James Sessford
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sessford.bsky.social
James Sessford
@sessford.bsky.social
98 followers 150 following 15 posts
Long covid research
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Reposted by James Sessford
mark-ungrin.bsky.social
We'll succeed only if we go after the structural failures that create misinformation. Playing whack-a-mole with symptoms as an excuse for the eternal empire-building of institutions that are part of the problem (Wakefield was protected for over a decade 🤨) will just keep making things worse.
mark-ungrin.bsky.social Mark Ungrin @mark-ungrin.bsky.social · Dec 24
Policy on health is clearly broken - politicized, out of touch, reactive and slow. My recent keynote at the Canadian Biosafety Symposium took a big-picture look at how and why that's happening, and how we can turn things around.

Here's a general-audience version, recorded at the Deep River library.
Inquiring Minds 03: Mark Ungrin - Science, Pseudoscience and Public Policy
YouTube video by Deep River Public Library
www.youtube.com
February 13, 2026 at 5:42 PM
Reposted by James Sessford
mark-ungrin.bsky.social
🧵(1/2): Essential new paper: "Toxic experts in longevity business: A multilevel relational framing of emergence"

Draws on multiple examples, including the way medical pseudoexperts botched the pandemic.

journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

#medsky #scisky #standupforscience #longCOVID #cdnpoli
Third, in the case of COVID-19, Greenhalgh et al. (2021) demonstrate that the exclusion and dismissal of heterodox scientists in the UK led to flawed health policies that prioritized randomized clinical trials over evidence of airborne transmission from physicists and engineers. This highlights how orthodox experts can become toxic when they reject interdisciplinarity due to hubris and overconfidence (Maclean et al., 2021).
February 11, 2026 at 12:19 PM
Reposted by James Sessford
njbbari3.bsky.social
Waiting rooms aren’t riskier than any other crowded environment…?

I can’t stop laughing.

Of course they are.

You have two groups of people in the waiting room.

montrealgazette.com/news/local-n...
Worried about catching a bug in a hospital waiting room? Here's what infectious disease experts say
You can lower the risk, but you can't eliminate it. That being said, waiting rooms aren't necessarily riskier than other packed environments.
montrealgazette.com
February 10, 2026 at 6:44 PM
Reposted by James Sessford
mark-ungrin.bsky.social
If it doesn't get inside you, it can't make you sick!

The back story on the way physical interventions to block virus transmission have been hacked as a side effect of power struggles in the information space is something that could have come out of one of your books, too.

🤯
mark-ungrin.bsky.social Mark Ungrin @mark-ungrin.bsky.social · Dec 24
Policy on health is clearly broken - politicized, out of touch, reactive and slow. My recent keynote at the Canadian Biosafety Symposium took a big-picture look at how and why that's happening, and how we can turn things around.

Here's a general-audience version, recorded at the Deep River library.
Inquiring Minds 03: Mark Ungrin - Science, Pseudoscience and Public Policy
YouTube video by Deep River Public Library
www.youtube.com
February 7, 2026 at 2:36 PM
Reposted by James Sessford
trishgreenhalgh.bsky.social
Our new paper:

Synthesis challenges in complex evidence: A critical analysis of systematic reviews of face mask efficacy

#episky #healthpolicy #medsky

www.cambridge.org/core/journal...
Synthesis challenges in complex evidence: A critical analysis of systematic reviews of face mask efficacy | Research Synthesis Methods | Cambridge Core
Synthesis challenges in complex evidence: A critical analysis of systematic reviews of face mask efficacy
www.cambridge.org
February 6, 2026 at 10:25 AM
Reposted by James Sessford
ttr0001.bsky.social
... Medicine as a business model deals with this by denying there is a problem :-(.

The roll of IPC would seem not to be to prevent infections in HC settings, but to prevent the HC setting being held responsible for those infections :-(.
February 1, 2026 at 2:10 PM
Reposted by James Sessford
mark-ungrin.bsky.social
The pending handover of Canadian public health guidance to GRADE pseudoscience, and possible elevation of Dr Henry to federal CMOH, highlight the fact that the best way to cover up a bunch of unnecessary deaths is to grab control of the institutions responsible for investigating and reporting them.
mark-ungrin.bsky.social Mark Ungrin @mark-ungrin.bsky.social · 26d
Country club insiders investigating their friends behind closed doors reflects our well-established tradition of burying major medical scandals.

