Frances Daily

34 yrs as a doctor with experience in GP, ID, IPC, AMS/AMR, public health,MCH, medical & other health education- mostly in LMIC.Gardener, traveler, nature lover

[Frances Daily @Frances__Daily]

@Engineer_Wong Sorry Adam that is awful. I hope you have alot of good memories that you can now reflect on. May he RIP. condolences to you and all your family

[Frances Daily @Frances__Daily]

@MackayIM What about long covid effects? Seems like some cherry picking in this article

[Outbreak News Today @bactiman63]

#SriLanka #dengue total tops 52,000 https://t.co/HYLgtcQ93e

[Frances Daily @Frances__Daily]

@MackayIM Why haven't we learned to mitigate the risk? We can avoid infections by improving ventilation, air filters, not meeting others when sick, masking etc. There are both immediate and longer term consequences from many infections. Pandemic hasn't resulted in being smarter. Sigh

[Frances Daily @Frances__Daily]

@maffygirl Oh I remember it well and my friends father even drove us to the hotel they were staying after the concert on Dequeteville Tce. Of course we never got to meet them but my father would never have done such a thing!!

[Dr Tracy Westerman AM @TracyWesterman]

The media has not bothered to thoroughly fact check Hansons National Press Club address so I’ve done it for them. 18 false and / or misleading statements. John Paul Janke was the journalist who pushed back on her claims and Sarah Martin questioned her about her daughters position as campaign advisor (rightly so) and was called a “trashy journalist” by Hanson and told she would be banned from future pressers. Nothing else was challenged by the so called journalists in attendance and she continues to be unchallenged on the facts in every interview she sits.

[Frances Daily @Frances__Daily]

@TheDohertyInst @Fla_Medic @DuckSwabber Thanks for info. Great to know

[Doherty Institute @TheDohertyInst]

On Saturday the first case of high pathogenicity avian influenza (HPAI) H5N1 was confirmed in Australia. What does this mean for our wildlife population? Origin, transmission and prevention measures explained by experts.
https://t.co/aVl0b8C2Jn
@DuckSwabber

[Frances Daily @Frances__Daily]

@Globalbiosec @ConversationEDU Nice explainer @Globalbiosec thanks

[Raina MacIntyre @Globalbiosec]

What’s the risk of humans getting sick from bird flu? Our summary of the #H5N1 situation in Australia. https://t.co/ujkZNQq5PZ via @ConversationEDU

[Frances Daily @Frances__Daily]

@CharlieHorseToy Just more whinging no real improvements. In fact likely the opposite

[Frances Daily @Frances__Daily]

@DrRebeccaRyan @surf4children Also interested to know

[Frances Daily @Frances__Daily]

@trentconsultant @TheReSisters2 @DrLKVaughan @micmicmic1 Totally dangerous and unrealistic. Let her be the guinea pig

[Frances Daily @Frances__Daily]

@ukhadds Thanks as always Al. Great to read. Sadly many of our colleagues continue to deny the possibility of airborne infection for numerous pathogens. Yet they are usually not on the first line......... Being so dogmatic about it is harmful to many

[Frances Daily @Frances__Daily]

@ozgal1965 Really sorry to read all of this but good on you for being assertive. I'm horrified as a doctor what has happened to health system in Australia. Truly shocking. Wishing you all the very best

[Dr Tracy Westerman AM @TracyWesterman]

