Melody Schreiber
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melodyschreiber.com
Melody Schreiber
@melodyschreiber.com
Health contributor/reporter at Guardian US, contributing editor at the New Republic, freelance elsewhere. Arctic obsessive and book enthusiast.

Email: [email protected]
Signal: melodyschreiber.06
Newsletter: notadoctor.news
Pinned
NEW: The entire US childhood vaccine schedule is now open for scrutiny. My latest:
www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...
Experts fear for US childhood vaccine schedule after hepatitis B guideline change
Pediatricians say panel’s decision will create confusion and access issues, and condemn ‘parody of public health’
www.theguardian.com
Are you SERIOUS
"At Walmart, recalled products were found in stores across 21 states.

In a letter to Target, the health regulator said officials in Arkansas found the company offering a $2 discount on the recalled formula from November 16 to November 22. Target had the formula in stores across 20 states."
US FDA sends warning letters to Walmart, Target for selling recalled baby formula
The FDA said four major retailers continued to sell baby formula linked to a nationwide outbreak of bacterial illness in infants even after the products were recalled.
www.reuters.com
December 16, 2025 at 12:56 AM
This is so dangerous for people who use drugs
"Trump declares fentanyl a weapon of mass destruction. The designation could have sweeping impacts on U.S. policy toward China as well as the Trump administration’s military buildup in the Western Hemisphere." www.politico.com/news/2025/12...
Trump declares fentanyl a weapon of mass destruction
The designation could have sweeping impacts on U.S. policy toward China as well as the Trump administration’s military buildup in the Western Hemisphere.
www.politico.com
December 16, 2025 at 12:55 AM
Reposted by Melody Schreiber
This week had more new measles cases than sales of “American Canto”.

Hope the media is proud.
December 13, 2025 at 4:33 PM
Reposted by Melody Schreiber
The HHS roundtable on Lyme disease has just kicked off.

RFK jr. opened the discussion by stating Lyme disease has greatly affected his own family, citing his and his sons' experience with the disease. "We have to make it safe for children to go back into the woods.”

www.youtube.com/watch?v=U3il...
Lyme Disease Roundtable
YouTube video by U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
www.youtube.com
December 15, 2025 at 7:14 PM
Great story by @lizszabo.bsky.social -- especially the point that immigration could become a new anti-vaccine talking point.
Racially charged language on mothers, babies taints vaccine advisory meeting
by @LizSzabo

Throughout the 2-day meeting, speakers and ACIP members singled out immigrants and people from Asia as potential sources of hepatitis B infection

www.cidrap.umn.edu/c...
December 15, 2025 at 7:21 PM
Reposted by Melody Schreiber
“It's terrifying for government appointees to describe immigrants this way,” said Dr. Flor Munoz about the recent ACIP meeting, in which committee members repeatedly tied hepatitis B to immigrants.
Racially charged language on mothers, babies taints vaccine advisory meeting
by @LizSzabo

Throughout the 2-day meeting, speakers and ACIP members singled out immigrants and people from Asia as potential sources of hepatitis B infection

www.cidrap.umn.edu/c...
December 15, 2025 at 6:39 PM
Reposted by Melody Schreiber
Fired, suspended, punished, disciplined, and this is not at all a complete list—Kirk fans identified thousands of people who expressed their views in an insufficiently respectful way and urged their employers to take action. We'll probably never know the true number. www.reuters.com/investigatio...
The Charlie Kirk purge: How 600 Americans were punished in a pro-Trump crackdown
Two months after Charlie Kirk’s assassination, a government-backed campaign has led to firings, suspensions, investigations and other action against more than 600 people. Republican officials have end...
www.reuters.com
December 15, 2025 at 3:10 PM
Reposted by Melody Schreiber
Researchers hoped they had finally found a way to get gene therapies past the blood-brain barrier. Then the first patient died. www.statnews.com/2025/12/15/g...
Child’s sudden death unnerves a promising area of gene therapy research
Researchers hoped they had finally found a way to get gene therapies past the blood-brain barrier. Then the first patient died.
www.statnews.com
December 15, 2025 at 3:31 PM
True of all things!
There are SO MANY other ways to effectively fight the the fucking right than screaming into the social media void and making yourself feel as awful as these dickheads actually are. They want to exhaust you here so you feel helpless everywhere else. Fuck them. Conserve your joy, online and off.
December 15, 2025 at 6:26 PM
Reposted by Melody Schreiber
There are SO MANY other ways to effectively fight the the fucking right than screaming into the social media void and making yourself feel as awful as these dickheads actually are. They want to exhaust you here so you feel helpless everywhere else. Fuck them. Conserve your joy, online and off.
December 15, 2025 at 5:56 PM
Reposted by Melody Schreiber
Updated 2024-25 COVID #vaccine cut emergency visits among kids, study suggests

The findings draw on data from more than 98,000 pediatric cases.

www.cidrap.umn.edu/c...
December 12, 2025 at 9:30 PM
Reposted by Melody Schreiber
“Employees with driver’s license offices across the state, from El Paso to Paris to Plano, reported the names and license numbers of these people to a special agency email account.“
Texas is making a list of transgender Texans. It’s using the DMV to help.
A year after the state blocked transgender Texans from updating their state IDs, it has collected information on more than 100 people who have tried. Officials won’t say what they’re using the list fo...
www.kut.org
December 15, 2025 at 6:11 PM
Reposted by Melody Schreiber
Ahmed al Ahmed, the man who tackled one of the Bondi killers, became an Australian citizen 3 years ago.