Like the Seven Oaks whitewash, that was so bad Justice Campbell added an extra section to the report of the SARS Commission while he was dying of cancer.
Seven Oaks also showed the bad side of Ontario’s response to SARS systemic problems that remain unfixed; the problems at the provincial laboratory; the two solitudes between infection control experts and worker safety experts; the exclusion of the Ministry of Labour from the centre of the investigation and the subsequent report; the occupation by the Ministry of Health of worker safety territory, where one would expect greater presence and collegial involvement by the Ministry of Labour; the failure to ensure effective consultation with safety officials from health worker unions; and the strong echo of the turf wars between the health system and the worker safety system that so bedevilled SARS. Seven Oaks demonstrated that many worker safety lessons of SARS have not been learned. The Ministry of Labour must be independent in setting workplace standards and in enforcing them. It must be an integral member of the response to any infectious disease outbreak. It must be directly involved in any post-event review of any infectious disease outbreak in which workers have gotten sick. Any post-event review of an infectious disease outbreak in which workers have gotten sick must include worker safety experts. The Seven Oaks outbreak also demonstrates the continuing reluctance of the health system to fully accept the importance of the precautionary principle in worker safety. Until this precautionary principle is fully recognized, mandated and enforced in our health care system, nurses and doctors and other health workers will continue to be at risk from new infections like SARS. Seven Oaks also showed the bad side of Ontario’s response to SARS systemic problems that remain unfixed; the problems at the provincial laboratory; the two solitudes between infection control experts and worker safety experts; the exclusion of the Ministry of Labour from the centre of the investigation and the subsequent report; the occupation by the Ministry of Health of worker safety territory, … Members of the Expert Panel Bonnie Henry MD MPH FRCP(C) Physician Epidemiologist, BC Centre for Disease Control Assistant Professor, Department of Health Care and Epidemiology, Faculty of Medicine, University of British Columbia James G. Young MD O-Ont. Special Advisor to the Deputy Minister, Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness Canada Former Chief Coroner of Ontario David M.C. Walker MD FRCPC Dean, Faculty of Health Sciences Director, School of Medicine, Queen’s University Chair, Expert Panel on SARS and Infectious Disease Control SARS Commission Final Report: Volume Three Spring of Fear Did Politics Intrude? was outraged and fighting together, and then when they got the travel advisory turned back, everybody celebrated about that and once everybody were getting back to normal and everybody was that is part of why the lack of leadership. There should have been somebody who said... nobody questioned it. [Dr.] Jim Young went off to China to talk about our successes and how we controlled it. [Dr.] Bonnie [Henry] went with him and [Dr.] Tony [Mazzulli] went with him and nobody said, "how do you know it is over?" including myself. None of us said "well, just because," and it is such a simple question to ask and we blew it. It is just amazing everybody blew it.
January 25, 2026 at 1:48 PM
Reposted by James Sessford
mark-ungrin.bsky.social
Country club insiders investigating their friends behind closed doors reflects our well-established tradition of burying major medical scandals.