The Sanewashing of Hanson Is at Its Peak.
This is how Trump came to power: platform the lies, skip the follow-up, let the headlines call it “proving her critics wrong.”
We are all watching it happen in real time.
At the National Press Club, Pauline Hanson said the following. Not one claim was challenged by the so called journalists in attendance and she continues to be unchallenged on the facts in every interview she sits.
-1. Unlike the Prime Minister, I welcome scrutiny.” Hypocritical. In the same speech she announced she refuses ABC interviews, will scrap the SBS, & will make the ABC subscription-only. The event allowed 2 hours; standard format gives 25–30 mins for the address. She spoke for 50-halving the time left for questions. When Guardian journalist Sarah Martin used that remaining time to ask about her daughter's $150,000 taxpayer-funded advisor role, Hanson called her “a trashy journalist” and banned her from all future press conferences.
• “Babies are aborted the day before birth.” Fabricated. Late-term abortion is highly restricted, requires medical approval, and occurs only in genuine medical emergencies.
• “Interest rates are heading towards 10%.” False. RBA cash rate: 4.35%. Forecast to fall, not rise.
• “There’s no gender pay gap — just women taking time off.” False. WGEA confirms the gap exists at equal hours, equal roles, regardless of career breaks.
• “$30B a year on Indigenous programs.” False. Only 18% (~$5.6B) is Indigenous-specific. The rest is the Indigenous share of mainstream services every Australian uses.
• Transgender people were compared to “militant Islam.” False and dangerous. ABS data: transgender and gender-diverse Australians make up 1% of the pop’n. There’s no body of research showing transgender ppl commit crime at elevated rates-in fact it shows transgender people are dramatically more likely to be victims of violence— assault, sexual violence, and homicide rates against trans people are well above general population rates in most studies (US, UK, and Aust data all show this pattern)
• “23% of Australians can’t speak English.” False. That 23% speak another language at home — most are bilingual. Limited English proficiency: just 3.2%.
• “The CEFC has had $200 billion.” False by a factor of six. Actual legislated capacity: $33 billion.
• “I care about the homeless and hungry.” Hypocritical. In the same speech, she backed cuts to Indigenous-specific funding — despite Aboriginal homelessness running up to 10 times higher than the non-Indigenous rate.
• $90 billion in cuts, no plan. ~$35 billion of it remains unaccounted for. No modelling.
• “I support worker rights.” False. Voted against minimum wage increases, penalty rates, criminalising wage theft, casual conversion rights, same job same pay, and the right to disconnect. Took a $100,000 pay rise while voting against a tax break for low-paid workers
• Called Australian workers “lazy.” She has attended just 12% of Senate estimates since 2016 & 53% of parliamentary votes. Paid over $200k a year
• Labor have let immigration get out of control.” False. Net overseas migration has fallen every year since the post-COVID peak in 2022-23 — 538,000 → 446,000 → 306,000 in 2024-25. She also recycled a 26-year-old ABS pop’n projection as a fresh “next 50 years” forecast

Said: This beautiful country belongs to all Australians born here and those who have joined us”- in her opening line; then spent the next 50 minutes demanding a monocultural society, comparing transgender Australians to militant Islam, inflating migration and language figures, denying the gender pay gap, and repeating the debunked $30 billion Indigenous funding myth. Welcomed everyone in the first sentence. Spent the rest of the speech defining most of them out — and offered no plan to fix anything she raised, only $90 billion in cuts.
Not one follow-up question. No source data on a single figure in the entire speech. This is what unchallenged looks like.
/2 sources

[Margie Jones @MargieJay50]

All women.

Apparently, upon entering @PressClubAust all male journalists had their spines removed.

#auspol

[Frances Daily @Frances__Daily]

@gasugasu1984 Hmm ominous

[Frances Daily @Frances__Daily]

@IntegralAnswers Very sad her sisters husband anti HPV vaccine. Astonishing https://t.co/CcYaNtxj1w his SIL history

[Afshine Emrani MD FACC @afshineemrani]

