Mark Ungrin

@mark-ungrin

Parent. Interdisciplinary biomedical researcher. Hardline scientist, Professor, PhD. New platforms and real-world impact, emphasis on scientific rigour, reproducibility, integrity and efficiency. Diverse interests.

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Mark Ungrin@mark-ungrin· 27d

In 2021, ID docs were distracted by this, instead of fixing their "widespread failure" (per the UK COVID Inquiry), or (if you prefer to quote the WHO's Associate Director General) "very big mistake" that wasted "an enormous number of lives", of rejecting the reality that COVID is airborne.

Around this time, an internal review of the TDU leadership yielded mixed results, before UHN called in an independent third-party investigator in response to fresh competing harassment complaints by Bogoch and Boggild in May 2021.
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According to UHN, the investigator came down on Boggild’s side, concluding that her allegations against Bogoch were supported, with aspects of his behaviour found to be “unprofessional, harassing, and inappropriate,” amounting to “incivility under UHN’s Physician Code, and harassment under UHN’s Fostering Respect in the Workplace Policy.”
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On the other hand, the report concluded that Bogoch’s allegations against Boggild were not supported, that she had not breached either of the UHN policies and that her conduct did not amount to workplace harassment, inappropriate treatment or incivility.

Mark Ungrin@mark-ungrin· 28d

😐

Police allege they seized 400 improperly stored firearms from Mark's Dauphin-area home during a July 7 search. (Manitoba RCMP)
Mark is a former MP who represented a Dauphin-area constituency (now known as Dauphin-Swan River-Neepawa) from 1997 until he resigned in 2010. He served as MP first with the Reform party, and later with the Canadian Alliance and finally as a Conservative.

Mark Ungrin@mark-ungrin· 29d

This article (from 2020, including a look at Lindsay Graham) is about why people become "collaborators", abandoning their principles to support authoritarianism and corruption. It emphasizes Trumpism, but seems equally applicable to institutional medicine. www.theatlantic.com/magazine/arc...

I must remain close to power. Another sort of benefit, harder to measure, has kept many people who object to Trump’s policies or behavior from speaking out: the intoxicating experience of power, and the belief that proximity to a powerful person bestows higher status. This, too, is nothing new. In a 1968 article for The Atlantic, James Thomson, an American East Asia specialist, brilliantly explained how power functioned inside the U.S. bureaucracy in the Vietnam era. When the war in Vietnam was going badly, many people did not resign or speak out in public, because preserving their “effectiveness”—“a mysterious combination of training, style, and connections,” as Thomson defined it—was an all-consuming concern. He called this “the effectiveness trap”:

The inclination to remain silent or to acquiesce in the presence of the great men—to live to fight another day, to give on this issue so that you can be “effective” on later issues—is overwhelming. Nor is it the tendency of youth alone; some of our most senior officials, men of wealth and fame, whose place in history is secure, have remained silent lest their connection with power be terminated.

Mark Ungrin@mark-ungrin· 29d

I put subtitles on the video of that Russian AA unit's machine gun test, as it's a bit hard to hear what they're saying. @antongerashchenko.bsky.social @igorsushko.bsky.social can you check if I got the translation right? #Russia #Ukraine

Mark Ungrin@mark-ungrin· Jul 11

Ninety-nine tankers of fuel on the sea,

Ninety-nine tankers of fuel

Drones come down, explosions abound ...

Ninety-eight tankers of fuel on the sea!

Mark Ungrin@mark-ungrin· Jul 11

Totally stable genius.

A page from a cognitive function test asking you to identify the animals in a drawing.

Mark Ungrin@mark-ungrin· Jul 11

"CPR in progress" -> rolled out under a blanket, not moving with his feet sticking out -> "no urgency" / "did not use sirens" 🤔

The neighbor, who was not publicly identified by CNN, told the outlet that officers said there had been a “medical emergency” that morning but did not confirm it was the senator. The neighbor also told CNN that the emergency responders worked efficiently, but did not appear to be panicked and did not use sirens as they departed.

“In a situation where perhaps time is of the essence, there seems to be a little bit more urgency, but there was no urgency here,” the neighbor told CNN, adding that in the brief moment they saw the person’s feet hanging out of a blanket, they were “not moving.”

Last week, emergency services audio was published by multiple outlets that describes an “unconscious” person and “CPR in progress” for a “cardiac arrest” at McConnell’s D.C. address shortly before 9 a.m. local time on June 14.

Mark Ungrin@mark-ungrin· Jul 8

Drawing of a beaver riding on a Canada goose above a banner reading "Canada".

