Well this was a production failure. Today was supposed to be my first official daily show and because I spent much of the morning trying to figure out the wildly fluctuating case numbers coming out of DRC (more on that tomorrow when the situation becomes more clear), I didn’t notice that I physically muted my mic while moving it around on my desk. Because the mic wasn’t muted on my streaming software, I didn’t realize I had accidentally pressed the mute button on the microphone itself.
I was in a rush to log on and as a result, I didn’t test my sound in advance. I actually reminded myself to look at the chat (I am getting better at that) and glad I did, because lots of lovely people were letting me know. Oh well. At least I figured it out in time to explain why I have entered my Brezhnev era when it comes to eyebrow aesthetic choices. Yesterday I wasn’t sure about the new look, but I’m starting to come around. After scanning the catalog of Brezhnev’s legendary caterpillars in action, I’m thinking I am going to get some serious frowning mileage out of it.
I would like to note that the link on the banner on the video is to the open letter we submitted to Trump et al regarding the plan to keep Ebola out of the US, and it does not indicate endorsement of comparative eyebrow studies in any way by my colleagues at the O’Neill Institute. Though I suspect they will be okay with it if you came for the eyebrow discourse and stayed for the open letter. It would be even better if you shared it or told your friends about it.
Here’s what you missed in what became my first silent film:
Read our open letter objecting to forcibly quarantining Americans in Kenya
I joined a team of experts, human rights advocates, and civil rights attorneys in sending an open letter to US President Donald Trump, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. opposing the proposed quarantine facility in Kenya. This will confine Americans in a high-risk setting for three weeks with untrained staff in a facility far inferior to those we have here at home. It denies them their rights. We published the letter today at the O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law at Georgetown Law School. Please read and share. Americans should know the risk this presents to us all.
I wrote this longer piece with The Save America Movement about it today.
You Can't Stop Ebola with More Ebola
On Friday I was on NewsNation to talk about the situation with the Bundibugyo virus outbreak causing an epidemic of Ebola virus disease in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Uganda. The situation is really, really, really bad. And the US government is making it worse. They have proposed limiting our Ebola response to building a tent hospital in …
Jessica Malaty Rivera, MS and I also had our co-authors Kaci Hickox, a nurse and infection preventionist who was forcibly quarantined when returning from West Africa in 2014, and Lawrence Gostin, a professor and globally renowned expert on international health law, on TAKING SHOTS to discuss it on Friday.
I will go over everything again tomorrow, with updated numbers from DRC and Uganda (things are changing a lot, in confusing ways) and hopefully some clarity about what is actually happening in Kenya. And with sound!
Friday night Danish surprise
In their usual tradition of issuing Executive Orders they are particularly proud of, on Friday Trump issued this one making the Denmark Doctrine for knocking half of the vaccines for kids off the recommended vaccination schedule. I’ll have more to say about this tomorrow too, but it appears to be an attempt to find a way around the federal court order blocking the anti-vax Advisory Committee for Immunization Practices (ACIP) from meeting without undergoing the standard process for making sure ACIP is already qualified. Kennedy keeps trying to change the ACIP charter to get around it. This Executive Order extends a Presidential Memo from December 5th, 2025, in which he ordered Kennedy to align the US vaccine schedule with “peer nations” like Denmark.
I’m especially annoyed this part was muted, because I had missed it when it dropped due to Kenyan Ebola prison news. Denmark is not a peer of the US in terms of geography, demographics, the economy, resources, population health, health systems, government, security needs (in fact, the US is threatening Denmark on that front), and thus blindly accepting the Danish vaccine schedule in lieu of the prior evidence-based method used by both the US and Denmark makes no sense scientifically. But it doesn’t have to, because the point is to get as many vaccines off the schedule as possible. More on this tomorrow as well.
Thank you Wendy R 🇨🇦, Rebecca Staton, Kris Shapar, and many others for tuning in, especially those of you who stuck around for the final few minutes! Join me tomorrow at 11 am-ish ET for a repeat (with updates, since I expect the Ebola situation to be different as it is rapidly changing).
