Mallory Harris, PhD

@malar0ne

thinking about infectious diseases, information, and behavior Postdoc UMD College Park 📍Austin, TX

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Mallory Harris, PhD@malar0ne· 11d

May 22, 2020
Global -4,900,000/325,000; USA – 1,600,000/95,000 Turmoil in OWS – Peter Marks drops out.
Upset with how he is being treated with the arrival of Moncef. Moncef has met with pharma companies
involved in the harmonized protocols and as expected they expressed doubt about the possibility that we
(NIAID/USG) could pull the trials off. Deep down, they want the money and they want to do it on
their own. I will set up teleconference next week with Francis, me, Larry Corey, John maslcola, Cliff and
the CEIO’s of the companies tomstraighten this out. Trump getting out of control in pushing to open
up the country and get the economy back before election day. He is desparate. This is all about
re-election.

Since then I am sometimes included in a brief meeting before his press briefing (approx. 2-3
times total). A couple of weeks ago a Dr Scott Atlas showed up at the WH with a very different take on
the epidemic. Dr Atlas thoughts 1. No matter what we do it the outcome will be the same – in other
words in most places the virus has already run its course. There is enough herd immunity to protect the
rest of the population if we protect the vulnerable
2. Schools can open and should open everywhere – I countered that this would cause a new round of
community spread and eventually lead to new hospitalizations and deaths – but I had no impact 3.
Children are not at any risk to infection and do not spread the virus in any manner – the do not transmit
the virus 4. HTN and associated co-morbidities are not that critical – ie all BB, MLB, FB except for line
backers that are overweight are at no risk as physical fitness overcomes the virus effects 5. Masks are over
rated and not needed 6. Testing is very over rating – thus the source of the President’s call for new
testing guidance 7. Case identification is bad for the President’s reelection – testing should only be of
the sick T

POTUS in complete denial that
there is a raging pandemic and everything is spiking. He keeps insisting that we have “turned the corner”
or “rounding the turn”. Some potentially nefarious stuff going on. The FDA career scientists are
hesitant to grant EUAs to Lilly’s and Regeneron’s mAb based on the current data. Alex Azar is really
pushing them and furious because he thinks FDA is “slowwalking” the process so as not to have it out
before the election in 5 days. Clearly, Alex wants to please the POTUS so that they can say that they
have a breakthrough (similar to Convalescent plasma nonsense) right before the election.

Then, at 9:30 AM, the POTUS called me
from Air Force One. We had a 15 minute conversation where he did his usual rambling. He started by
saying that I really need to be positive. “Tony, I really like you, and you know that, but what the fuck
are you doing? You constantly drop bombs on me. Everybody wants me to fire you, but I am not
going to fire you, you have too illustrious a career, but you have to be positive. The country cannot stay
locked down. (I never said that we should lock down). You have got to give them hope. I like you but so
many people, not only in the White House, but throughout the country hate you because of what you
are doing. I am going to win this fucking election by a landslide. Just watch. I always did things my way.
And I always win, no matter what all these other fucking people think. And that fucker Biden. He is so
fucking stupid. You are 10 times smarter than he is. I am going to kick his fucking ass in this election. I
will win by a landslide. Just wait and see. I will win Florida, Pennsylvania, Ohio, all the key states. Just
wait and see. The smallest crowd that I had was 25,000 people. Biden had 5 people blowing their
fucking horns in their cars. Tony, you have to be positive. I do not want to keep you off TV, but when
you are out there, you have to be positive. (I tried to interject some words that I am being positive by
telling people what they need to do to avoid infection – he heard none of it and just kept talking over
me. He did not seem hostile, but he was just rambling). Then when he was finished, he said: “OK, Tony,
I will see you in a couple of days. Take care”.

Mallory Harris, PhD@malar0ne· 15d

Just vile.