Like the Seven Oaks whitewash, that was so bad Justice Campbell added an extra section to the report of the SARS Commission while he was dying of cancer.
Seven Oaks also showed the bad side of Ontario’s response to SARS systemic problems that remain unfixed; the problems at the provincial laboratory; the two solitudes between infection control experts and worker safety experts; the exclusion of the Ministry of Labour from the centre of the investigation and the subsequent report; the occupation by the Ministry of Health of worker safety territory, where one would expect greater presence and collegial involvement by the Ministry of Labour; the failure to ensure effective consultation with safety officials from health worker unions; and the strong echo of the turf wars between the health system and the worker safety system that so bedevilled SARS. Seven Oaks demonstrated that many worker safety lessons of SARS have not been learned. The Ministry of Labour must be independent in setting workplace standards and in enforcing them. It must be an integral member of the response to any infectious disease outbreak. It must be directly involved in any post-event review of any infectious disease outbreak in which workers have gotten sick. Any post-event review of an infectious disease outbreak in which workers have gotten sick must include worker safety experts. The Seven Oaks outbreak also demonstrates the continuing reluctance of the health system to fully accept the importance of the precautionary principle in worker safety. Until this precautionary principle is fully recognized, mandated and enforced in our health care system, nurses and doctors and other health workers will continue to be at risk from new infections like SARS. Seven Oaks also showed the bad side of Ontario’s response to SARS systemic problems that remain unfixed; the problems at the provincial laboratory; the two solitudes between infection control experts and worker safety experts; the exclusion of the Ministry of Labour from the centre of the investigation and the subsequent report; the occupation by the Ministry of Health of worker safety territory, … Members of the Expert Panel Bonnie Henry MD MPH FRCP(C) Physician Epidemiologist, BC Centre for Disease Control Assistant Professor, Department of Health Care and Epidemiology, Faculty of Medicine, University of British Columbia James G. Young MD O-Ont. Special Advisor to the Deputy Minister, Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness Canada Former Chief Coroner of Ontario David M.C. Walker MD FRCPC Dean, Faculty of Health Sciences Director, School of Medicine, Queen’s University Chair, Expert Panel on SARS and Infectious Disease Control SARS Commission Final Report: Volume Three Spring of Fear Did Politics Intrude? was outraged and fighting together, and then when they got the travel advisory turned back, everybody celebrated about that and once everybody were getting back to normal and everybody was that is part of why the lack of leadership. There should have been somebody who said... nobody questioned it. [Dr.] Jim Young went off to China to talk about our successes and how we controlled it. [Dr.] Bonnie [Henry] went with him and [Dr.] Tony [Mazzulli] went with him and nobody said, "how do you know it is over?" including myself. None of us said "well, just because," and it is such a simple question to ask and we blew it. It is just amazing everybody blew it.
January 20, 2026 at 9:39 AM
Reposted by James Sessford
mark-ungrin.bsky.social
🧵(1/n) Some unsolicited advice for the federal @ndp.ca, after several months of trying to get them to acknowledge the existence of the #longCOVID community. Please repost and maybe they'll pay attention.

@ndp.ca enough with the plastic Left™ machine politics, focus grouped BS, and message control.
a picture of a cartoon character with the words hellooooo anybody home
ALT: a picture of a cartoon character with the words hellooooo anybody home
media.tenor.com
January 24, 2026 at 6:36 PM
Reposted by James Sessford
mbgoransson.bsky.social
New research article with @ndloubere.bsky.social and @pauloshea.bsky.social.

"Mediating official misinformation: how Sweden’s national broadcaster (SVT) communicated mask scepticism during the COVID-19 pandemic"

Global Social Challenges Journal, Bristol University Press
January 24, 2026 at 9:09 AM
Reposted by James Sessford
mark-ungrin.bsky.social
Essential reading for everyone in the medical profession, regarding #longCOVID and the need to listen to patients. This one, by an MD, is going to get printed out and brought to a lot of appointments.

Also worth reflecting on the role of humility in "building the plane while we flew it".

#medsky
January 21, 2026 at 12:48 PM
Reposted by James Sessford
beansproutsmom.bsky.social
More pediatric flu complications since COVID arrived

Time period: Complication Rate
2017-Mar '20: 53%
Mar'20-May'23: 63%
May '23-Aug '25: 64%

The authors blame the prevention of COVID infections rather than actual COVID infections aka 'immunity debt'.

I am so tired.

www.mdpi.com/2075-1729/16...
www.mdpi.com
January 19, 2026 at 7:19 PM
Reposted by James Sessford
jvipondmd.bsky.social
Important read on schools and transmission of viral illnesses.
substack.com/home/post/p-...
The School Engine Behind Flu and COVID — and Why Clean Air for Kids Is the Missing Public Health Tool
Every winter we treat flu season as if it were driven by weather, chance, or holiday travel.
substack.com
January 18, 2026 at 7:06 PM
Reposted by James Sessford
newlevant.bsky.social
What's Up With COVID and What We Can Do About It: 2026 Edition

I've thoroughly updated this public health propaganda zine! With new information about:

Adjusting mask fit
CO2 monitoring
Improving ventilation for infection control

Read at newlevant.com/COVIDzine or in the thread below 👇
[COVID zine front cover] [bold, handwritten] What’s Up With COVID and What We Can Do About It: 2026 Edition [Drawing of a person (me) with a shoulder-length shag haircut, wearing head-strap respirator mask a sweatshirt, carrying a Corsi-Rosenthal box (a DIY air purifier made with a box fan and furnace filters)] [word balloon] clean the air, basically! By Hazel Newlevant [COVID zine back cover] [handwritten text, circled by a chain which is breaking on the bottom] “Every chain of transmission that is broken is VALUABLE. Every person that doesn’t GET SICK, that doesn’t lose that WEEK OF WORK, that doesn’t become DISABLED or DIE, from the minorest of inconveniences, to the GREATEST of losses: every single one of those things is VALUABLE.” -Becca on DEATH PANEL podcast 2/16/23. Print and distribute this zine yourself! Download a PDF here. [arrow pointing to the citations QR code] [drawing of this zine, getting stapled with a long-arm stapler] [Creative Commons license logo] CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 Citations: [QR code] newlevant.com/COVIDzine [bold, handwritten] ALWAYS FREE
January 16, 2026 at 3:17 PM
Reposted by James Sessford
covidsolutions.bsky.social
Maybe we'll see some movement on the legal side?

👇🤞
bsky.app/profile/chan...
January 16, 2026 at 4:12 PM
Reposted by James Sessford
bylinetimes.bsky.social
🟨 Print Edition — The Covid Inquiry – 230,000 Deaths and the ‘Calculated Silence’ of the Medical Establishment

The Covid Inquiry’s second report has helped expose the UK’s ‘closed club’ approach to dealing with the pandemic – which cost so many people their lives, writes former WHO director…

🔗 …
The Covid Inquiry - 230,000 Deaths and the ‘Calculated Silence’ of the Medical Establishment – Byline Times Digital / Print Edition
The Covid Inquiry’s second report has helped expose the UK’s ‘closed club’ approach to dealing with the pandemic – which cost so many people their lives, writes former WHO director Anthony Costello
subscribe.bylinetimes.com
January 14, 2026 at 9:23 PM
Reposted by James Sessford
drdavidkeegan.bsky.social
We’re beyond #ducttapemedicine.

Edmonton is in full-on crisis.

Demand action. Demand an end to the destructive and deadly dismantling of our healthcare system.

We need a state of emergency, mask mandates, proactive vax campaigns.

www.theglobeandmail.com/gift/28dd011...

#ableg
#abpoli
Edmonton doctors call on Alberta government to declare state of emergency as hospitals overflow
Call follows deaths of three patients in Grey Nuns Community Hospital emergency on Dec. 22
www.theglobeandmail.com
January 8, 2026 at 3:19 AM
Reposted by James Sessford
mark-ungrin.bsky.social
#OneOfTheTwo

Jon Stewart (2011): “The bias of the mainstream media is toward sensationalism, conflict, and laziness.”

Jon Stewart (2025):

🤷

If someone can get him to put down the laziness long enough to watch the talk below, maybe it'll help.
January 1, 2026 at 4:57 AM
Reposted by James Sessford
jvipondmd.bsky.social
This.
This is the problem.
OH and S standards are different for HCWs and for the life of me (and them) I can't understand why.
December 19, 2025 at 1:27 AM
Reposted by James Sessford
drjenirwin.bsky.social
Read this twice.

“Our findings redefine SARS-CoV-2 infection as a condition of long-lasting immune compromise.”

www.sciencedirect.com:5037/science/arti...
www.sciencedirect.com
December 6, 2025 at 9:55 PM
Reposted by James Sessford
mark-ungrin.bsky.social
Meanwhile, the convergence between the "Evidence Based Medicine" authoritarians in politics and in institutional medicine continues as expected.

Funny how a heuristic that claims to substitute for science and lets 2+2 be 5 if you want it to is popular with both.

thehill.com/policy/healt...
Kulldorff formerly taught at Harvard University’s medical school until he was fired in 2024 for what he claimed was his refusal to receive the COVID-19 vaccine. He was also an author of the “Great Barrington Declaration,” which called for promoting herd immunity early on in the COVID-19 pandemic by allowing the virus to spread unmitigated. “Martin Kulldorff transformed ACIP from a rubber stamp into a committee that delivers gold-standard science for the American people,” Kennedy said in a statement. “I’m glad to welcome him to my team to help develop bold, evidence-based policies to Make America Healthy Again.” Kulldorff said he was honored “to join the team of distinguished scientists” at HHS. “I look forward to contributing to the science-based public health policies that will Make America Healthy Again.” Pediatric cardiologist and former U.S. Air Force flight surgeon Kirk Milhoan will replace Kulldorff as chair of the ACIP. Milhoan is also an ardent vaccine critic and previously argued that vaccines were ineffective, arguing only natural immunity could end the COVID-19 pandemic.
December 5, 2025 at 2:10 PM
Reposted by James Sessford
mark-ungrin.bsky.social
The sheer dedication to avoiding any mention of COVID when talking about things that we know for certain are heavily impacted by COVID is...impressive.