His deed was "his way of conveying his gratitude for staying in Australia, for being granted citizenship."

He took 5 bullets, and fears he'll lose his left arm.

www.smh.com.au/national/nsw...
December 15, 2025 at 4:34 PM
Reposted by Melody Schreiber
Merriam-Webster’s human editors have chosen ‘slop’ as the 2025 Word of the Year.
December 15, 2025 at 2:07 PM
Reposted by Melody Schreiber
This is fucking grim. Somebody invented a white guy, an "IT professional" named Edward Crabtree, who stopped the Bondi shooting and spread it all over the internet, which was picked up by AI agents and slop aggregation sites.

The real hero is a fruit stand owner named Ahmed el Ahmed.
December 14, 2025 at 8:02 PM
Reposted by Melody Schreiber
Holiday gathering reminder 🎁

If your guests test w/rapids twice before the event, 48 hours apart, it’ll catch 63% of Covid cases even if they have no symptoms. Testing 3x improves that to 79%!

This is how we curb the annual January surge that gave me Long Covid—thanks for protecting yr community 🤍
Study Examines Performance of Serial COVID Testing - News Center
Testing performance of rapid antigen tests for SARS-CoV-2 improved for both asymptomatic and symptomatic patients after testing multiple times in 48-hour intervals, according to findings published in ...
news.feinberg.northwestern.edu
December 14, 2025 at 10:57 PM
Reposted by Melody Schreiber
New: Pregnant immigrant women are showing up to deliver their babies w/ surveillance smart watches on their wrists as part of an ICE monitoring program. They’re too afraid of being detained to have the watch cut off even when it’s medically necessary. www.theguardian.com/technology/2...
ICE is tracking pregnant women all the way to the delivery room: ‘She was so afraid they would take her baby’
Pregnant immigrants in ICE monitoring programs are avoiding care, fearing detention during labour and delivery
www.theguardian.com
December 10, 2025 at 1:36 PM
Reposted by Melody Schreiber
🚨The person of interest in the shooting at Brown University is Benjamin Erickson, a 24-year-old originally from Wisconsin.

My Signal is 202-412-9091 if you know more about him or what happened in Providence.

News, with @jeremyrroebuck.bsky.social

www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2025/...
Live updates: Officials identify person of interest as 24-year-old from Wisconsin
Police have a person of interest in custody, Providence Mayor Brett Smiley said, after a gunman killed two and injured nine others at Brown University.
www.washingtonpost.com
December 14, 2025 at 8:58 PM
One thing I haven't figured out is why so many people in the alternative wellness space are obsessed with supplement shots and IVs
I can literally think of nothing worse than every word used to describe this new private members club (it’s not even the one you think)
www.ft.com/content/6aad...
December 14, 2025 at 10:07 PM
This is superb, sobering journalism www.nytimes.com/2025/12/14/m...
They Answered an Ad for Surrogates, and Found Themselves in a Nightmare
www.nytimes.com
December 14, 2025 at 8:33 PM
what if you have two uteruses
December 14, 2025 at 7:13 PM
Imagine if we all joined forces and negotiated prices as one!
Rand Paul on his healthcare plan: "What if you could join Costco? Costco has 44m members and if one person negotiated for all 44 and they bought a group plan like Toyota or General Motors does, they would be the largest collective entity in the country. They would drive prices down by sheer might."
December 14, 2025 at 6:40 PM
Reposted by Melody Schreiber
This storm in Gaza has wrought an incredible amount of destruction upon people already desperately clinging to the bare essentials of life.
🚨A plea to save my family from death
We are in Gaza. Our tent was destroyed by the rain, and we are still without a tent😭
Our hope is to raise just $100 to buy a tent to live in and protect us from the rain.
Pls Help⬇️
chuffed.org/project/1580...

@mommunism.bsky.social
@alexanderchee.bsky.social
December 14, 2025 at 6:28 PM
I mean... Of course it can be airborne. The question is, how big an infectious threat is that?
📽️ WATCH: After a bird flu outbreak tore through Midwestern barns, which led to 18 million hens being killed and a spike in egg prices, the Department of Agriculture didn’t investigate whether the virus was airborne.

But ProPublica did.

@natlash.bsky.social breaks it down: propub.li/4iVcYfD
December 14, 2025 at 3:54 AM
Reposted by Melody Schreiber
And yet in RFK Jr’s recent MAHA report, published by the White House, called “Make Our Children Healthy Again,” there was not a single mention of guns

Not one mention of the top cause of child death in America

It’s almost as if they don’t actually want to do anything to improve children‘s lives
December 14, 2025 at 3:06 AM