Original artist is Jennifer Borutski

https://www.reddit.com/r/canada/comments/9wtzxi/we_had_an_ama_about_canadians_in_space_today/

Mark Ungrin@mark-ungrin· Jul 7

😐

Legionnaire’s is a type of pneumonia that spreads when people inhale tiny water droplets infected with legionella, a type of bacteria, which the city notes is likely caused by cooling towers on the top of buildings.

Anyone who lives, works or has recently visited the impacted area should monitor for symptoms, city health officials said, including visitors to the East Side of Central Park between 76th Street and 97th Street.

That span of Central Park includes a number of major attractions, such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Central Park Reservoir, and the warning comes during the busy summer tourist season in New York and as more tourists have descended on the city for the World Cup.

Mark Ungrin@mark-ungrin· Jul 7

#Omsk firms.modaps.eosdis.nasa.gov/map/#d:24hrs...

Mark Ungrin@mark-ungrin· Jul 6

This headline is very 2026.

Mark Ungrin@mark-ungrin· Jul 5

It says a lot about the goals of the @nationalpost.bsky.social that their senior editor can look at a country where masked thugs kidnap people off the street at gunpoint without even a warrant and not just think but 👉publicly state in his outside voice👈 "that's what I want for Canada".

"When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time."

- Maya Angelou.

Mark Ungrin@mark-ungrin· Jul 5

😐

UNIVERSITY SERVICE:
A. University of Regina/University of Saskatchewan/University of Guelph/Dalhousie
University
2018-present Chair, Scientific Committee, Agri-Food Analytics Lab, Dalhousie
University.

Dr. Sylvain Charlebois
Faculty of Management
Professor (Full)
Faculty of Management
Faculty of Agriculture
Dalhousie University
Halifax, Nova Scotia Canada N1G 2W1
Citizenship: Canadian E-Mail: sylvain.charlebois@dal.ca

EDUCATION:

Doctorate Food distribution and policy, political economies, 2005. Faculty of
Business Administration, Administration, University of Sherbrooke, Sherbrooke, Canada.

MBA (Thesis-Based), Agriculture and food safety, 2002. École des Sciences de la
Gestion, UQAM, Montréal, Canada.

BComm, Bachelor in Commerce, 1992. Royal Military College, Kingston,
Canada. (Degree denied after a court martial, later allowed for reasons that are unclear - https://www.canlii.org/fr/qc/qcca/doc/1995/1995canlii5191/1995canlii5191.html )

Mark Ungrin@mark-ungrin· Jul 5

There were 1.3M census families in Alberta in 2025. That $35B for a pipeline could give every single one more than $26,000 to install renewables - or a $3,000 incentive for each of the 11M families across Canada. Instead? Corporate welfare and UCP slush funds. www150.statcan.gc.ca/t1/tbl1/en/t...

2025 Statistics Canada numbers estimating 1,323,571 total census families in Alberta

2025 Statistics Canada numbers estimating 11,111,244 total census families in Canada

Mark Ungrin@mark-ungrin· Jul 4

Yeah it's perfect. Not my drawing, just found it floating around the internet and saved it for this kind of situation. There are a few variations in the theme.

A drawing of someone facepalming so hard they have pushed their palm all the way through their head and two more behind it.

A drawing of someone facepalming so hard they have pushed their palm all the way through their head and a long way behind.

Mark Ungrin@mark-ungrin· Jul 4

A drawing of someone facepalming so hard they have pushed their palm all the way through their head.

Mark Ungrin@mark-ungrin· Jul 3

A great infographic on keeping cool efficiently, and a reminder that the work the community has put in over the last few years on indoor air quality around pathogens, fire smoke and allergens is also relevant to cooling. For a quiet, portable one-person fan the Arctic P14 PWM/PST runs at 12V/0.12A.

A complex infographic highlighting that it is possible to reduce electricity use by using fans to blow air across your skin in combination with less use of air conditioners (e.g. raising the set-point etc).

Mark Ungrin@mark-ungrin· Jun 30

#medsky this is on you. You don't have to keep doing this to us. You don't have to just do the minimum, and put IPC's massive COIs ahead of your patients. You don't have to keep being part of the "widespread failure" (to quote the UK COVID Inquiry). It's on you. bsky.app/profile/mark...

1.56 Reliance on the historical misunderstanding that it was possible to clearly distinguish between aerosol and droplet transmission directly affected infection prevention and control guidance, as well as the precautions that were advised. As particles larger than five microns were seen as more likely to contain the virus, behaving ballistically and only travelling about 1.5 metres before falling to the ground (see Figure 4), fluid-resistant surgical masks were considered capable of acting as a boundary against inhalation of particles. Similarly, keeping beds two metres apart was considered sufficient to prevent particles from reaching patients in other beds.98 This did not account, however, for the possibility that an infectious particle more than five microns in size may not behave as a droplet but as an aerosol – which could remain airborne for some time, travel further than 1.5 metres and permeate a fluid-resistant surgical mask.