The "after pandemic" bit is a red flag too - someone's either not keeping up, or deliberately trying to manipulate the narrative.
November 30, 2025 at 6:08 PM
Reposted by James Sessford
mark-ungrin.bsky.social
The information that could have stopped the pandemic in 2020, that Dr. Morawska was desperately trying to teach WHO infection control leaders in 2020, was known for 👉84 years👈 before these events (documented in @carlzimmer.com's excellent book AIR-BORNE):

(figure: academic.oup.com/aje/article/...)
A page from Carl Zimmer's book AIR-BORNE: Kerkhove started the conversation off politely, but it quickly devolved. Some WHO representatives rejected Group 36's concerns out-right, dismissing their evidence as weak. Julian Tang, a British virologist with Group 36, pushed back, pointing out that WHO was claiming that fomites and large droplets spread SARS-CoV-2 while it had no rigorous proof of its own. Before long, Jimenez recalled, the temperature hit the boiling point. He watched John Conly scream at Morawska. "He kept yelling, 'But, Lidia, where is your evidence? Where is your evidence?" Jimenez recalled. "I was thinking, 'Jesus Christ, what is this?" The Group 36 scientists would later publish a collective account of the shocking experience. "After the call was finished, disappointed and frustrated, we wondered, Why are they acting like this?" they wrote. "Why are they so bluntly rejecting our arguments?" I later asked Conly about Group 36's account. He stressed that he was not directly involved in the conflict over WHO's guidelines. With over thirty advisors from around the world helping to develop the guide-lines, he wasn't that high on the WHO ladder. Conly thought that scien-tists like Li and Morawska did great work, but he saw many gaps in the evidence about how Covid-19 spread. They all deserved careful scientific inquiry. With so much complexity and uncertainty to contend with, dis-putes were inevitable. "The flattest pancake in the world has two sides," Conly told me. Reeling in frustration after the April 3 call, Group 36 conferred about what to do next. "We were like, 'Okay, we need to find more evidence," Jimenez said. They had to find an outbreak of Covid-19 that they could document, taking proper account of the role that air played in the infections. A plot from Wells' 1934 paper showing particles on the order of 100 microns or less will evaporate to airborne aerosol size before they have time to fall to the ground from head height. Associated text reads: residues or nuclei physically comparable with particles of fine dust may be of considerable hygienic importance. The size of droplet nuclei depends upon the amount of solid matter contained in the evaporating droplet. Because of the high percentage of water in body fluids, nuclei will be small in proportion to the size of the original droplet. Yet they will remain large in comparison to the mass of a bacterium. Normal saline droplets would reduce to salt nuclei roughly one-fifth of the former diameter, having a volume of some ten thousand bacteria. The nuclei of such droplets would settle slowly and be carried long distances by light air currents.
November 21, 2025 at 6:05 PM
Reposted by James Sessford
sameo416.bsky.social
The irony.

Designed and proven using entirely mechanistic method and observational data, with a healthy side order of biochemistry.

And fielded for decades with huge successes, without a single randomized trial as proof.

& today, groups of MDs work tirelessly to prove N95 don’t work vs viruses.
cdnhistoryehx.bsky.social Canadian History Ehx @cdnhistoryehx.bsky.social · Nov 16
On this day in 1966, Cluny Macpherson died.
Born in St. John's in 1879, he invented the gas mask during the First World War. His design was adopted by the British Army. He later became the president of the St. John's Clinical Society and the Newfoundland Medical Association.
Sepia-toned portrait photograph of a man in World War I-era military uniform. He wears a peaked cap with insignia, a high-collared jacket with epaulettes, collar badges, and a cross-belt strap. He has a mustache and faces forward with a neutral expression against a plain light background.
November 16, 2025 at 5:18 PM
Reposted by James Sessford
greymoran.bsky.social
During the height of the pandemic, Tyson used Palantir to predict Covid-19 infections among meatpacking workers down to a nearly exactly figure. But rather than using this data to increase worker protections, Tyson used it plan for labor shortages + plant closures
My latest for @sentientmedia.org
November 13, 2025 at 7:49 PM