It’s time for another double-feature email. First let me run through the latest shocks that the Trump administration has inflicted on American science and medicine. All the spectacle in the news these days can make it easy to miss how dire a state we’ve ended up in. And then I’ll pivot to happier personal news about podcasts and more AIR-BORNE fun.

—Measles (a quintessential airborne disease, by the way) is having a moment in the United States. An outbreak in the west Texas region has reached at least 159 cases, with more cases popping up as far away as New York. One child died of measles in Texas, and a second person has died with measles in New Mexico. The second death is still being investigated.

—HHS Secretary Robert Kennedy initially brushed off the outbreak, calling it “not unusual.” It is unusual. The last time someone died of measles in the United States was 2015. And the time before that was 2003. Now we may have had two deaths in little over a week. Kennedy then offered lukewarm encouragement for measles vaccination. He also suggested taking cod liver oil.

—Meanwhile Kennedy canceled a flu vaccine meeting to select strains for next season.

—The Trump administration continues to stall funding for biomedical research, despite a court ruling. It has also stopped considering new grant applications, which will halt further research on diseases such as cancer and Alzheimer’s.

—The courts have ruled that NIH must unlock much of their funding. On March 5, a judge issued a preliminary injunction blocking the government from slashing payments for research overhead.

—But in apparent violation of the courts, the NIH is going beyond freezing applications and such. It is terminating approved and active grants that touch on LGBT+ health, gender identity, and DEI.

—In response to these cuts, universities are freezing their admissions of graduate students. Grad students and postdocs are gripped with anxiety and fear.

—The destruction of USAID could mean the end of PEPFAR, a program that has prevented 25 million deaths from HIV since its inception. Without it, South African health experts predict half a million people may die in that country alone. A whistleblower warned that shutting down USAID programs will lead to millions more malaria infections and 200,000 cases of paralytic polio each year.

—The destruction of USAID also means that a new drug that might help end the HIV epidemic won’t be rolled out. “There’s despondency and a sense of tragedy,” one of the drug’s creators told Wired.

—The USAID freeze has also halted efforts to develop an effective HIV vaccine.

—The Trump administration is throttling conservation efforts. Among mass layoffs of conservation biologists, the scientists who have been bringing the black-footed ferret back from extinction have been fired. The president has directed agencies to bypass protections for endangered species to ramp up logging on public land.

—The White House is reportedly seeking to cut NASA’s Science Mission Directorate—the program that has sent probes to Mars and Pluto, that launched the spectacularly successful James Webb Space Telescope—by as much as 50 percent. One expert told Ars Technica that the cut would be “nothing short of an extinction-level event for space science and exploration in the United States.”

—Meteorologists and climate scientists have been laid off by the hundreds at NOAA. The Trump administration is moving to cancel leases on the building where NOAA puts together national weather forecasts.

—The Trump administration has severely damaged the country’s ability to respond to climate change, with effects that could last generations.

AIR-BORNE ON RADIOLAB AND MORE

All of this news hung like a pall over the launch of AIR-BORNE. Still, it’s been gratifying to meet with so many readers and share something I’ve been working on for the past few years. Last Tuesday, Jad Abumrad and I had a great time at 92NY in New York talking about miasmas and stratospheric spores.

You can watch videos of a couple AIR-BORNE events online. Here is my talk last Wednesday at Harvard, where I was able to see a rare relic of aerobiology: a Wells Air Centrifuge. The Harvard Crimson wrote an article about my talk, including my comments on the scientific chaos in the US.

Here is a talk I gave Tuesday at the Westport Library in Connecticut, and here is an online Q&A at the Commonwealth Club.

On the podcast front, it was a delight to return to Radiolab to talk about the book with hosts Latif Nasser and Lulu Miller. I also spoke on podcasts with Eric Topol and Tyler Cowen.

Smithsonian published an excerpt that offers a taste of the book: “A Brief and Amazing History of Our Search for Life in the Clouds.”

Reviews are coming out, too. The Associated Press called AIR-BORNE “gripping.” In Science, Nathan Lents write, “The final three chapters of AIR-BORNE constitute the most comprehensive scientific history of COVID-19 that I have read. Informed by personal interviews with many top officials, physicians, and scientists, Zimmer’s reporting is equal parts riveting and infuriating.” Science News calls it “an immense pleasure.”

There’s more to come! I’ll be heading to New York, Portland, Washington DC, and more places in the weeks to come. You can see my full schedule here.

STORIES OF ELEPHANT-BONE AXES AND OTHER WONDERS

I’ve written about some cool non-airborne science in the past few weeks. Here are gift links:

“Trove of Ancient Axes Shows Early Humans Made Tools From Bones”

“Early Humans Thrived in Rainforests”

“Trillions of Viruses Live in Your Body. A.I. Is Trying to Find Them”

“The Gene That Made Mice Squeak Strangely”

“Ancient DNA Points to Origins of Indo-European Language”

That’s all for now. Stay safe!

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