@alexandraphelan
Global Health Lawyer. Associate Professor at Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security working on emerging and reemerging infectious disease outbreaks, their Planetary Health drivers, and international law in pandemic preparedness, equity & justice.
“We are fearful that this is a prototype for other studies,” said @cdelawalla.bsky.social. My latest on the unlikely researchers at the heart of US vaccine policy:
www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026...
goddamn is this a breath of fresh air after Allred 2024
Iconic. A double coated pomsky and a toddler has led to many renditions in our house of Brandy and Monica’s 1998 classic, “The Fluff Is Mine”
“Ecocide” means unlawful or wanton acts committed with knowledge that there is a substantial likelihood of severe and either widespread or long-term damage to the environment being caused by those acts
- consensus definition for proposed inclusion of Ecocide as international crime in Rome Statute
The catastrophic impact to local health where the air is poisoned, as well as to our global ecosystem as they literally set the planet on fire and fill the atmosphere with pollutants
“Looking to combat vaccine skepticism and mistrust of officials among migrant residents — especially those who are undocumented — organizers enlisted trans women to bridge the communication gap.“
www.them.us/story/trans-...
Hello! One month from today I’m releasing my new book about our majestic universe, which thinks with poetry, quantum physics, relativity, Zhou kingdom philosophy, galaxies, particles, Akan aphorisms, Black feminism, Star Trek, Alice in Wonderland. AND it’s for all readers. 📚💙
Please preorder it! 🧵
“The Unwillingness to Call This Illegal Is a Terrible Mistake”
Five Questions to Oona A. Hathaway
Read it in English here:
verfassungsblog.de/the-unwillin...
And in German here:
verfassungsblog.de/die-weigerun...
I once asked a bookseller at a large indie store how many people would have to buy a book for it to get the attention of the store buyer and cause an additional order and they said: Three.
“The children are always ours, every single one of them, all over the globe; and I am beginning to suspect that whoever is incapable of recognizing this may be incapable of morality.”
James Baldwin
The world could be such a nice place if we allowed it. It's all so goddamn unnecessary. There's no need for any of it. It's so beautiful here. It should be so cool to be alive
I’m not watching that video st 3am but I don’t need to see it know this is a grave violation of US and international law. From my area of study I can tell you that it’s easy to think the UN Charter doesn’t mean much, but we want to live in a world that values its prohibition on aggressive warfare
Congrats to our partner @dndi.org on the approval of their drug acoziborole to treat sleeping sickness! 🎉
This neglected disease could now be cured with a safe, single-dose pill, rather than complicated, toxic treatments that have previously been used.
A very fluffy pomsky standing in the snow
Contrary to reports, the new Pokémon Pombom is actually a Snow-type starter
Same day as this:
Smartphone screenshot showing two New York Times “Breaking News” push notifications. The first, at 5:38 AM, says Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor was arrested on suspicion of misconduct in public office over links to Jeffrey Epstein, citing the BBC. The second, at 2:01 AM, says Yoon Suk Yeol, South Korea’s ousted leader, was found guilty of leading an insurrection over his 2024 martial law decree. Each notification includes a “Share” option and a bell icon.
Watching other countries actually make their leaders and powerful men face consequences with jealousy.
So SCOTUS, with its fabricated-out-of-thin-air immunity doctrine, has actually made American presidents less accountable than LITERAL royalty.
the number of people that have said they've taken test tubes (albeit harmless ones) into the White House to demonstrate biosecurity concepts over the last twenty years is too dang high
time.com/7373405/weap...
This is a vivid, horribly relevant read. “She does not sleep well. And as you lift up her pajama top to check her rash one morning, you see that her breathing is labored, shadows pooling between her ribs when she sucks in air. You suffer an icy moment of realization: This is a medical crisis.”
It appears that in planning for Operation Metro Surge, the government failed to plan for the constitutional rights of its civil detainees. The government suggests — with minimal explanation and even less evidence — that doing so would result in "chaos." The Constitution does not permit the government to arrest thousands of individuals and then disregard their constitutional rights because it would be too challenging to honor those rights. 14 At this preliminary stage, Plaintiffs have made a clear showing of likelihood of success on their Fifth Amendment claim.
BREAKING: Judge Nancy Brasel, a Trump appointee, has issued a TRO in the Minnesota access-to-counsel case about treatment at Whipple.
"It appears that in planning for Operation Metro Surge, the government failed to plan for the constitutional rights of its civil detainees."
Screenshot image from whatisnewyork instagram account showing Polymarket’s “free grocery store” in New York City
This is like when Al Capone opened a soup kitchen during the Great Depression.
They’re not Robin Hood: they’re either trying to avoid being regulated or undermine Mamdani’s subsidized grocery store initiative.
BREAKING: The Trump administraiton has committed a mass violation of ICE detainees' constitutional rights in MN, effectively blocking their acess to attorneys in the Whipple building, a judge ruled tonight.
The judge: Trump appointeee Nancy Brasel
storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...
As this press release notes, Moderna has started the first step confirming they will request a Type A Meeting with the FDA:
www.accessnewswire.com/newsroom/en/...
Moderna are being very careful in their responses about next steps here but given the likely arbitrariness and unreasonableness of an outright refusal to file (let alone the economic impacts), I expect they will appeal, with a range of options available: trendspotting.sidley.com/trends/fda
“They are refusing to review a new vaccine with a more flexible technology, while creating a real risk we will not have traditional vaccines for next year," @doritreiss.bsky.social said.
www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026...
This is troubling for multiple reasons, but one big one is companies won’t want to invest in R&D and clinical trials if they don’t think they can get a fair regulatory review—which is at the end of a long and extremely expensive process.
www.nytimes.com/2026/02/10/h...
As I tell my students, AI are faulty simulacrum generators: the six finger uncanny valley of AI videos is just as present in any writing you produce using them and as evident to anyone knowledgeable in the field.
NEW: The AMA and a leading public health research group focused on vaccines are teaming up to create a parallel system to review vaccine safety and effectiveness.
The CDC’s vaccine review process has “effectively collapsed” under RFKJr. My story.
www.washingtonpost.com/health/2026/...
Massachusetts, from this article:
www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026...
Irish man Seamus Culleton has been in ICE detention in Texas for 5 months in conditions he describes as a “modern day concentration camp”. The conditions are inhumane and he fears for his life, stating that “people have been killed by security staff”.
