The following resources, websites, and journal articles have been published by others (journalists, teachers, physicians, and scientists) and are included here because Dr. BuAbbud found them interesting & applicable to patient care.
Vaccines do not cause autism.
Neither does Tylenol.
Autism is as old as humanity. Many important thinkers, inventors and artists, past and present, are people who happen to have autism. Autism does include some real challenges for some people. Autism also includes some special strengths for some people. When people try to eliminate autism, this amounts to eugenics, body fascism and genocide. Hard lessons from the 20th century as far away as Nuremberg, Germany and as close as Lynchburg, Virginia remind us that humanity is a diverse mosaic of people and when we try to single out and coerce or otherwise harm any group of people, we do so at all of our peril.
Vaccines that have been approved for the public are an important public health tool that protects us all, especially the most vulnerable of us, from preventable hospitalization and death. Vaccines are arguably the most important discovery in the history of humanity in regards to protecting as well as preserving the quality of human lives. Vaccines are generally safe for almost everyone to take. If you think you may not be a good candidate for a vaccine because of a health condition you have, talk to your doctor to learn more. It is important to get all your recommended vaccines because you will be protecting more vulnerable people who are not able to get the vaccine for various reasons. Some problems have happened with vaccines in the past, the worst example being the Cutter Incident, and we learn from those incidents to make vaccines even more safe, effective and accessible.
No one is safe until everyone is safe.
Be aware of modern risks posed by soulless technology companies aspiring to be monopolies & authoritarian leaders here and abroad with imperial motives hoping to divide us & destroy our society for their short-term profits.
Struggling to process helpful information from misinformation or disinformation?
First, stay logged out of YouTube (use it only as a “guest”). YouTube is one of the largest (anti)social media sites and search engines designed to amplify outrage and disinformation to coerce your attention and behavior, so toxic unregulated technology monopolies can extract massive profits off our stolen attention and hijacked emotions.
Second, if you are using (anti)social media services like Discord, Facebook, Instagram, Telegram, TickTock, WhatsApp, & others, consider asking your real friends for their phone number or email address and delete your account. Spend your time connecting directly with people you care about, in person, on the phone, or even by video chat. Real connection is a human need exploited by cults, con artists and bad actors throughout history - technology companies abusing people seeking to fulfill this need is nothing new. Redirect your attention to engaging with and supporting your local and special-interest communities, reading, listening to audiobooks, and actually educating yourself with the resources at the bottom of this page.
Third, so-called “artificial intelligence” or large language models, perpetuate disinformation, hallucinate fake references to support disinformation (check to see if a reference is real and actually read it here), and have been designed for “engagement” (stealing your attention) at all costs. Tragic consequences include children who need real help being actively encouraged by “AI” to end their lives instead. A study that followed over 3,800 children for 4 years found that children who struggled to stop using screens (or were addicted to screens including social media use) had double the risk of suicide. [1] “AI” is not a therapist, it is not a source of scientific information, and is not really intelligent at all. Consider disabling all the “AI” functions in search engines you use like google and duckduckgo, as well as on your devices like “smart”phones, computers, laptops, tablets, “smart”watches, etc.
Fourth, podcasts can be a kind of (anti)social media. Sad clowns like Joe Rogan and bad actors like Alex Jones have profited directly or indirectly in millions of dollars by selling worthless or harmful snake oil in the form of “supplements”, by peddling misinformation that (anti)social media companies selectively promote because doing so causes outrage and steals our attention, by endorsing medications to be used off-label for conditions they have no evidence of healing, and by hosting charlatans who knowingly disinformed millions of people.
