Eric Lofgren
Computational Epidemiologist and Associate Prof at WSU. Maker of artisinal, small-batch simulation models for the discerning infectious disease consumer. WoW and zombie epidemiology. Adopter of dogs. Not taking this terribly seriously. He/him.
- Reposted by Eric LofgrenHonestly this video is horrifying *before* you think about how these creators have the gall to spout this nonsense and then claim to have a Ghibli aesthetic. But after you realize that, it’s downright repulsive.
- Reposted by Eric Lofgren“Oh you should be online to try to provide value to your political side” fuck that that’s nerd shit you should be online because you’re unwell and need to tell people about weird animals you saw
- 2025 continues to be the worst fucking year. Everyone hug your pets and give them an extra treat for me please.
- DARPA: “We designed a decentralized communications platform resistant to attacks at a single point of failure.” Amazon: “Hold my triple hop microbrew IPA.”
- Microsoft apparently got jealous of all the press Amazon was getting.
- Reposted by Eric LofgrenAs a colleague mentioned yesterday, Gamergate is one of the five most significant developments in US politics since the Cold War
- Reposted by Eric LofgrenPlease stop making rural hospitals political pawns. Treating rural hospitals as political currency sends a message that rural communities do not matter, hardens already large divides, and punishes populations that are far more diverse than most on social media would like to acknowledge.
- Reposted by Eric LofgrenThe veterinary field gives us a preview of how this will play out— with no major federal funding for companion animal medicine, potential return on investment dictates what is or is not researched and developed. It’s one of the reasons we have far fewer drugs licensed for cats than dogs.
- Reposted by Eric Lofgrenthis is, hands down, the best video I've seen on men's influencer content and it's not close either
- Reposted by Eric LofgrenCovid has killed ~5-6x the number of people this year as those who died in 9-11. Both are heartbreaking, ❤️🩹 but only one is grieved publicly. The other is barely noticed & declared over
- Reposted by Eric LofgrenThis formulation is popular: contrasting SCOTUS' intolerance of race as an admissions factor with SCOTUS' tolerance of race as a detention factor. There are, in fact, doctrinal, historical, and logical distinctions between the positions, that one could use to dismiss this comparison. But... /1
- Reposted by Eric LofgrenWe built a calculator that doesn't work, but don't worry, it's also a plagiarism machine that will tell you to kill yourself. It runs on the world's oceans and costs 10 trillion dollars.
- Reposted by Eric Lofgren🧵There's a lot of talk today to the effect that "public health shouldn't be political," & with respect: The notion that government has a responsibility to guide & support the health of every last resident, regardless of background, status, & to some extent even citizenship, is PROFOUNDLY political.
- Reposted by Eric LofgrenI have a message to the staff at CDC who have dedicated their careers to protecting Americans from health threats of all kinds: Thank you. Your courage and dedication have improved or saved the lives of people who may not even know it. We’re with you.
- Reposted by Eric LofgrenYou've seen how much damage RFK has done at HHS. RFK is a disorganized, age-addled maniac, and most of his job is PR stunts. I cannot begin to tell you how much damage a Thiel-verse technocrat like O'Neill will do in CDC. Starting with: he will persecute women you know and love for their abortions.
- Reposted by Eric LofgrenJust call Congress. I am asking you to do that for the women in your life, if not for public health. You don't even need to find a script or write down what you're going to say before you call. Hell, you don't even need to shave your nasty little beard before you take a video and post it on Bluesky.
- Reposted by Eric Lofgrenresigned leaders all speaking live now
- Work on the COVID-19 outbreak in Whitman Co, WA with Erin Clancey & @mietchen.bsky.social is published! TLDR: Modeling supports the idea that our outbreak was driven by import cases and that the university and surrounding area had little cross transmission. #episky journals.lww.com/epidem/fullt...
- Reposted by Eric Lofgrenputting aside the trans rights issues specifically (lol), I think part of what has me so frustrated with the Newsom thing is that Pritzker, Walz, and Zohran are putting on clinics for a popular, progressive politics and we’re wasting time talking about this used car salesman ass goblin.
- Reposted by Eric LofgrenWhen the dust settles, and if universities have meaningfully survived, it will be worth asking how institutions usually so resistant to thoroughgoing change chose to leap with both feet into an untested technology they didn't understand and didn't know how to use.
