Leah Shaffer
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leahshaffer.bsky.social
Leah Shaffer
@leahshaffer.bsky.social
Science writer, mostly puttering about the garden.
she/her
Can't be having ridiculous distractions when Adonis must be cooed at on this microblogging site.
November 10, 2025 at 10:38 PM
solid coral base to clutch in times of stress
November 10, 2025 at 10:29 PM
FB increasingly harvests content from Bluesky, packages into meme or screenshot form for their pages. All be damned if I get how that sausage is made but yeah, it's a thing that routinely happens there.
November 10, 2025 at 6:24 PM
Sorry we couldn't meet up, that lake effect curtailed our ambition to get to the city. But very productive conference.
November 10, 2025 at 2:58 PM
A self inflicted wound like no other, it will blow a crater in the country and I have no idea what emerges from the other side.
November 10, 2025 at 12:30 AM
Oop, don't be a doomer, chimes in the social scientist. Most people vaccinate and that's an important message to share.

Most people vaccinate, especially incredibly cool and successful people. #Facts #SciWri25 🧪🩺
November 9, 2025 at 10:42 PM
More outbreaks, and more death, all baked into our future, a mass sacrifice of children, unless we reverse course. #SciWri25 🧪🩺
November 9, 2025 at 10:40 PM
We can build a better future!
#SciWri25
"We've done it before!"
November 9, 2025 at 9:36 PM
Defense: gotta rebuild our public health agencies and systems to last.
Train next gen leaders.
Better prepared countries had lower COVID mortality.
You can have the tools but if you choose not to use them, it's not the fault of the tools. #SciWri25
November 9, 2025 at 9:34 PM
Drills: grassroots, community based safety planning. Don't count on the Feds, build redundancies within redundancies. #SciWri25 #Pandemics #ScienceSky #MedSky
November 9, 2025 at 9:29 PM
U.S. is in bad shape! #HigherEd and research centers are trying to fill the void of data tracking but good God, it's a scramble. #SciWri25 #Pandemics
November 9, 2025 at 9:27 PM
Early detection systems are doable! Even for low resourced countries. #SciWri25 🧪 But U.S. early detection systems have gone dark in the past year. #ScienceSky #Pandemics Our wastewater monitoring system will be losing funds soon.
November 9, 2025 at 9:25 PM
Data: early detection systems.
(Coughs loudly, drops press release) source.washu.edu/2025/03/new-... 🧪#SciWri25
New biosensor can detect airborne bird flu in under five minutes
Researchers in the McKelvey School of Engineering at Washington University in St. Louis have developed a sensor that detects airborne H5N1 avian flu and can be used on poultry and dairy farms.
source.washu.edu
November 9, 2025 at 9:22 PM
We have reduced our protections and increased our vulnerabilities.
Gotta do the opposite.
Lots of natural hazards have been contained, let's follow that lead.
Do
Data, drills and defense #SciWri25
November 9, 2025 at 9:20 PM
"We are living in an age of infectious disease threats"
And the foxes are in charge of the hen houses.
#SciWri25
November 9, 2025 at 9:18 PM
Goddamnit, she's just as pissed to have to talk about measles as the rest of us. We had it eliminated! Asshole antivaxers ruin everything! #ImpeachRFKJr
November 9, 2025 at 9:16 PM
People can't wrap their head around the fact that our "Once a century" disasters happen all the damn time. 100 floods are actually every 30 years or every decade! #SciWri25
November 9, 2025 at 9:15 PM
"Pandemics happen regularly" just not usually as big as COVID. Yeah, we will get another pandemic, but can we prepare better. #SciWri25
November 9, 2025 at 9:08 PM