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Virology Down Under

Facts, data, info, expert opinion and a reasonable, occasionally grumpy, voice on viruses: what they are, how they tick and the illnesses they may cause.

Tag: science communication

Influenza vaccines do have an effect and we need to do more to understand it

Posted onAugust 1, 2018October 15, 20183 Comments

Sometimes it’s hard to convey complex issues in a short-form article written for a general public audience. Other times, stories start off with an overly-simplified title they never recover from. Occasionally they lack any Read More …

CategoriesInfluenzaTagscommunication, effectiveness, influenza, science communication, vaccination

World’s most dangerous animals set free…digitally

Posted onMarch 1, 2018June 19, 2020

You may have heard that from June 2018 onwards [1], a new mosquito emoji (from Japanese e (çµµ, “picture”) + moji (文字, “character”) [2]) will start rolling out to all Read More …

CategoriesCommunication, MosquitoTagsbacteria, communication, disease communication, emoji, mosquito, science communication, Unicode Consortium, virus

Talking Flu to a wider audience: some measures of impact

Posted onSeptember 2, 2017June 6, 2018

We keyboard warriors love to talk into our echo chambers, shill our bigPharma ideas to pay the rent on our Bell 429WLG and generally hear ourselves think out loud. So Read More …

CategoriesInfluenzaTagscommunity engagement, flu season, influenza, influenza virus, metrics, quantitation, science communication, social media, SoMe

900 words on some general stuff about viruses and those other bugs…

Posted onJuly 15, 2017July 12, 2019

We (Dr @kat_arden and I) were invited to contribute one part to a four-part series in The Conversation this week – and after a lot of no…yes/no/yes from yours truly (I do that Read More …

CategoriesCommunicationTagsSciComm, science communication, Viruses

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All opinions are my own and do not represent medical advice or the views of any institution.

All graphics made by me are free-to-use. Please just cite the particular page, blog and me. A heads-up would be nice, but that can happen later.

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Recent Posts

  • Catch them all? There are three different influenza viruses and they can co-circulate each season
  • The “Infection Pause”: because it’s about fewer infections, not an immune debt to repay
  • A Flunami in July
  • COVID-19 is a Pandemic: What if it was a Pandemic Emergency? And what are they anyway?
  • In Australia, COVID-19 deaths did decrease between 2023 and 2024, but it’s still a major killer.

All opinions are my own and do not represent medical advice or the views of any institution.

All graphics made by me are free-to-use. Please just cite the particular page, blog and me. A heads-up would be nice too but that can happen later.

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