Sara Loo

Symposium & workshop on inequalities in infectious disease dynamics at LSHTM in April 2026. We aim to will bring together leading researchers and practitioners to share ideas, discuss recent advances, and reflect on future directions. Details & application: iddconf.org/lshtm-sympos... Closing 21 Jan

Four graphs compare hospitalizations and deaths in low and high immune escape scenarios. Each plots time from Jan 2024 to Jan 2025 against counts. Lines indicate "no booster," "high-risk," and "all" vaccine recommendations.

This decision analytic model, based on plausible assumptions of immune escape and vaccine recommendations, suggests that maintaining universal #COVID19 vaccine recommendations could save more lives than targeting high-risk groups alone.

ja.ma/47QhWqp

At the height of the pandemic, Americans of all political stripes were on guard against COVID Between April 2020 and June 2022, researchers found that people of different political leanings reported avoiding contact with others.

Prof. Mauricio Santillana discusses a PNAS study using 430K+ survey responses from all U.S. states (2020–22). The research reveals how personal choices, politics, and health guidance shaped COVID-19 behaviors, offering a deeper view beyond policy compliance.
news.northeastern.edu/2025/09/17/c...

Recommending Covid-19 vaccines for everyone in the US could save thousands more lives than limiting to high-risk groups | CNN As a group of advisers to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention meets this week to discuss Covid-19 vaccines and make recommendations on who should get the updated shot this season, a newl...

Results from last year's Scenario Modeling Hub COVID projections were published today, timely perhaps 👀 Quoted in www.cnn.com/2025/09/18/h... and article at jamanetwork.com/journals/jam...

Evolution of Human Pair Bonds as a Consequence of Male-Biased Mating Sex Ratios? - Bulletin of Mathematical Biology Compared to our closest primate relatives, human life history involves greater longevity, which includes a distinctive postmenopausal life stage. Given mammalian reproductive physiology in which femal...

Here's a recent #BulletinMathBio paper by Matthew C. Nitschke, Viney Kumar, Katrina E. Milliner, Kristen Hawkes, and Peter S. Kim titled "Evolution of Human Pair Bonds as a Consequence of Male-Biased Mating Sex Ratios?".

link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Vaccine failure mode determines population-level impact of vaccination campaigns during epidemics | Journal of The Royal Society Interface Vaccines are a crucial tool for controlling infectious diseases, yet rarely offer perfect protection. ‘Vaccine efficacy’ describes a population-level effect measured in clinical trials, but mathematic...

w/ Da In Lee, Thayer Anderson, Michael Z Levy, @alisonhill.bsky.social #EpiSky 🧪

royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10....

Pandemic monitoring with global aircraft-based wastewater surveillance networks - Nature Medicine By simulating the implementation of airport-based wastewater surveillance sites at the global level, a modeling study shows how this early warning system would perform in identifying sources of pandem...

Wastewater from airplane toilets?
We introduce a global Aircraft-Based Wastewater Surveillance Network (WWSN) for pandemic monitoring in Nature Medicine 🔗 doi.org/10.1038/s415...

Aircraft-based wastewater surveillance allows for real-time, non-invasive monitoring of global pathogen spread
Short 🧵

🧵 1/N Our new study on the strength and durability of indirect protection from vaccines and infection-acquired immunity against SARS-CoV-2 is published this week in @naturecomms.bsky.social! We find that both vaccines and infection-acquired immunity reduce transmission to close contacts.

Our short course in infectious disease epidemiology and control is now open for applications! I am proud to be the director of this popular hands-on course which will teach you the basics of epidemic modelling in just two weeks! Apply here and spread the word! www.infectiousdiseasemodels.org

Screenshot of IDDjobs.org showing the header description.

Looking for a position - postdoc, PhD, faculty - in infectious disease dynamics (broadly defined)?
Follow @iddjobs.bsky.social and check IDDjobs.org

This is a community site started in 2017 for open positions in our wide and varied field. Add your jobs, look for jobs, share opportunities!

This is a very interesting talk by @scarpino.bsky.social continuing the exploration of the predictability of an influenza season using fundamental and practical methods
www.youtube.com/live/8RslYIn...

The deadline for the Epidemics special issue on Artificial Intelligence for Infectious Disease Dynamics has been extended to 30 April 2025, so there is still time to submit your paper 📝
Feel free to contact me or another guest editor for more information 😊

www.sciencedirect.com/journal/epid...

Struck today looking at the {EpiNow2} contributors page how much work it takes to maintain a package over the long term.

Below link is filtered to just the maintenance period in which there has been no "output" (in the traditional academic sense).

github.com/epiforecasts...

🚨JOB 🚨Would a title "Professor of Life History Evolution" suit you? If yes... Become a colleague of us here in Mainz! I am happy to provide more information if this intrigues you.
cms.zdv.uni-mainz.de/karriere/wp-...

So good to see this work by Pantea, Mark and Jeremy out in the world. 👏

Modeling dynamic disease-behavior feedbacks for improved epidemic prediction and response Human behavior significantly influences infectious disease transmission, yet traditional models often overlook this factor, limiting predictions of disease and the associated socioeconomic impacts. We...

Our framework for combining standard epi models with an economic dynamic decision model is up on medRxiv! super flexible and excited to see where this project goes next www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1...

Australia’s COVID inquiry shows why a permanent ‘centre for disease control’ is more urgent than ever After initial success, Australia’s pandemic response suffered due to a lack of strong, independent, central co-ordination. We mustn’t make the same mistake twice. Here’s how a CDC can help.

Good overview of Australia's covid inquiry findings

Australia’s COVID inquiry shows why a permanent ‘centre for disease control’ is more urgent than ever
theconversation.com/australias-c...

Little write up just published on the process and impacts of the Scenario Modeling Hub, a huge effort it's an honour to be a part of 🎉.

The US COVID-19 and Influenza Scenario Modeling Hubs: delivering long-term projections to guide policy doi.org/10.1016/j.ep...

Needing to move is a huge barrier to broadening representation in the sciences Science will be more inclusive and equitable when we stop expecting people to uproot their lives every few years

Imagine our profession was built so that you could advance your career without moving all the time. Isn't this a huge piece of the equity and access problem? Yes, it is.

Evaluation of the US COVID-19 Scenario Modeling Hub for informing pandemic response under uncertaint... The US COVID-19 Scenario Modeling Hub produced medium to long term projections based on different epidemic scenarios. In this study, the authors evaluate 14 rounds of projections by comparing them to ...

Excited our work evaluating covid19scenariomodelinghub.org is out in Nature Communications www.nature.com/articles/s41... , with an accompanying piece here theconversation.com/pooling-mult.... Kudos to the brilliant @emilyhowerton.bsky.social for leading this work, and the many other contributors.