Cost-effective ways exist to improve your indoor air quality that will reduce your COVID and flu risk, lower your cancer and lung disease risk, and eliminate headaches and sleepiness caused by poor ventilation.

Maybe you’ve been sitting in church or listening to a lecture that, though provocative, sends you into a dozing dreamland, despite getting plenty of sleep the night before. Or maybe you’ve fought to stay awake during a long car ride. These experiences often have as their root cause a common factor – poor indoor air quality caused by a buildup of carbon dioxide because of poor ventilation.

The U.S. reportedly plans to overhaul the country’s childhood vaccine schedule. The move, first reported by CNN, would change how many vaccines to protect against various diseases children get and when they receive those immunizations.

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., secretary of health and human services, is a longtime vaccine skeptic and supports altering the vaccine schedule. Recommendations for several vaccines that are currently given routinely to children in the U.S.—including shots for rotavirus, varicella (chickenpox), hepatitis A, meningococcal bacteria, influenza and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV)—could be scrapped entirely under the plans, according to CNN.

Flu season comes around every year, but a new strain is leading many global health experts to worry that this round may be particularly severe. The strain—a version of the influenza A(H3N2) virus—first appeared in surveillance reports in June, 4 months after the 2025-2026 influenza vaccine formulation had already been determined, and has been associated with earlier waves of influenza outbreaks in Canada, Japan, and the UK.

The latest data on respiratory illness in the United States shows that shoppers and merry-makers are spreading more than just holiday cheer: They’re also passing around germs. In many cases, it’s a new virus variant that’s been causing early and busy flu seasons in Asia, Australia and Europe.

The US is on the cusp of finding out what this flu variant, called subclade K, will do. For the week ending December 6 — the first full week after the Thanksgiving holiday — the proportion of doctor’s visits for symptoms including fever plus a cough or sore throat rose to 3.2%, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

When Susan Monarez was sworn in to lead the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the country’s premier public-health agency, many researchers across the country breathed a sigh of relief.

Trained as a microbiologist and immunologist, Monarez had been a non-partisan government scientist for nearly 20 years. She was an unexpectedly uncontroversial choice by US President Donald Trump, who had previously put forward (but later withdrew the nomination for) Dave Weldon, a physician and vaccine sceptic who worked as a Republican member of Congress from 1995 to 2009.

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Dr. Brian Chow, an infectious disease specialist, is among the most qualified people in the country to speak about the importance of hepatitis B vaccinations.

He received advanced training at Brown University and was an attending physician at Tufts Medical Center. While there, he witnessed a young patient die of liver cancer that stemmed from a hepatitis B infection, a death that could have been prevented had the man received a common vaccine for the disease as a baby.

Prof Wilmot James during a meeting in Mexico with the Helena Group on the intersections between synthetic biology and artificial intelligence. Wilmot has been at the forefront of the fight pandemics, catastrophes and biological warfare.

In the 1980s, researchers tested a new hepatitis B vaccine candidate on over 10,000 people, finding it well tolerated with no reports of serious adverse events. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved Engerix-B to prevent potentially deadly hepatitis B infections in 1989. In 1986, it had approved another vaccine Recombivax HB; its label points to studies involving more than 1,000 people. The US government has been recommending these vaccines for all newborns since 1991 and cases of hepatitis B in people 19 years old and younger have dropped 99 percent since it did. Yet despite this efficacy and the numerous safety studies conducted before after the vaccines were licensed, anti-vaccine activists have targeted the long-used immunizations as inadequately researched. The lawyer Aaron Siri, who has worked closely for and with Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., for years, sought in 2020, for instance, to have the licenses for the vaccines suspended or withdrawn.

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Hear from the co-chairs of the G20 High-Level Independent Panel on Financing the Global Commons for Pandemic Preparedness and Response (HLIP) as they share insights from their new report, Closing the Deal: Financing Our Security Against Pandemic Threats, which outlines practical and bold steps to take pandemic threats off the table.

The G20 first established the Panel in 2021 to rethink how global preparedness is financed. This year, the Panel was reconvened by the South Africa G20 Presidency under the Joint Finance and Health Task Force to address the global pandemic financing gap at a time of profound challenges for global health and health security. The U.S. National Academy of Medicine served as the Panel’s Secretariat.

As the global health architecture undergoes major changes, drivers of pandemic risk continue to rise. The next pandemic is not a theoretical concern—it could happen at any time. Yet, despite mounting threats, countries remain severely underinvested in pandemic preparedness and response. The Panel’s new report serves as a blueprint for rapid, coordinated action.

In this virtual public briefing, hear about the Panel’s five key recommendations and learn what actions can be taken now to prevent biological catastrophe and achieve a high return on investment in global health security.

