Saturday Longforms: Ebola, foreign aid, congenital syphilis, HIV and AI
June 20, 2026
Hope all had a good Juneteenth. Here are a few longform articles (and other media) for your weekend perusal.
I’m on family vacation next week, so my next post will be on June 29.
Thanks for reading!
A. Rovina’s Choice shows the impact of discontinuing US AID
Atul Gawande is an executive producer and narrator of Rovina’s Choice, a 22-minute documentary nominated for an Academy Award. The film follows a South Sudanese single mother as she struggles to find food and medical care for her family in the midst of US foreign aid cuts. Gawande is also interviewed on the podcast Stay Tuned with Preet (Bharara), where he adds detail and talks about GLP-1s, too.
B. AI is already taking over hospitals and insurance plans
Ben Mazer writes in The Atlantic that AI chatbots are everywhere. They are not always giving the right answer, and they are almost never regulated. In a related story, John Tozzi of Bloomberg reported this week that United Healthcare has AI bots calling physician offices for appointments. (Gift Link)
C. When the numbers go quiet, the virus doesn’t
Former CDC Director Tom Frieden writes in his Substack The Formula that untested laboratory samples mean that untested laboratory samples mean the Ebola count is being understated.
D. Congenital syphilis cases on the rise due to penicillin shortage
A congenital syphilis case is what hospitals call a ‘never event’ -- a preventable harm so serious it should never occur, like operating on the wrong patient. Congenital syphilis can lead to miscarriage, infant death, brain damage, blindness and deafness. Bicillin, the long-acting penicillin used to treat syphilis in pregnancy, is in severe shortage, and Eric Boodman of StatNews reports that confusion on accessing emergency supplies from Pfizer has meant that babies were born without being treated.
E. Eliminating HIV transmission is falling out of our reach
During Donald Trump’s first term, public health officials and politicians were optimistic that HIV infections could drop to close to zero with effective drug therapy and education. Approval of an annual pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) medication increased optimism. Alice Miranda Ollstein and Megan Messerly of Politico Magazine explain how this goal is falling out of our reach.
I’ll be back in your feed on June 29. Hope you have a happy Spring Solstice.
Animal photo:
Iguana at the Wackadohatchee Preserve in Delray Beach, FL in April, 2026