1.57 The failure to appreciate and guard against the risk posed by routes of transmission other than droplet or contact put healthcare workers and patients at unnecessary risk of When asked whether the Covid-19 infection prevention and control guidance took a sufficiently cautious approach to the risk of aerosol transmission outside of aerosol generating procedures, Laura Imrie (Clinical Lead for NHS Scotland Assure and Antimicrobial Resistance and Healthcare Associated Infection Scotland from 2018, and member of the UK IPC Cell) said:
“I think the position we were in, it was very constrained by the dichotomy of describing something as ‘droplet’ or ‘airborne’.”99

1.58 It is no longer appropriate to rely on this dichotomy. References to cut-off points based on particle size and the belief that it was possible to distinguish clearly between droplet and aerosol transmission – and the precautions required as a result – were and are wrong. They should no longer be relied on in healthcare guidance.

Mark Ungrin@mark-ungrin· Jun 29

It's amazing how often the causal networks behind these perpetual IPC failure modes link back to EBM/GRADE heuristics. Failure to act prospectively is the inevitable consequence of a paradigm where the only evidence given any weight is a variation on the theme of counting bodies after it's too late.

An image of the "hierarchy of evidence" taught in many medical schools, taken from official WHO documents used to make COVID policy. It places all of human knowledge from outside medicine below even the opinions and editorials of insiders, explaining why WHO MDs operating on an understanding of science that was out of date as of 1934 felt entitled to shout down scientific experts in 2020, in the worst medical error in human history. More details are here: https://canadahealthwatch.ca/2025/04/18/trumps-cronies-arent-what-broke-public-health

Mark Ungrin@mark-ungrin· Jun 27

Cutting edge Russian technology in the form of a combat donkey carrying an anti drone jamming device.

Mark Ungrin@mark-ungrin· Jun 27

A humorous picture of Russian Orthodox priests blessing a gas pump

Mark Ungrin@mark-ungrin· Jun 24

They played the exact same games with COVID, minimizing the consequences of asymptomatic infection with technicalities to exaggerate how well they were protecting people, and blame the infected person instead of their own bad guidance.

The health ministry said it had identified "a first positive case of Ebola virus disease on national territory." The patient, who arrived in Paris on Tuesday, "boarded a commercial flight from Kinshasa and was almost asymptomatic – except for headaches," the ministry said.

Mark Ungrin@mark-ungrin· Jun 24

...a bit more money initially, you can use 5-packs of 12V Arctic P14 computer fans. IIRC you'd need about 15 of them to get the same flow rate as one box fan, so it adds up, but even in large numbers they're much quieter than a box fan and use a lot less electricity. While they need a bit more...

A kitchen table lamp combined with a filter box - 5 Arctic P14 fans and some LED strips.

Mark Ungrin@mark-ungrin· Jun 22

Definitely feeling some Seven Oaks vibes from a public health "investigation". I wonder what it would take for them to actually start doing real ones? 🤔

“We are currently following all guidelines in accordance with outbreak management,” Dr. Zain Chagla, comedical director of infection prevention and control said in a statement. “St. Joe's began an immediate investigation and implemented enhanced cleaning measures and other mitigating strategies.”

The statement does not provide further detail about the mitigating strategies.

Public health said in a statement that the “investigation includes reviewing clinical practices, potential exposures, and the timeline of illness among affected individuals.”

Mark Ungrin@mark-ungrin· Jun 20

Your regular reminder that the litmus test for integrity and due diligence in medical leadership is their willingness to admit and remedy their failures. One who will not address their errors RE airborne transmission of COVID is negligent, dishonest, or both. www.nytimes.com/2026/06/19/s...

Lost Lessons
Dr. Green was echoing the words of William and Mildred Wells, a husband-and-wife team who discovered the threat of airborne germs in the 1930s. They famously protected children in Philadelphia schools from a measles epidemic in 1940 by installing ultraviolet lamps that disinfected classroom air.

“I believe that a provision of pure air for children (and adults) to breathe should be looked upon as of equal importance to the provision of pure water and pure milk,” Mildred Wells later wrote.

But she and her husband failed to sway their colleagues, and the threat of airborne germs went underappreciated for generations. When Covid hit in 2020, the World Health Organization emphatically stated that it was not airborne — which turned out to be wrong.