- Reposted by Eric LofgrenAs a science professor at a STEM-only university, I think this is a very bad idea.
- Reposted by Eric LofgrenScience friends, life is difficult now, but please still try to peer review papers if you can. I'm the editor handling a paper that just had it's 43rd person decline to review. We may have to reject it because no one is willing to review it, which sucks for the authors.
- This is the energy I’m bringing to my talks from now on.
- Reposted by Eric Lofgren[This post could not be retrieved]
- Registering for #idweek & was going to agree to serve as a mentor for their program - I've enjoyed that in the past. Only to discover that earlier career Eric wouldn't have been eligible. Nuts to that. It's disappointing that that conference is still so ruthlessly alienating to non-physicians.
- Reposted by Eric LofgrenThe NIH was healthiest when pay lines were in the 20th percentile range. We are headed into an environment where pay lines are in the 5% range. In my entire career, I’ve only had 3 grants that scored better than 5%. And my lab is considered a successful one. This is going to destroy science.
- Reposted by Eric Lofgrenfeels like one of the main divides in how people view ai is the reaction to its ingratiating servile tone. when ai is like "ouhhhh i'm so sorry i got that wrong sir, let my try again, you were right my liege" tech guys are like "i like this" instead of "what the fuck is wrong with you"
- Reposted by Eric Lofgren
Will preach about respecting Pigeons till the day I die. Pigeons are our own pocket sized city dinosaurs!!! We domesticated them to love us and then we abandoned and villainized them. Our little feathered friends deserve kindness. - Along with about a thousand other reforms...ban both camo and black fatigues for law enforcement agencies. Nothing you should be doing should be parsed as "tactical" or "cool". Visible, approachable, and identifiable. Your design cues should not be "It's giving military occupation".
- There's a recurring theme at every public health meeting I've been to recently about how we didn't communicate well enough, and surely if we had just explained things better to certain groups... It is always taken as a given that they *are* persuadable. [Citation Needed]
- Reposted by Eric LofgrenThen he can damn well afford to pay authors and other creatives to license the copyright material which Meta has stolen.
- Reposted by Eric LofgrenThere is not a single person in the Democratic Party who is treating the death of USAID with the gravity it deserves. There’s no political issue more important than the death of 14 million people, but they’re just delivering boilerplate condemnations and nothing more.
- Reposted by Eric LofgrenUSAID is shutting its doors today--marking the end of democracy, diplomacy, and decency all in one fell swoop.
- Reposted by Eric LofgrenInfectious Disease Modelling starter pack update! Many more modellers have joined Bluesky recently so this update is overdue. Pls keep on sending suggestions! (bio should contain experience relevant for this pack) IDModelling pack 1: go.bsky.app/86Ao1a5 IDModelling pack 2 : go.bsky.app/2oBB7KXat://did:plc:d6bgsz245lav4b6lqi6575nb/app.bsky.graph.starterpack/3lamf2le2xs2u
- Reposted by Eric LofgrenYou hear this a lot on the left but it isn't true. USAID did not "fail to tell its story to Americans," the right targeted the agency with lies and misinformation. Ultimately this narrative turns conservative attacks into even more calls for the left to reform. www.nytimes.com/2025/06/29/o...
- Reposted by Eric LofgrenPlease stop assuming that too many em dashes means AI written. Some of us are producing grammatically incoherent work the honest way!
- Reposted by Eric Lofgrenreal important point, and also as @dsquareddigest.bsky.social was saying, if that agentic idea actually works then the entire internet will be crawling with scam AIs trying to trick your agent
- Reposted by Eric LofgrenMost viewed this week from JAMA Network Open: Living within close proximity to golf courses and in water service areas with golf courses was associated with a higher risk of developing Parkinson's disease. ja.ma/44k5zQ2
- Reposted by Eric LofgrenIt is impossible for me to stress to you, as one of the authors of the widest-cited paper projecting Aedes aegypti-borne virus risk under climate change, the degree to which we do not need to be worrying about yellow fever epidemics in the United States right now compared to other real things
- The best way to tell that DOGE didn't know what it was doing is that, in the process of killing American science in pursuit of finding "Inefficiencies", we still somehow ended up with different Biosketch and Current/Pending/Other support forms.
- Reposted by Eric LofgrenVaccinating vampire bats against rabies, sure, but also: Vampire bats lick each other to get clean, like cats!