The above bad actors have contributed to anti-vaccine disinformation which resulted in at least 232,000 people in the USA dying unnecessarily of COVID 19 before September 3, 2022 because they did not receive a primary series of the safe and effectove COVID 19 vaccine. [2] The only risk of the COVID vaccine or any vaccine that has been approved as a public health measure is a rare case of anaphylaxis, or an allergic reaction that can stop the person from breathing, which is why you are asked to stay at the place you were vaccinated. at least 15 minutes so they can give you the antidote (Benadryl or diphenhydramine) if needed. No risk of the COVID 19 vaccine is worse than the risk of any condition caused by contracting COVID 19 without the benefit of a vaccine. [3, 4] Risks of adverse effects like myocarditis are at least 2 times higher and much more severe in unvaccinated people of all ages and demographics who contract COVID 19, including myocarditis. [5] Over 1,277,697 people in the USA have died of COVID 19, the largest mass-casualty in our country’s history [2], followed by the ongoing opioid epidemic (which has killed over 725,000 people in the USA)[6], the ongoing HIV/AIDS epidemic (which has killed over 700,000 people in the USA)[7], and the 1918 influenza pandemic (over 675,000 people in the USA)[8]. Hundreds of thousands more COVID 19 deaths could have been prevented by masking and social distancing measures [9] which were discouraged by misinformation and disinformation on (anti)social media, ill-intentioned podcasts and by public figures supported by bad actors across the globe who wished to see people in the USA be divided, throw away our democracy and other valued institutions and die of preventable deaths.
[2] Jia, K. M., Hanage, W. P., Lipsitch, M., Johnson, A. G., Amin, A. B., Ali, A. R., ... & Swerdlow, D. L. (2023). Estimated preventable COVID-19-associated deaths due to non-vaccination in the United States. European Journal of Epidemiology, 38(11), 1125.
[3] Cochrane Emergency and Critical Care Group, Graña, C., Ghosn, L., Evrenoglou, T., Jarde, A., Minozzi, S., ... & Boutron, I. (1996). Efficacy and safety of COVID‐19 vaccines. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, 2023(3).[4] El Sahly, H. M., Baden, L. R., Essink, B., Doblecki-Lewis, S., Martin, J. M., Anderson, E. J., ... & Miller, J. (2021). Efficacy of the mRNA-1273 SARS-CoV-2 vaccine at completion of blinded phase. New England Journal of Medicine, 385(19), 1774-1785.
[5] Woolf, S. H., Lee, J. H., Chapman, D. A., Sabo, R. T., & Zimmerman, E. (2024). Excess death rates by state during the COVID-19 pandemic: United States, 2020‒2023. American Journal of Public Health, 114(9), 882-891.[6] CDC (November 1, 2024). "Understanding the Opioid Overdose Epidemic". Overdose Prevention. Retrieved September 24, 2025.
[7]The HIV/AIDS Epidemic in the United States: The Basics - Kaiser Family Foundation[8]1918 Pandemic (H1N1 virus) - United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
[9] Bollyky, T. J., Castro, E., Aravkin, A. Y., Bhangdia, K., Dalos, J., Hulland, E. N., ... & Dieleman, J. L. (2023). Assessing COVID-19 pandemic policies and behaviours and their economic and educational trade-offs across US states from Jan 1, 2020, to July 31, 2022: an observational analysis. The Lancet, 401(10385), 1341-1360.You may ask, “Dr. BuAbbud, why do you care about all this? Aren’t you a psychiatrist and addiction medicine specialist?” Besides the obvious, it’s important to note that people with mental health and addiction diagnoses are at significantly higher risks of dying from COVID 19 or having serious consequences of COVID 19 like long COVID, new chronic mental health and physical health diagnoses, loss of employment, loss of housing, and other serious problems that may be preventable with access to vaccine and health resources. [10,11]
If recent attacks on our public health infrastructure have made it hard or impossible for you to get a vaccine, and you have a diagnosis of a mental health or addiction condition, tell your pharmacist or whomever is administering the vaccine that you have a mental health or addiction diagnosis (you don’t have to disclose which diagnosis) so you’ll have access to the vaccine. Really anyone over the age of 6 months (with very few exceptions) should be given the latest COVID 19 vaccine annually (around November each year is the best time). [12] If you think you should not be given the COVID 19 vaccine (e.g. because you had an allergic or anaphylactic reaction to a previous vaccine, or because you were infected with COVID in the past few months, or because you’ve been diagnosed with mulitsystem inflammatory syndrome), ask your medical doctor for more information before proceeding. Most people who had allergic reactions to previous vaccines can simply be monitored by a health professional for 30 minutes after subsequent vaccinations to treat any allergic reaction and refer to higher levels of care when needed.