Tweet by Secretary Kennedy from today: Dear Diary....if I plead the Fifth, will I still be famous. Below it is an AI-generated image of Dr. Fauci at his Senate hearing today. Behind him, on one side is RFK Jr brandishing handcuffs and on the other is Jay Bhattacharya holding a beagle

Mallory Harris, PhD@malar0ne· 23d

Life comes at you fast

Tweet by Jay Bhattacharya from November 2022: The Biden administration is hostile to basic civil rights guaranteed in the first amendment. The most important source of health misinformation is the Biden Administration itself. It's far past time to end the American censorship regime. Quote tweeting: The White House says they are keeping a “close eye” on Twitter under Elon Musk

Lawyers for the UC professors now contend that the admission proves three wide-ranging constitutional violations:

1. By using keyword searches to review hundreds of grants and terminate them en masse rather than reviewing them individually on their merits, the Trump administration targeted research it found politically disfavorable, which is a First Amendment violation.

Mallory Harris, PhD@malar0ne· Jul 2

Scott Atlas is literally the Merchants of Doubt Fellow at Hoover.

Scott Atlas is the Robert Wesson Senior Fellow in scientific philosophy and public policy at the Hoover Institution and was special adviser to President Donald Trump on fall 2020

Old bio for Fred Singer on the Hoover's website, which says he is the Robert Wesson Fellow in Scientific Philosophy and Public Policy at the Hoover Institution.

The cover of Oreskes and Conway's Merchants of Dohbt

The book criticizes the so-called Merchants of Doubt, some predominantly American science key players, above all Bill Nierenberg, Fred Seitz, and Fred Singer. All three are physicists: Singer was a space and satellite researcher, whereas Nierenberg and Seitz worked on the atomic bomb.[6] They have been active on topics like acid rain, tobacco smoking, global warming and pesticides. The book says that these scientists have challenged and diluted the scientific consensus in the various fields, as of the dangers of smoking, the effects of acid rain, the existence of the "ozone hole", and the existence of anthropogenic climate change.[4]

Mallory Harris, PhD@malar0ne· Jun 25

Incidentally, our current NIH Director argued to the Supreme Court that Fauci directed a cabal of Reddit mods & FB anti-vaxxers to take down his social media pages, culminating in Fauci testifying that Reddit "didn't register ... as something that I would want to remember." bsky.app/profile/mala...

Q. Let me ask you a new question then.
A. Sure.
Q. Are you familiar with the social media platform Reddit?
A. Reddit?
Q. R-e-d-d-i-t?
A. I'm heard that term, but --
Q. Are you aware that Reddit also censored the Great Barrington Declaration, along with Google?
MR. KIRSCHNER: Objection. Lack of foundation.
BY MR. SAUER:
Q. If you know.
A. Again, I'm not even sure what Reddit is, and so I don't think I could be aware of its censoring. If I did -- was aware at one time, I certainly didn't register it as something that I would want to remember.

Mallory Harris, PhD@malar0ne· Jun 25

3 years ago, Musk tweeted that it was time to "move on" from the Fauci Files a full week before his hand-picked journalist released a story he flew internationally twice to write, revealing...Fauci had comms staffers tweeting on his behalf. But conspiracy theories can keep running on fumes forever

Thread by Paul Thacker. Includes screenshot from Dr. Fauci's deposition saying he doesn't have an account on Twitter and doesn't know how to access a tweet. Followed by screenshot of a Twitter report stating Dr. Fauci did an account takeover for WHCOVIDResponse.

Mallory Harris, PhD@malar0ne· Jun 22

On the Smart Girl, Dumb Questions podcast earlier this year, NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya said big question he still has is whether his actions will actually restore trust in science. 1) he's cut NIH grants on hesitancy that could answer this but 2) the episode's top comments suggest an answer

I appreciated this conversation, but I wish he would've been more open to listening before responding rather than talking over and cutting you off so frequently. I powered through, but it was a difficult listen.

Didn't love the way he spoke to you and misrepresented your words. This was a hard listen. I think we need to have robust conversations but this is a great example of why people are closed off from opposing opinions. I did not see him as respectful to your views or questions.

I appreciate a nuanced conversation but it is extremely difficult to take him at face value as he pretends that how the government is marketing vaccines (the 11 vs 72 as an example) will have no bearing on public health, or the trust American's have in vaccines as a whole. The question you were asking about how do we foster a culture of education and trust in the US is an
extremely valid one that he chose to overlook because it would mean being honesty about the MAHA grift.