Vaccines have greatly improved public health, but their continued use is being hampered by misinformation, distrust, and inequity. On this episode, Dr. Seth Berkley discussed his book, Fair Doses.

COVID-19 cases are on the rise in 17 states, according to new data released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

The states with either "growing" or "likely growing" cases of COVID-19 were situated in the Midwest and Northeast of the country.

The CDC noted in its report though that its current estimates may be impacted by "holiday reporting effects and should be interpreted with greater uncertainty."

On this episode of "Halteres Presents", hosts Mickey Urdea and Rich Thayer are sitting down with Dr. Jennifer Nuzzo, the Director of the Pandemic Center and Professor of Epidemiology at the Brown University School of Public Health, to comb through the lessons learned from the COVID-19 pandemic and to assess America's readiness for pathogens both natural and from a bioterrorism weapon. This at times sobering conversation covering surveillance methods to curtail disease outbreaks, how to combat health-related misinformation, and improving American prosperity through global health security initiatives can hopefully kickstart the precautions necessary to prevent the worst case scenarios. Please enjoy this episode of "Halteres Presents".

Africa is home to the youngest population on Earth. By 2060, nearly 800 million children will live on the continent – an extraordinary demographic force that should be our greatest asset. But a landmark new study published this month in PLOS Global Public Health delivers a stark reality check: the children’s hospitals responsible for caring for this generation are stretched, strained and in many places simply not equipped to meet their needs.

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Leveraging Data for High-Impact Health Security Investment 1
The COVID-19 pandemic caused a significant slowdown in economic growth across Africa and triggered widespread debt distress, leaving many countries struggling to recover. Growth is expected to remain sluggish for several years, contributing to significant reductions in health spending. Official development assistance (ODA) has dropped 70 percent since 2021, even as disease outbreaks have surged by more than 40 percent between 2022 and 2024. These trends place overwhelming strain on health systems across the continent.

The combination of economic slowdown and reductions in ODA is unfolding in a time of increasing​​ biological threats. Climate change disproportionately impacts African countries, driving a surge in infectious disease outbreaks across the continent. At the same time, rapid technological advances are lowering barriers to the misuse of biology. Yet many countries in the region lack the necessary data and core capacities to keep their populations and economies safe from emerging health crises.

Dr. Ashish K. Jha is dean of Brown University School of Public Health and a contributing Globe Opinion writer.

It’s easy to feel like the United States is losing ground in public health. Policies and actions from federal health leaders have fractured trust, undermined science, and disrupted essential services. This past year brought funding cuts to core health programs, the spread of dubious science, and the use of food benefits and health care as bargaining chips in political negotiations. The country urgently needs a course correction before the story of public health in America becomes one of steady decline.

The four governments of the United Kingdom responded during the COVID-19 pandemic. But they did “too little, too late,” to effectively stop the virus from spreading during a critical moment in time, according to a national inquiry published this week.

“This lack of urgency and the huge rise in infections made a mandatory lockdown inevitable,” the inquiry report explained. “It should have been introduced one week earlier. Modelling shows that in England alone there would have been approximately 23,000 fewer deaths in the first wave up until 1 July 2020.”

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The best books of 2025

Fair Doses: An Insider’s Story of the Pandemic and the Global Fight for Vaccine Equity. By Seth Berkley. University of California Press; 408 pages; $29.95 and £25

The story of vaccines, as told by an infectious disease epidemiologist. During the covid-19 pandemic, Seth Berkley fought against political resistance and nationalism to help distribute 2bn vaccines across the world.

(TNND) — Most Americans are confident that childhood vaccines are safe and effective.

But new polling shows many Americans are skeptical of the shots. And there are gaps in sentiment along demographic and political lines.

A Pew Research Center survey conducted last month and published Tuesday found 63% of Americans have high confidence in the effectiveness of childhood vaccines.

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Last week, the two top officials at the National Institutes of Health—the world’s largest public funder of biomedical research—debuted a new plan to help Americans weather the next pandemic: getting everyone to eat better and exercise.

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Environmentalism has typically focused on outdoor air quality, but climate change is pushing more people indoors more of the time, even as airborne pathogens and wildfire smoke challenge indoor air quality. I discuss the fight for better indoor air with Dr. Georgia Lagoudas, who recently coordinated a global pledge declaring it a basic human right. We dig into what pollutes indoor air, the technologies that can keep it clean, and the enormous social and economic benefits clean air in schools.

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Meet the heroes keeping global progress alive

On a Friday morning in October, about 100 high school and college students gathered in a Utah ballroom to play a game. Some students were assigned specific roles and given costumes to wear. “Government officials” slung ties over their T-shirts; “store clerks” sported aprons; and a trio of “journalists” wore fedoras and carried fake microphones.