- www.404media.co/ai-scraping-... They can't even be unobtrusive about their theft.
- Instead of LLMs to steal people's jobs, could we maybe work on developing software with sophisticated AI to tell it I probably don't want to expand a window to 35 inches across?
- Reposted by Eric Lofgren[This post could not be retrieved]
- Reposted by Eric LofgrenI keep thinking about how Nature ran a story saying scientists don't have support to study viruses in wildlife trade *about a newly funded $23m project*, meanwhile the NSF program that funded basic disease ecology in the U.S. for 20+ years has been shut down and no one has even reported it
- Reposted by Eric Lofgren"Good teaching requires some intellectual empathy. Considering who your audience is and what they require" - @epidbydesign.bsky.social #SER2025
- Reposted by Eric LofgrenJust standing here, asking reviewers for fellowships to double check when an assistant professor started their lab and ask, 'well what might have happened early on in that process that could have slowed down publications?'
- Reposted by Eric LofgrenCongratulations to the winners of the poster prize on the final day! #SER2025
- Wondering how to close out your #SER2025 experience? Why not come hear about augmenting your research with simulated and synthetic data methods?
- Reposted by Eric Lofgren#EpiSky remember Shiny Epi People? Wasn’t it a fun way to learn about the interests and slightly uninhibited thoughts of the best in the field? Glad I could meet @lisabodnar.bsky.social at #SER2025 and tell her that 😹
- The #SER2025 “Assumption Dysfunction” symposium meme game is strong
- Reposted by Eric LofgrenI love @epidbydesign.bsky.social 's peer review policy for questions @ this morning's #SER2025 session! 🤩 All conferences should do this! @societyforepi.bsky.social
- Reposted by Eric LofgrenThe whole trans girls in sports discussion is absolutely being used to propagandize people into being transphobic bellends. In K-12, the number of trans girls in sports is five. In college the number is fewer than ten, according to the NCAA President. You're being manipulated. Please stop.
- What amuses me is that Gavin Newsome could have probably ridden this shit all the way to the White House if he’d kept his yap close about trans girls in sports. Now no matter what he does in response to this Trump manufactured crisis, all I’ll ever think is “you raised a kid who likes Charlie Kirk.”
- Reposted by Eric LofgrenThe causal interpretation of race as a variable in observational studies - seminal work by @whitneyepi.bsky.social #SER2025
- Reposted by Eric LofgrenTIL that Diego Luna was a Zapatista??? BRO
- Reposted by Eric Lofgren10:15am symposia includes the Epi Eras Tour! Grand Ballroom, 2nd floor I have no involvement in this, just fangirling #SER2025
- Reposted by Eric LofgrenCathleen O'Grady coming in with an incendiary title. Featuring @jbakcoleman.bsky.social @stairwaytokevin.bsky.social and myself among others. What we do next still matters even tho we cannot do anything to change the government's course or undo their actions. We can always course-correct ourselves.
- Reposted by Eric LofgrenResearch from 2022 that every Democrat apologist should chew on: “We do not find any evidence that accommodative strategies reduce radical right support. If anything, our results suggest that they lead to more voters defecting to the radical right.“ www.cambridge.org/core/journal...
- I am (sadly) once again reminded that there are people in the administration, as well as congress, who treat "virology" and "gain of function studies" as synonyms.
- Reposted by Eric LofgrenHave you wondered what an artificial neural network really does (and how it might just be regression all the way down)? Well I have a new AJE Classroom paper on the basics of how neural networks work academic.oup.com/aje/article/...
- Reposted by Eric LofgrenStar Wars has always been obsessed with mentor-mentee relationships ("do or do not," "trust the force," etc). But Andor is specifically about different ways of running a lab, and how they all go wrong.
- Reposted by Eric LofgrenEven ChatGPT o.3 hallucinates papers when asked to do this. Submitting a narrative CV that includes papers that you didn't write and don't exist strikes me as a serious, actionable instance of academic misconduct. TERRIBLE ADVICE from Andrew's office of research services.
- Reposted by Eric LofgrenWe are through the looking glass now. Do read this
- Reposted by Eric LofgrenHarvey Milk served his country honorably — first in uniform, then in public office. Taking his name off this Navy ship sends a clear message, and it’s one of disrespect and cruelty.