Mallory Harris, PhD@malar0ne· Jun 12

In new video, Atlas retells how, from within the White House, he orchestrated the meeting that became the Great Barrington Declaration with allies Kulldorff & Bhattacharya (+ a libertarian thinktank) to manufacture support for Trump's unpopular & unscientific preferred approach to the Covid pandemic

Mallory Harris, PhD@malar0ne· May 31

Registered 4 voters in Texas today (you have to go through a training to become a Volunteer Deputy Registrar here and be able to register people 🧙‍♀️)! And the second person was also named Mallory 👯‍♀️! Plus I got a nice view 😎

Mallory Harris, PhD@malar0ne· May 27

Jay Bhattacharya tweets from May 2022: What are citizenship rights worth if your country refuses to let you come home, even though you've broken no law? Courts that should have pushed back against two years of covidian tyranny are finally waking up.
https://abcnews.go.com/Health/wireStory/quarantine-lottery-breached-rights-zealand-court-rules-84338982

Mallory Harris, PhD@malar0ne· May 22

A week ago, The Brownstone Institute was fundraising off of hantavirus conspiracy theories & opposition to quarantines. Since then, they have not said anything about a passenger trying to quarantine at home while Jay Bhattacharya (who won an award from them this year) mandates quarantine at the NQU

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The consultants were, too, and so were the bureaucrats. They dusted off their lockdown plans. Seventeen Americans were pushed into a 42-day quarantine merely for having contact even though they tested negative and had no symptoms. They complied but what if a few had not? Interesting to consider.

All the forces have lined up. To be sure, we have some Brownstonians in high places who are leaning against the pressure, hoping to dial back the panic. There is nothing good that locking down accomplishes, they correctly say. It only wrecks commerce and social functioning.

Mallory Harris, PhD@malar0ne· May 11

And part of the reason for that is that Florida had *not* protected the vulnerable. It had some of the lowest vax rates for nursing home residents & staff, but instead of consulting the data & ringing alarm, Bhattacharya joined DeSantis for a victory lap. www.nytimes.com/2021/08/28/u...

The situation in nursing homes, where infections can spread swiftly, has also been problematic. While vaccination rates among older Floridians as a whole have been good, the rate of nursing home residents who are fully vaccinated — an average of 73.1 percent in each home — is lower than every state but Nevada, according to the C.D.C. About 47.5 percent of nursing home staff members were fully vaccinated as of Aug. 15, the lowest of any state but Louisiana.

Mallory Harris, PhD@malar0ne· May 11

Here is the full quote from Bhattacharya during the Florida roundtable (which was actually held in late July 2021). He was specifically arguing, at the onset of the delta wave, that even though cases were rising, deaths wouldn't follow. He was wrong. alachuachronicle.com/desantis-hol...

Dr. Bhattacharya: I think that, in epidemiology, we’re going to want to continue to track cases, but to tell the public at large that one case is exactly like another, when in fact they’re not—if you’re older and unvaccinated, you’d be more concerned about the case, those are the kind of cases you might want to track. If a child gets a case positive, but with very few symptoms… why should we be telling the public or panicking the public over that? So it’s not a question of should we track or not track. To me, it’s a question of putting these numbers in context: we have protected the vulnerable—by vaccinating the older population, we have provided them with enormous protection against severe disease and death.

That’s why you see, even as the cases have risen in Sweden in the past wave, or in the UK in this past wave, and in Florida in this past wave, the number of deaths have not risen proportionally. Why? Because we protected the vulnerable. The key thing to me is hospitalizations and deaths from COVID. While we’ve done an incredible job at decoupling the cases from the deaths, the public focus on cases at this point, I think, only serves to panic people without actually serving any other public health purpose. We should absolutely continue to protect the vulnerable. And certainly there’s reasons to have public interest in that, but to track cases for its own sake, I think, is now counterproductive.

Mallory Harris, PhD@malar0ne· May 11

Two examples of political leaders publicly embracing Jay Bhattachary's preferred approach to the Covid pandemic: President Trump's HHS Sec in October 2020 (right before the deadlist Covid wave in the US) and Governor Ron DeSantis in August 2021 (before the deadliest Covid wave in Florida).

