COVID

Is it a badge of honor to refuse the vaccine but choose to die?

Conditions

September 13, 2021

You know that if you don’t get vaccinated and you don’t wear a mask, you potentially will die.

You go to super spreader events, big groups at beaches, football games, baseball games … loads of people laughing and clapping, and shoulder to shoulder.

Your refusal of the mask and COVID vaccination almost seems like a passage. Beating your chest. The survivor. It won’t happen to me.

Until you can’t breathe anymore. Delta doesn’t …

The most patriotic thing you can do right now is get vaccinated

Patricia McGuire, MD

Physician

September 12, 2021

I am so tired of the freedom argument with it comes to vaccines. So tired. It didn’t really hit me until I learned more about medicine, government, and public health, just how much freedom is taken for granted.

I get it. I don’t like it when people try to tell me what to do with my body. All my life, I feel like I’ve gotten an onslaught of advice or orders …

A summary of state of the art COVID treatment

Susan Levenstein, MD

Conditions

September 10, 2021

Prevention

Our most effective weapons are lockdowns, masks, distancing, ventilation and vaccination, but we can also protect close patient contacts pharmacologically. Subcutaneous REGEN-COV (Regeneron’s monoclonal antibody combo, casirivimab plus imdevimab) lowers the rate of illness by a whopping 81.4%. This has been known since April and blessed by the FDA in July, but has yet to catch on.

Outpatient therapy

A year and …

Clearing the air our kids share: a prescription for healthy schools

Erika Maria Moseson, MD

Conditions

September 8, 2021

As a pulmonary and critical care doctor and the mother of three children too young to receive a COVID-19 vaccine, life has been harrowing. At the beginning of the summer, however, I was beginning to breathe a sigh of relief. My children had been in school last spring, and by the heroic efforts of their amazing teachers and staff, completed the school year free of sickness or quarantine from COVID-19. …

A person-to-person strategy is needed in the pandemic war

David Galinsky, MD

Physician

September 6, 2021

In June 2020, I wrote a short piece about the COVID vaccine that turned out to be prophetic. I said that the vaccine’s immunity might wane over time, that there might be bothersome side effects immediately, and that the public might ignore social distancing and mask-wearing once they were vaccinated. I worried that there would be political pressures to focus more on the economy than on public health.

And I wrote, …

Obi-Wan Kenobi and Charles Darwin have a COVID conversation

Tomi Mitchell, MD

Conditions

September 3, 2021

By now, many of you would have read my article, “Who needs scientists? It’s not like we listen to them anyway.” So, let me tell you another fiction story. But, first, I need to give you some background to this story.

Many of you would know about the theory of evolution by natural selection and how it explains the diversity we see today. It’s an excellent idea, and …

Physicians have gone from being heroes to villains

Lisa Cronk, MD

Physician

September 2, 2021

I am exhausted.

Mentally, emotionally, physically.

I fear we are reaching our breaking point. We have run a marathon, hoping that we were nearing the finish line as we saw numbers decline in June, only to be told to lace up our sneakers and start over.

Work in outpatient pediatrics is always busy in the summer – seeing our patients for school and sports physicals, marveling at how much they’ve grown since we …

Rage Against the Machine: This song is mine, and it’s how I heal

Amy Cowan, MD

Physician

September 2, 2021

“F—- you! I won’t do what you tell me!” the lyrics blare into my teenage ears, as I lip-synch to the rock band Rage Against the Machine’s song Killing In the Name. It’s 1992, and my Walkman is attached to the waistband of my Seattle Blues. It would take at least a decade to fully understand the meaning of those lyrics. Nearly thirty years later, this line …

From advocate to adversary: How COVID-19 has changed the doctor-patient relationship

Nida Zakiullah, MD

Physician

September 1, 2021

Ask any physician how they are doing today, and you’ll probably hear some version of frustrated, tired, and sad. It’s not the lump-in-your-throat type sadness. It’s that my-mind-and-soul-are-tired sadness. The feeling you have when all you can see is the conflict and the angst that seems to fill the world right now. The feeling that the world is burning and we are powerless to stop it.

I am a physician who …

A perspective on comorbidities and severity of illness in children with COVID-19

David Epstein, MD

Conditions

August 30, 2021

“Children don’t get as sick with COVID-19” and “only children with comorbidities get very sick from COVID-19” are two statements that have concerned me during the pandemic. They have been used as statements to support loosening COVID-19 prevention measures for children, like wearing masks, and rationalizing arguments opposing vaccinating children against COVID-19. It is true that children, for the most part, do not get as sick from COVID-19. Nevertheless, while …

If I already had COVID, do I need the vaccine?