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The United States may be heading into its second severe flu season in a row, driven by a mutated strain called subclade K that’s behind early surges in the United Kingdom, Canada and Japan.

Last winter’s season was extreme, too. The US had its highest rates of flu hospitalizations in nearly 15 years. At least 280 children died of influenza, the highest number since pediatric death numbers were required to be shared in 2004.

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A physician–scientist involved in the equitable-access initiative examines its achievements and discusses what can be done better when the world faces the next pandemic.

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A resident of Washington state has contracted a new form of bird flu — the first case of its kind.

The source of infection remains unknown, setting this case apart from most other infections linked to farmworkers or diseased animals.

Virologists warn each human infection gives the virus a chance to mutate, potentially becoming more transmissible between people.

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After a summer hiatus, bird flu cases are once again ticking up in the United States. During the government shutdown, public health tracking systems stopped sharing updates, including CDC’s FluView and the National Wastewater Surveillance System (NWSS), both of which provide early warning of outbreaks.

We have been flying blind in the face of a potentially catastrophic pandemic threat.

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Local production is a global priority for increasing access to routine, outbreak, and pandemic vaccines and leads to a variety of direct and indirect benefits for countries. This study aimed to characterize the enabling environment for the sustainable production of influenza vaccines, including for epidemic and pandemic preparedness.

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As I stepped into line to pick up my badge for the Children’s Health Defense (CHD) conference last weekend in Austin, Texas, a gregarious man approached holding two tall plastic tubes he said contained “clots” from Covid vaccinated bodies. After 36 years in the Air Force, he told me, he’d been pushed out for refusing the shot. Now in retirement, he calls funeral homes and surveys undertakers to document alleged vaccine harms.

When the world was in a health crisis, Dr. Seth Berkley didn’t just watch—he was at the centre of the storm. In this episode of the Public Health Insight Podcast, we rewind to his early days and trace his path through global health’s toughest challenges.

Pandemic prevention, preparedness, and response (pandemic PPR) stands at a precipice because of inadequate financing at a time of shifting geopolitical alignment in global health. In 2021, in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the G20 High Level Independent Panel on Financing the Global Commons for Pandemic Preparedness and Response (HLIP) called for US$15 billion per year in international finance to strengthen surveillance, health systems, vaccine supply, and governance for health security.1 Execution, however, has not lived up to ambition. Following the recommendations of the HLIP, the G20 catalysed the creation of the Pandemic Fund at the World Bank in 2022, but the Fund has only mobilised pledges for approximately $3 billion of its envisioned annual $10 billion scale.2 The G20 Joint Finance–Health Task Force (JFHTF) was launched in 2021 to bridge finance and health policy. Despite these developments, no global mechanism adequately finances pandemic response, and breakthrough research and development are underfunded.

The idea was born over drinks at the Hard Rock Hotel in Davos Switzerland, on January 23, 2020.

There was a new virus ringing alarm bells in China, but it hadn't yet become an international concern. It didn't even have a name. Yet Seth Berkley was already thinking about how to protect the world with vaccines against it.

Berkley was the CEO of Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, a nonprofit group dedicated to expanding access to vaccines around the globe.

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Canada is no longer measles-free because of ongoing outbreaks, international health experts said Monday, as childhood vaccination rates fall and the highly contagious virus spreads across North and South America.

The loss of the country’s measles elimination status comes more than a year after the highly contagious virus started spreading.

A sit down conversation with two of the most influential actors in the indoor air quality sector, Georgia Lagoudas (Science Policy Expert and Bioengineer) and Bronwyn King (Australian Radiation Oncologist & Anti-Tobacco Campaigner), the principals behind the recent landmark air quality event at the UN General Assembly in New York.

This event launched the Global Pledge for Healthy Indoor Air—the first international effort to formally recognise clean indoor air as a basic human right essential to health and well-being.

Measles cases in the U.S. and Canada continue to rise, but not as dramatically as they did. Vaccination is still the best way to protect your family and those around you who cannot be vaccinated.
(Note – we use data from both the CDC and the Brown University Pandemic Center’s weekly tracking report. While the CDC tracks confirmed cases only, the Pandemic Center tracks both probable and confirmed cases using publicly available data from state health departments. Numbers below are correct as of 11/6).

So, how many cases and outbreaks of measles are there in the US at the moment?

Seth Berkley & Eric Topol - Discuss Fair Doses Book A recording from Eric Topol's live video

It’s Election Day in parts of the country, so we thought it was time to talk politics.