Timeline of Covid deaths in the US from Our World in Data with an arrow indicating October 2020, right before the largest wave of deaths. Next to this is a tweet by Alex Azar timestamped October 5, 2020 that says: Today I met with Dr. Atlas and three distinguished infectious disease experts to discuss COVID-19 science and data from around the world, as part of our commitment to ensure we hear broad and diverse perspectives. In the conversation with Martin Kulldorff, PhD (Harvard), Jay Bhattacharya, MD, PhD (Stanford), and Sunetra Gupta, PhD (Oxford), we heard strong reinforcement of the Trump Administration's strategy of aggressively protecting the vulnerable while opening schools and the workplace.

Another time series of Covid deaths over time, this time for Florida. From USA Facts. At the top, it says that in Florida, COVID-19 deaths peaked in September 2021. An arrow indicates late July/early August 2021. Next to this, an August 1st, 2021 tweet from Ron DeSantis with a picture of Bhattacharya and the quote: "We have protected the vulnerable by vaccinating the older population." - Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, Professor of Medicine at Stanford University.

Mallory Harris, PhD@malar0ne· May 8

Our current Acting CDC Director said his entire plan for pandemic preparedness is to fire everyone responsible for it.

Tweets from Jay Bhattacharya in January 2024: Effective pandemic preparedness. Step 1: Fire all the people currently responsible for pandemic preparedness. They likely caused the pandemic, locked you down, kept your kids out of school, demolished economies, and want more power to do it again. There may be more steps needed, but they will need to be devised by people not captured by pharma or the pandemic industrial complex.

Mallory Harris, PhD@malar0ne· May 8

"Bhattacharya’s suppression of vax effectiveness data is consistent w the anti-vaccine positions that have defined his career...it is unsurprising that he has continued to leverage his position to subvert public conf. in vaccination by suppressing scientific evidence that goes against his ideology."

Dr. Bhattacharya’s recent suppression of vaccine effectiveness data is consistent with the anti-vaccine positions that have defined his career.

He has sidestepped NIH’s rigorous review process to direct taxpayer dollars towards outdated research technologies and retaliated against career NIH officials who have objected to his anti-vaccine hostility. With Dr. Bhattacharya now overseeing the CDC, it is unsurprising that he has continued to leverage his position to subvert public confidence in vaccination by suppressing scientific evidence that goes against his ideology.
We are deeply skeptical that Dr. Bhattacharya’s recent call for a parallel CDC publication alongside MMWR will be anything more than an effort to cloak unfounded anti-vaccine claims in CDC legitimacy.

Mallory Harris, PhD@malar0ne· May 1

Remembering these examples from Acting CDC Director Bhattacharya for valid vaccine uncertainties. I hope the CDC Director knows we don't give HPV vax to babies, it has benefits to men beyond preventing cervical cancer, & you can get Hep B pre-adulthood... www.importantcontext.news/p/trump-nih-...

Bhattacharya said that if he had a young child, he would give them “many” of the vaccines on the schedule, but added that “there’s uncertainties about all of them.” He also noted, “There are ones where I’d be more skeptical.”

“‘HPV is generally sexually transmitted. Why give it to a baby?’ Someone could easily ask that,” Bhattacharya said. “Do I need to give it to my son who’s not ever going to get cervical cancer? Hepatitis B is another virus that babies, unless they’re exposed from the mother in utero, are not going to get the disease until they’re an adult. Could we wait? I personally would do it, but I could totally understand a parent saying ‘no, let’s wait on this.’”

Mallory Harris, PhD@malar0ne· Apr 29

NIH Director's stump speech lists stats on how it's hard to be early career & proposes no solution past "elevate new ideas" while he slashes our opportunities. If you're a scientific org inviting him & don't point this out, I'll assume you don't care about us. deevybee.blogspot.com/2026/04/that...

So including for instance elevating elevating the ideas of early career scientists

We have a problem, we have a major problem, right

For for the last 30 years it's gotten worse and worse

Where where you have the time to first- like the age at which you get your first large grant, the age has gone up from the mid-80s was about 35 years old to now it's like in your mid 40s.