Fifth, if you are using dating services like tinder, grinder or others to meet people, be aware that about a third of the accounts on those services are there in bad faith, made by con artists or scammers to steal your money and time by coercing your attention and emotions.
learn from experts
Use the following resources to counter disinformation (intentional lies) and misinformation (unintentional inaccuracies) you’ve encountered on (anti)social media:
Take a course or tutor a student from pre-K through 12th grade advanced placement courses for free at Khan Academy.
Take courses from MIT, Harvard, Stanford, Georgetown, Tennessee and other universities for free at EdX.
Review peer reviewed published literature in the National Library of Medicine and with Google Scholar
Listen to or watch the latest episode of This Week in Virology, and read along with links to the latest journal articles. Or tune in to any of Microbe.TV’s “Science Shows by Scientists” to learn about your immune and nervous systems, evolution, microbiology, parasitism, agriculture, engineering, public health and more!
Take a free virology course.
Search COVID 19 randomized controlled trials by medication or therapy
Follow the latest evidence about managing long COVID (PASC or post-acute sequelae of COVID)
engagE civically
Download the “Libby” app on your devices and support local libraries everywhere you can - they are a national treasure. Ditch your Audible account - you can’t take these books with you to other platforms, so you never really own them after paying for them. Ditch your Amazon account - Amazon treats its employees poorly, and acted in bad faith to coerce people to pay more and more for memberships and junk that falls apart quickly and ends up in landfills, perpetuating an endless cycle of exploitation, pollution and waste. Support local businesses instead. The owner of Amazon and Audible is a modern day robber baron who destroyed the Washington Post’s editorial independence to kowtow or capitulate in advance to an aspiring authoritarian because he wanted more than the billions of dollars he already had.
Support publicly funded independent programming on PBS and NPR. Local public radio and TV stations are often the only source of trustworthy local news, including warnings and other lifesaving information before and during disasters like Hurricane Helene. This is especially true for native and rural populations across our country. Preserve these institutions so we can preserve our collective health and well-being.
Call your local, state and federal representatives and direct them to support measures to end tech monopolies, create convenient paths for documentation, citizenship and asylum so our country can regain its place as a beacon of hope for the people of the world and recruit skilled experts from around the world to work here again, replace our current unqualified directors of Health and Human Services (HHS), Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) and Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) with credible experts who will actually protect our collective health and environment, rebuild our National Institutes of Health (NIH) which before it was destroyed in 2025 was the premier basic and medical research institution in the world, support our Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and other public health institutions, support universal public education, universal health care and other resources to counterbalance the many social determinants of ill health we suffer from in this country.
Journal articles of interest
Comments: this randomized controlled trial (RTC) shows a very specific gut microbe, Limosilactobacillus (L.) reuteri (formerly Lactobacillus reuteri) improves social behavior & function in people with autism but does not affect the severity of autism.
Comments: several different phenotypes of PASC exist and benefit from tailored management. FDA approved therapeutics like nirmatrelvir-ritonavir (Paxlovid) and vaccines (even after infection) can prevent and reduce symptoms of long COVID.
Comments: In herpes simplex virus (HSV), a virus that most of us carry, brain infection (HSV encephalitis) is associated with one of the many pathways that lead to Alzheimer Disease (AD), namely phosphorylation of the tau protein.
Comments: Shingles vaccination is associated with 20% lower risk of dementia. This is an impressive risk reduction - larger than the measured effect of any medication approved for dementia. This vaccine may prevent progression to dementia by preventing episodes of infection associated with central nervous system inflammation.
Comments: HPV vaccination after infection is associated with 72.4% remission of HPV, compared to 45.7% in unvaccinated people. HPV is a virus that most of us carry which causes various cancers including cervical cancer, as well as various head and neck cancers.
Comments: HPV vaccination is associated with significantly lower risk of head and neck cancers, including in people who use tobacco. Using nicotine in less harmful ways (pouches, lozenges, gum, inhalers, etc.) remains an important way to further reduce risks of head and neck and other cancers and medical conditions like stroke, heart attack, and vascular dementia.