I'm a cardiologist. Your dentist may be protecting your heart — and most doctors still aren't connecting these dots.
The American Heart Association just updated its scientific statement on periodontal disease and cardiovascular risk for the first time in 13 years. Their conclusion: the association between gum disease and heart attack, stroke, heart failure, and atrial fibrillation is stronger than previously recognized.
42% of American adults over 30 have periodontitis right now. Most have no idea it's affecting anything beyond their mouth.
Let me explain what's actually happening inside your body when your gums bleed.
Your mouth contains over 700 species of bacteria. When gums become infected and inflamed — the chronic condition we call periodontitis — the tissue barrier between your mouth and your bloodstream breaks down. Bacteria pour through. Not occasionally. Continuously. Every time you chew, every time you brush inflamed gums, bacteria enter systemic circulation.
One organism in particular should concern you: Porphyromonas gingivalis. I've written about it before in the context of Alzheimer's disease — it crosses the blood-brain barrier and has been found in the brains of Alzheimer's patients at autopsy. But it doesn't stop at the brain.
P. gingivalis has been found inside atherosclerotic plaques — the exact lesions I treat in the cath lab. It has been recovered from the arterial walls of heart attack and stroke patients. It is not a bystander. It is an active participant in the disease that kills more people than any other cause on earth.
Here's the cascade.
Bacteria from infected gums enter the bloodstream and trigger chronic systemic inflammation — elevated hsCRP, elevated IL-6, activated immune cells circulating throughout your vascular system. This inflammation damages the endothelium — the delicate inner lining of your arteries — promoting plaque formation, increasing oxidative stress, and shifting your blood toward a pro-clotting state.
The same inflammatory highway I've been writing about for months — connecting the gut to the brain to the heart — runs directly through your mouth. Your gums are the gateway. And for 42% of American adults, that gateway is wide open.
The AHA's updated statement highlights findings that should stop you:
The association between periodontitis and atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease is independent of shared risk factors like smoking, diabetes, and obesity in multiple studies. This isn't just "people with bad habits have both problems." The gum disease itself appears to contribute independently.
Brushing frequency alone shows a striking relationship with cardiac risk. Data from the NHANES registry found that brushing three or more times per day was associated with a 10-year ASCVD risk of 7.35% — compared to 13.7% for brushing once daily or less. Nearly half the cardiovascular risk — associated with how often you brush your teeth.
Treating periodontitis improves systemic inflammatory markers — hsCRP, the same marker I tell every patient to test — and improves intermediate cardiovascular measures including blood pressure and HDL cholesterol.
The more severe the gum disease, the stronger the observed cardiovascular risk.
I want to connect this to the bigger picture I've been building on this platform — because the convergence is now impossible to ignore.
P. gingivalis in the brain — linked to Alzheimer's through gingipain-mediated destruction of tau proteins and preferential attack on ApoE4 carriers.
P. gingivalis in atherosclerotic plaques — linked to heart attack and stroke through chronic inflammation, endothelial damage, and plaque destabilization.
Gut dysbiosis sending misfolded proteins up the vagus nerve — linked to Parkinson's through the same inflammatory pathways.
Insulin resistance starving both the heart and the brain simultaneously.
Chronic inflammation as the common thread — measured by hsCRP, driven by metabolic dysfunction, oral infection, gut permeability, and visceral fat.
Your mouth, your gut, your heart, and your brain are not separate systems treated by separate doctors in separate buildings. They share the same inflammatory highway. And the American Heart Association just confirmed that the mouth is one of the most important on-ramps.
What you can do — starting today:
Floss daily. Not optional. Not cosmetic. This disrupts the anaerobic biofilm where P. gingivalis thrives. If you do nothing else from this post, do this.
Brush at least twice daily — three times if you can. The cardiovascular data on brushing frequency alone is striking.
See your dentist every 3-6 months. Do not skip cleanings. Do not ignore bleeding gums — bleeding means the barrier is broken and bacteria are entering your blood.
Consider tongue scraping — it reduces bacterial load in the oral cavity.
If you have periodontitis, treat it aggressively. This is not a dental issue. It is a cardiovascular risk factor.
Get your hsCRP tested. If it's elevated, your mouth is one of the first places to investigate — along with gut health, metabolic function, and visceral fat.
The most fascinating thing about this entire body of science is what it implies:
One of the highest-ROI cardiovascular interventions available to any human being — free, available tonight, requiring no prescription and no doctor's visit — is flossing your teeth.
It's not glamorous. It will never go viral the way a new drug does. But the American Heart Association just dedicated an entire scientific statement to telling you that your gums and your arteries are connected — and that treating one may protect the other.
Your mouth is the gateway to your heart. Treat it that way.