We have a biological research ecosystem where you need 1,2,3 postdocs

Early career scientists are the ones who have the newer ideas

and so, like, when you when you elevate the new ideas you allow- essentially empower the institutes to have newer ideas funded, you're automatically organically going to fund early career scientists. You just are.

Mallory Harris, PhD@malar0ne· Apr 22

My district in Austin TX faces $131M in economic losses and 635 lost jobs from the White House's proposed cuts to scientific research funding at NIH and NSF in FY27. UT Austin is a major economic driver locally and depends on federal research grants. scienceimpacts.org/scorecard?st...

Screenshot of SCIMaP scorecard for FY2027, Texas District 37. Projected losses are $133M, $32M from NIH and $101M from NSF. The top institution driving losses for both agencies locally is UT Austin with $23M in NIH losses and $91M in NSF losses.

Mallory Harris, PhD@malar0ne· Apr 9

For years, Jay Bhattacharya has been upset at the MMWR for publishing findings that run contrary to his predetermined conclusions (e.g., on immunity after covid vaccination) and his political agenda. Now he's in a position to prevent those findings from being published.

Tweet from Jay Bhattacharya in February 2022: I've long respected the CDC's MMWR as a source for important epidemiological facts. I am sad to see that the CDC has used the journal to publish articles to support its predetermined conclusions (e.g. on immunity after covid recovery), rather uphold its pre-covid high standards

Mallory Harris, PhD@malar0ne· Apr 7

"What are we going to do with NASA? Are we going to have it be revived or shut it down? And I had very little hesitation." www.space.com/astronomy/de...

Space.com headline
Deja vu: Trump proposes cutting NASA science funding by 47% again
News
By Samantha Mathewson published 21 hours ago
The proposed budget would cut NASA's overall funding by 23% and nearly halve its science portfolio.

Mallory Harris, PhD@malar0ne· Apr 4

Interesting to think in combo w/ his lack of knowledge/action around health insurance costs for NIH postdocs. For someone who spent years railing against the out-of-touch "laptop class," Bhattacharya doesn't even seem to understand basic needs of young scientists. www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026...

At a meeting in January, Ian Morgan, a postdoctoral researcher at the NIH and a steward of NIH Fellows United-UAW 2750, stood up to ask about a dramatic rise in the costs of health insurance for early-career scientists employed by NIH. With a new baby on the way, he’s worried about making ends meet with his federal job.

“What can we do to actually support early-career researchers like myself who are struggling to get by?” he asked, while other employees applauded.

Bhattacharya, who has said multiple times that clearing the path for more innovative early-career researchers is a priority for him, didn’t seem aware of the issue.

“Honestly, I don’t know the answer to that question,” Bhattacharya said. “Come talk to me, let’s figure it out,” he added, asking Morgan to send an email to schedule a meeting.

But that meeting still hasn’t happened. Morgan says when he emailed to set a time, the director was too busy to meet with him.

Mallory Harris, PhD@malar0ne· Mar 28

#NoKings in Austin, TX

Mallory Harris, PhD@malar0ne· Mar 18

The effects of climate change were even more substantial when we considered the probability of extreme precipitation coinciding with suitably warm temperatures ideal for dengue transmission. That co-occurrence is now 189% more likely, almost tripling from 2.57% to 7.42%!

As above, but now we show the percent of climate model simulation with extreme precipitation and temperature above 24C. There has been a significant increase (p<0.001) from 2.57% (1865-1914) to 3.84% (1914-1964) to 7.42% (1965-2014).

Mallory Harris, PhD@malar0ne· Mar 18

Climate scientists Jared Trok & Noah Diffenbaugh analyzed CMIP6's ensemble of climate simulations and found that historical climate forcing has increased the likelihood of extreme monthly March precipitation in northwestern Peru by 31% in recent decades compared to a preindustrial baseline.