Dr. Craig Spencer, from Brown University’s School of Public Health, penned a Substack last week that stopped us cold. In it, he makes a bold case that public health needs to get more political—not partisan, but political in the sense of organizing, mobilizing, and demanding what people say they value: cleaner air, safer food, prevention that actually gets funded.


It’s a striking call at a moment of profound change — what some call a reimagining, others a dismantling — of public health itself. But if you look at the polling across Republicans, Democrats, and the MAHA “curious,” there’s surprising common ground right in public health’s wheelhouse.

It’s time, Spencer argues, for public health to step into the political arena to fight for change or watch the system unravel.

Walgreens is unveiling an expanded tracker of flu and COVID-19 to monitor where they're spreading across the country this winter, the company shared first with Axios.

Why it matters: Commercial and academic tools are becoming more important for identifying respiratory virus hotspots this year as federal data becomes less available.

Driving the news: Walgreens is adding COVID-19 data to its existing flu prevalence tracker to create a more comprehensive picture of when and where respiratory viruses are spiking this winter, the company told Axios on Monday.

BERKLEY’S TELL-ALL — Seth Berkley, the man who led a global vaccination push during the Covid-19 pandemic, has written a book describing his experience and, in his view, who helped the effort and who hampered it, POLITICO’s Carmen Paun reports.

During the pandemic, Berkley, as the CEO of Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, led COVAX, a partnership with the World Health Organization, the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations and UNICEF, to buy and distribute Covid vaccines. The U.S. was a major funder of the effort.
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Florida’s announcement that it would scrap public school vaccine mandates next year hit Elizabeth particularly hard. Her 11-year-old daughter suffers from a rare immunodeficiency disorder that requires biweekly plasma infusions to provide some protection against disease.

But she can still be out of school for 50 days during the school year — and Elizabeth is worried that falling vaccine rates will make their situation far worse.

Amid massive cutbacks to health funding, Seth Berkley says that global health organizations face a “devil’s choice” around vaccines. They can focus on bringing much-needed immunizations to people now or get ready for the next pandemic. And it’s coming.

For those working in global health, and especially on immunisation, it is difficult not to feel despair at the headwinds in 2025 that have been blowing forcefully against decades of collective efforts to improve the world's health through prevention of infectious diseases, especially for those in greatest need. Cuts to official development assistance in Europe and USAID in the USA, and reduced funding for WHO and Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, among other organisations, threaten populations today, with the impacts expected to be felt for a generation. Furthermore, the undermining of independent evidence-based scientific advice, and of confidence in science itself, risks taking us back to a pre-enlightenment world of magical thinking, where decisions about health were based on untested and unchallenged belief rather than the meticulous experimentation and careful observation we expect today.

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Global health expert Seth Berkley stated that future outbreaks and pandemics are inevitable, with the potential to be more severe than COVID-19. Berkley emphasized the certainty of such events due to evolutionary factors during a recent discussion on global health preparedness. He highlighted the importance of learning from the COVID-19 pandemic to better prepare for future health crises.

Fair Doses is a story of vaccines: how they came about, why they are important, and how they have been made globally available—although our quest for vaccine equity is still ongoing. In this fascinating deep dive into vaccines, Dr. Seth Berkley, an internationally recognized infectious disease epidemiologist and public health leader, offers an inside view of the challenges of developing and disseminating vaccines for a broad swath of illnesses, from Ebola to AIDS to malaria and beyond.

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Measles, whooping cough, and other vaccine-preventable diseases are on the rise around the world, and cuts to foreign aid, coupled with growing vaccine hesitancy, and persistent gaps in vaccine access are fueling outbreaks in poor and wealthy nations alike. Global health experts discuss the drivers of these outbreaks, the solutions that can advance vaccine equity and better public health worldwide, and a new vaccine-preventable disease tracker from Think Global Health, developed in collaboration with ProMED.

Gavin is joined by Dr. Seth Berkley, former CEO of Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, to discuss his new book, Fair Doses.

Dr. Berkley reflects on the global impact of vaccines, the ongoing challenges to vaccine equity, and the lessons learned from leading initiatives such as COVAX during the COVID-19 pandemic.

(Airdate 10/29/2025) In this episode, Jess and Sarah welcome Dr. Seth Berkley, a leading public health expert, to examine pressing global health security challenges. The scientists explore the concerning resurgence of preventable diseases and the critical role of vaccination programs in protecting populations. Dr. Berkley shares insights on lessons learned from the COVID-19 pandemic, addressing persistent issues of vaccine inequity and hesitancy across different communities. The conversation tackles the troubling rise of anti-science legislation and the erosion of public trust in scientific institutions, while also examining the tensions between individual health freedom and collective public health responsibility. Throughout the episode, the experts offer both sobering assessments of current challenges and hopeful perspectives on future advancements in global health and scientific progress.