Katelyn K. Jetelina

5 days ago | yourlocalepidemiologist.substack.com | Katelyn K. Jetelina |Hannah Totte

Happy June! We’re nearly halfway through the year. Phew. This week’s edition of The Dose is a bit packed—partly because we took last week off, and partly because, well, a lot is happening. We’re covering everything from Covid-19 (variants, summer wave concerns, and vaccine eligibility confusion) to a Salmonella outbreak tied to cucumbers, the MAHA report, and more. A lot is happening in the Covid-19 world. Here are 4 updates for you: 1. Transmission and a summer wave.

1 week ago | yourlocalepidemiologist.substack.com | Katelyn K. Jetelina

Given the current health and policy landscape, I’ll be sharing a different kind of post on Fridays—more reflective, less data-heavy. As I wrote in My Promise To You back in February, YLE will always stay grounded in evidence. But Friday reflections are where I’ll share my perspectives, distinguishing where the data ends and opinions begin. This week, the dismantling of science and our health infrastructure continued—at a pace that’s both gobsmacking and grimly impressive.

2 weeks ago | yourlocalepidemiologist.substack.com | Katelyn K. Jetelina

Yesterday, the FDA Commissioner, Marty Makary, and his new advisor, Vinay Prasad, unveiled a major shift in U.S. Covid-19 vaccine policy—via a New England Journal of Medicineperspective piece and a live FDA event. Their bottom line: Going forward, Covid-19 vaccines will only be recommended for people over 65 or with at least one chronic condition. If manufacturers want to offer updated vaccines to younger adults, they must run a new placebo-controlled trial after a variant arrives.

3 weeks ago | yourlocalepidemiologist.substack.com | Katelyn K. Jetelina |Aaron S. Kesselheim

It’s outrageous how much we pay for brand-name drugs in the U.S. An EpiPen is $600 here and just $67 in the U.K. On Monday, the administration dropped an executive order to tackle drug costs. This issue is wildly confusing (sometimes I think that’s on purpose), but that doesn’t make it less important—drug prices shape the lives of millions of Americans. So, I partnered with Dr. Aaron S.

3 weeks ago | yourlocalepidemiologist.substack.com | Katelyn K. Jetelina

It’s been five years of Your Local Epidemiologist. Five years! What started as an email thread to faculty and staff became an international newsletter with over 370,000 subscribers. And to my utter disbelief, it’s stillgrowing. For the last few years, I wondered how to sustain YLE beyond an international health emergency. Your insight was crucial into understanding how. And I would say we were successful in doing this! But every year, new challenges arise. This year, public health has been hit hard.