The CMIP6 period mean for the frequency of extreme March monthly precipitation in northwestern Peru has increased from 12.24% (1864-1914) to 14.89% (1915-1964) to 16% (1965-2014).
Annual values show the percentage of 203 climate model simulations exhibiting a given climate condition during each calendar year of the CMIP6 historical forcing experiment for the 1865–2014 period. Based on the quantiles observed in 2023 (see methods), extreme monthly precipitation is defined to have occurred when the March monthly precipitation averaged over northwestern Peru exceeds the 84th percentile (P84) threshold for the recent climate (calculated from the last 50 years of the CMIP6 historical forcing experiment, or 1965–2014). Solid lines show the mean frequency for the preindustrial (1865–1914, blue), early historical (1915–1964, gray), and late historical (1965–2014, red) periods. We also show p values for the Kolmogorov-Smirnov (KS) test for the mid- and late periods, calculated relative to the time periods shown in parentheses.

Mallory Harris, PhD@malar0ne· Mar 18

We also observed that large cyclone-attributable increases in dengue only happened in districts where temperatures exceeded 24C during the cyclone, which makes sense given the temperature sensitivity of the mosquitoes that transmit dengue.

Cyclone-attributable cases per thousand people versus mean temperature during Cyclone Yaku for each district. The red horizontal line indicates no effect of Cyclone Yaku on cases, while the red vertical line indicates 24°C, above which significant attributable cases were observed.

Mallory Harris, PhD@malar0ne· Mar 18

What factors are associated with greater cyclone-attributable dengue burden (climate vulnerability)? We did a PCA to consolidate several sociovulnerability indices and found that districts with greater cyclone-attributable dengue burden had more urban infrastructure & greater flood susceptibility.

Greater attributable cases per thousand people is associated with more urban infrastructre (less agriculture/pasture) and more flood susceptible (less houshold overcrowding). There was no significant association with nonpublic water source/inconsistent water access.

Estimates and 95% confidence intervals for the association between vulnerability indices (rotated components [RCs] of a principal-component analysis of socioenvironmental vulnerability factors) and dengue cases attributable to extreme precipitation per thousand people at the district level from April 22nd to July 14th. Labels at the top of the plot give the names of the variables most strongly associated with each RC (see Table S5 for variable descriptions). The standardized loading is given in parentheses (where | standardized loading | = 1 is the strongest possible association.

Mallory Harris, PhD@malar0ne· Mar 18

The effects of the cyclone of dengue cases also varied between districts: some had large increases in cases (dark red), while others actually had slight decreases (blue). Decreases could be because flooding can flush out mosquito larvae.

Spatial heterogeneity in the number of dengue cases per thousand people attributable to extreme precipitation: In the center, a map of the number of dengue cases attributable to extreme precipitation per thousand people across districts (calculated from April 22nd to July 14th), zoomed into the region of Peru where extreme precipitation occurred during Cyclone Yaku. Each district affected by extreme precipitation is outlined and shaded according to the estimated number of attributable cases, with darker red indicating a larger positive effect and blue indicating a negative effect. The dark outlines show region borders, and lighter outlines show district borders. A scale bar is provided in the bottom left corner of the map. The left and right columns of plots display dengue cases per thousand people attributable to extreme precipitation over time following Cyclone Yaku (in 2023) by region, with lines to the map indicating their geographic location. Within the faceted plots, each line corresponds to a different district within the region, and the horizontal dashed red lines indicate the baseline of zero dengue cases attributable to extreme precipitation.

Mallory Harris, PhD@malar0ne· Mar 18

We found that Cyclone Yaku caused 60% of cases (22,014 cases) and cases were substantially elevated for almost four months. This translates to 11.6 cyclone-attributable cases of dengue per thousand people in only four months.

The difference between observed cases in the districts with extreme precipitation versus their synthetic controls over time, where the period after the dashed line indicates the effect of extreme precipitation during Cyclone Yaku. The gray ribbon corresponds to the bootstrapped 95% confidence interval. The dashed horizontal line indicates no effect, and the dashed vertical line indicates when the cyclone occurred, meaning the only difference in cases to the right of this vertical line is attributable to extreme precipitation during Cyclone Yaku.

Mallory Harris, PhD@malar0ne· Mar 18

Post-cyclone, the red line (based on time trends in the *control*) is a counterfactual: how many dengue cases would there have been in the cyclone-affected districts without the cyclone? It would still be a bad year for dengue, but on par w 2017. The difference is cyclone-attributable cases.