Dr. Casey Middleton
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caseymiddleton.bsky.social
Dr. Casey Middleton
@caseymiddleton.bsky.social
94 followers 75 following 26 posts
Infectious disease modeling Views are my own
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Reposted by Dr. Casey Middleton
Every fall, for the last 13 years, I have worked with CDC and WHO colleagues on a report in MMWR to update the estimates of the global burden of measles disease and mortality. This year we were already planning to publish in WER because of restrictions on communication between WHO and CDC.
Reposted by Dr. Casey Middleton
1/ Hey, do you need some #goodnews? I know I do. Between the noise and the chaos, it helps to stop and remember what progress actually looks like.

Here are four public health wins to give you some good news for the week 👇
FWIW: I know there are bigger problems to solve in this world right now, but this one just seems so attainable!
Why, in this incredible world of technological advancements, are published inline equations still blurry? 😵‍💫
#Vaccines save babies! And they do it so well when we allocate resources to achieve high vaccination rates instead of meh vaccination rates 💉
A story about how complicated something as simple as vaccination is, everywhere. In Fall of 2024, I was part of a team that argued to the WHO to recommend that rubella vaccination be added to the national schedule for all countries. That recommendation was approved, and we were elated. 1/
Reposted by Dr. Casey Middleton
1/ Today and tomorrow, #ACIP —the external body that sets vaccine policy—is holding a special session. One item on the agenda is the highly anticipated vote for the Covid vaccine. We’re expecting VAERS data to be misused to suggest 25 pediatric deaths were caused by the vaccine. Here are the facts👇
In general, yes! With two important caveats:
1. Tests may have different binding affinities for different variants, making them less sensitive for some
2. When you’re detectable by RDT depends on things like symptom timing and viral growth rate, which may also be different for different variants
I wish I had done a PCR in hindsight. I just moved cities and jobs/insurance, so the idea of finding a new doc + figuring out my insurance while sick just felt daunting and potentially expensive 😅 But now I wish I tried!!
Agreed! However, in America that still costs quite a lot of $$ depending on health insurance.
I am pretty sure I had COVID-19 earlier this month, but I tested negative (by RDT) on days 1 & 3 of infection.

How do you satisfy your academic curiosities about what pathogen has infected you without spending tons of $$ on diagnostic tests?
Reports of falling fertility rates intuitively lead to speculation of reduced fertility. However, falling fertility rates could also be due to changes in reproductive behaviors leading to lower birth rates.

Is it too late to find a new term to describe women’s birth rates?
Fertility = the ability to conceive children or young.

Fertility rate = the average number of children born to a woman over her lifetime.

Fertility is purely biological, while fertility rate depends on a combination of biological fertility and reproductive behaviors.
I see news outlets reporting on falling ‘fertility rates,’ and I find this terminology non-intuitive… and potentially problematic.

Falling fertility rates tell us about reductions in women’s birth rates, not reductions in women’s fertility!

Let me explain:
Reason #2,946 to keep funding science:
color mix undoification 🤯
Colored droplets in corn syrup seemingly blended together can be returned to their original state by reversing the direction of mixing, a form of laminar flow called "Stokes flow".

Credit: UNM Physics & Astronomy
Reposted by Dr. Casey Middleton
Sang Woo (Daniel) Park and I are excited to share a new preprint, "Susceptible host dynamics explain pathogen resilience to perturbations" [1/8]

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
!!!! Wow. The word tipping does not cross my mind to describe that hand gesture. Thank you for this.
I don’t see enough people talking about how hard it is to search for this emoji 💁‍♀️

WHAT AM I SUPPOSED TO SEARCH FOR PLEASE TELL ME
Reposted by Dr. Casey Middleton
🧵1/N New study published in @jama.com on re-emergence of vaccine-eliminated infectious diseases under declining vaccination in the US. We model long-term risk and conditions for return to endemicity for measles, rubella, polio, & diphtheria. Collab w/ @Mathewkiang.com jamanetwork.com/journals/jam...
Reposted by Dr. Casey Middleton
Interesting new pre-print on test-negative designs and implications for estimating correlates of protection: www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1...
Reposted by Dr. Casey Middleton
A glimmer of good news amidst the chaos! On Monday, I successfully defended my PhD focused on infectious disease modeling. And yes, my thesis title is an acronym for my last name.

With gratitude to the incredible friends and mentors who got me here…
Dr. Casey Middleton, reporting for duty 🫡🦠
The cycle of dissertation writing:

1. Don’t sleep well

2. Too busy for nap

3. Drink afternoon coffee

🔁 Repeat
Dad from Kentucky: “We finally started feeding our baby raw milk and he has grown like crazy!”

Me: “Oh. Aren’t you worried about bird flu?”

KY Dad: “Well I know the farmer and I’ve met his cows.”

Me: “….”

Someone hire this man with his 🪄 diagnostic capabilities. He can detect H5N1 just by sight!