Mark Ungrin@mark-ungrin· Jun 20

Between funding cuts and general cluelessness, national and international public health orgs like the WHO are not equipped to manage Ebola. Rolling the dice on aerosol transmission plus hopes and prayers that it stays over there and "only" kills Africans are causing yet another unnecessary disaster.

1.85 Professor Noakes told the Inquiry in Module 2: Core decision-making and political governance that:
“[T]here was just a tendency to assume the other transmission routes, and then require the evidence for airborne transmission.”141

Such a mindset was consistent with Ms Imrie’s defence of the initial position of infection prevention and control guidance, which was that “there wasn’t enough good evidence to say that we were uncertain”.142 Members of the UK IPC Cell thus appeared to consider that it was necessary to disprove pre-existing beliefs rather than keeping an open mind to the potential risks of all plausible transmission routes.

Source: https://covid19.public-inquiry.uk/reports/module-3-full-report/#:~:text=there%20wasn%E2%80%99t%20enough%20good%20evidence%20to%20say%20that%20we%20were%20uncertain

Mark Ungrin@mark-ungrin· Jun 19

If you're wondering why poor-quality medical guidance is so common, a core driver is the trend to declare *expertise* a conflict of interest on par with major financial payments - reserving power for GRADE pseudoscience specialists 🤔. An insightful response: www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/...

Bruce Davidson, MD, MPH University of Washington 20 November 2015
Comment
The Annals’ new Guidelines International Network (GIN) interest group statement (1) discards the Institute of Medicine conclusions and attempts to equate “members with direct financial” COIs and members with “relevant indirect COIs”, writing they should not be included in guideline development, but can be if “managed”.
Where this is practiced, an expert medical scientist in an area would be perceived similarly conflicted to a physician or PhD-holder taking tens of thousands of dollars from a company. The latter have influenced guidelines a long time. The Chair of GIN neglects to disclose he is an institutional colleague of plenty of guidelines writers with direct financial conflicts, whom he and co-authors may now cover with their GIN article by lumping together cash gains with the scholarly production of medical scientists. Does Dr Schunemann believe that this benefit for his very own university colleagues with cumulative earnings in the hundreds of thousands is not a personal conflict of interest for him?
Inherent to science are skepticism about one’s own results, modesty regarding their meaning, and openness to other viewpoints. Expert guideline panelists who love research, those who seek institutional promotion and fame, those who take money from outside companies—either consistently display these qualities, or they don’t and should be removed as panelists. The GIN committee’s equating the scholarly work of clinical medicine with taking money from outside commercial entities is a cynical undermining of honest medical scientists at every institution. It has no ethical or professional legitimacy.

Sincerely yours,
Bruce L Davidson MD, MPH, FACP

1. 1. Schunemann HJ, Al-Ansary LA, Forland F, Kersten S, Komulainen J, Kopp IB et al. Guidelines International Network: Principles for disclosure of interests and management of conflicts in guidelines. Ann Intern Med 2015;163:548-553.

Mark Ungrin@mark-ungrin· Jun 18

When you don't see aerosol-appropriate PPE (N95s, NOT medical masks with the giant gaps at the sides) in healthcare and you wonder just how out of date the infection control docs responsible are... ...this is from 1897. I'm sure we can trust them with Ebola though. 🫠 doi.org/10.1007/BF02...

The droplets released into the air must pose a much greater infectious risk in the case of infectious diseases of the throat and respiratory organs associated with coughing and sputum. In diphtheria, phthisis, influenza, whooping cough, pneumonia, and perhaps also in cases of plague associated with pulmonary disease, the transmission of pathogens into the air in droplet form will occur frequently. According to the experiments listed above, there is no doubt at all that every cough, cough, or scream releases such droplets of sputum and oral secretions into the air in large quantities, so that they spread around the world and float in the air.

Mark Ungrin@mark-ungrin· Jun 18

Take a closer look at the source of that vocabulary in medicine. It's a power grab by EBM Inc, claiming discretionary authority over both medical practice and science for a little management class that's totally out of its depth. www.bmj.com/content/389/...

A quote from Guyatt et al, 2025 confirming that medical policy and guidance making is thoroughly subjective.

"Limitations of the Core GRADE approach
We see only one serious limitation in the Core GRADE approach, and that is the subjectivity involved in virtually every important decision in rating certainty of evidence and moving from evidence to recommendations."

Source: https://www.bmj.com/content/389/bmj-2024-081903#:~:text=We%20see%20only%20one%20serious%20limitation,evidence%20to%20recommendations

Mark Ungrin@mark-ungrin· Jun 18

webfiles.thecse.com/Quarterly_Li...