsky.social

www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
Understanding avian influenza mortality
Three theories could explain why the North American H5N1 epidemic has not been more deadly
www.science.org
October 14, 2025 at 9:02 PM
Reposted by Spencer J Fox
Today my @nytimes.com colleagues and I are launching a new series called Lost Science. We interview US scientists who can no longer discover something new about our world, thanks to this year‘s cuts. Here is my first interview with a scientist who studied bees and fires. Gift link: nyti.ms/3IWXbiE
nyti.ms
October 8, 2025 at 11:29 PM
Reposted by Spencer J Fox
What is the impact of the HHS decision to no longer recommend COVID-19 vaccination during pregnancy? In our new research letter in @jamapediatrics.com, we provide estimates on the number of infant hospitalizations under different vaccine scenarios here. @mathewkiang.com, @peterhotezmdphd.bsky.social
Modeling the Health Impact of Discontinuing COVID-19 Vaccination During Pregnancy in the US
This decision analytical model study estimates the number of avertable COVID-19 hospitalizations in US infants younger than 6 months and pregnant persons with vaccinations during pregnancy.
jamanetwork.com
September 29, 2025 at 11:30 PM
Was excited to see an explanation for spaghetti models for hurricane forecasts. We use these for infectious disease forecasting too! weather.com/science/weat...
How to Read Spaghetti Models During Hurricane Season | Weather.com
Understanding this delicious-sounding term will help you this hurricane season.
weather.com
September 25, 2025 at 11:50 PM
Reposted by Spencer J Fox
No university will pay $100k for an H-1B visa. These visas are primarily used for postdocs, and nobody can justify paying an extra $100k for that type of position. That's an entire additional year of postdoc funding. 1/2
EXCLUSIVE: A new analysis by The Xylom's @alexip718.com shows for the first time just how much America’s top research institutions have grown to depend on H-1B skilled workers — and how this delicate balance might be disrupted by U.S. President Donald Trump’s crackdown on legal immigration.
The Most Detailed Maps of H-1B Visa Holders Joining America's Top Research Institutions
A new analysis by The Xylom shows for the first time just how much America’s top research institutions have grown to depend on the specialized knowledge of H-1B skilled workers — and how this…
www.thexylom.com
September 25, 2025 at 11:15 PM