John Kitsteiner, MD

Conditions

August 29, 2021

I used to think, “I had COVID. I don’t need a vaccine… not for now at least, and maybe not ever.”

November 2020: I was a few hours into my 12-hour shift in the emergency department. I had been treating COVID at every shift for about 10 months at that point, and I knew what I was feeling now was more than just fatigue. I took a swab and went into …

The COVID killing fields

Debbie Moore-Black, RN

Conditions

August 29, 2021

I go to the hospital cafeteria to unwind from this night — another unpredictable one with irrational patients that randomly attempt to assault the staff.

This time, they missed. Behavioral health. Land of the psychotics and schizophrenics. But an incredible staff to work with.
This song blares out. “Easy Like Sunday Morning.” And I know that nothing is “easy” anymore.

I’ve heard it all about COVID vaccinations:

“It’s my body.”

“It’s not FDA-approved.”

“I have natural …

Read more…

The COVID killing fields

The vaccine is not the enemy. COVID is.

Michele Luckenbaugh

Conditions

August 24, 2021

I’m confused and disillusioned. When we were in the throes of the COVID pandemic at the beginning of this year, the talk revolved around when life-saving vaccines would become available for the general public. Thankfully, beginning during the first quarter of this year and continuing through present times, the COVID vaccine is being administered to all who wish to secure it. But unfortunately, in many states across our country, some …

Read more…

The vaccine is not the enemy. COVID is.

The fifth column brings a fifth wave

Steven Teitelbaum, MD and Nina Shapiro, MD

Conditions

August 23, 2021

U.S. COVID deaths have surpassed U.S. war deaths from World War II, Vietnam, and Korea. The unvaccinated are a fifth column that has ushered in a wave of nasty COVID variant infections in the United States, with their attendant deaths, costs, and disruptions to society. We need to stop debating the tone in which we address the unvaccinated and label their sabotage for what it is. We need to start …

Read more…

The fifth column brings a fifth wave

Who needs scientists? It’s not like we listen to them anyway.

Tomi Mitchell, MD

Physician

August 21, 2021

But seriously, who needs scientists? It’s not like we listen to researchers or pay attention to the warnings. The world is burning up with record ground-breaking temperatures. These so-called scientists predicted these warnings decades ago, with great details. Who do they think they are? They got lucky! They are fear mongers and not to be believed. Look at the fake media! Landslides, earthquakes, fires, flooding, drought, and the list goes …

The Delta variant is a monster and our last weapon is the unvaccinated

Anita Vijayakumar, MD

Conditions

August 19, 2021

Oh, how the tide has turned. Three months ago, COVID was ravaging my homeland, India. The Delta variant was burning through the country like an uncontrolled wildfire. People carted dying relatives town to town, desperately seeking hospital beds or a whiff of oxygen. A cousin in India said, “COVID is not taking lives, just the beds. Lack of oxygen is taking lives.”

I watched India’s suffering unfold and felt guilty for …

Is it ethical to force unvaccinated patients to use telehealth only?

Jacob M. Appel, MD, JD, MPH

Physician

August 17, 2021

COVID-19 has raised many ethical challenges for health care providers, including the level of risk they must take when providing patient care. Early in the pandemic, the ability to mitigate these risks was relatively limited, especially when caring for hospitalized patients. Shortages of personal protective equipment rendered mitigation even more challenging.

As a result, it has been reported that 3,607 frontline health care workers died of COVID-19 in the U.S. from …

I’m vaccinated and positive for COVID-19

Alison Yarp, MD, MPH

Conditions

August 16, 2021

I just tested positive for COVID-19.

I was vaccinated earlier this year.

I am scared.

I am confident I will get through this.

I received two doses of the Pfizer vaccine earlier this year, and I just tested positive for COVID-19. It’s almost comical that I am positive now. I worked as a resident physician in the hospital from the beginning, during the first surge, and through August 2020. Since then, I have been …

Sorry, I’m fed up. It’s not professional, but I am.

Alan Johns, MD

Physician

August 14, 2021

“It’s experimental.”

“It alters your DNA.”

“It may cause long-term problems.”

“It’s too new, too rushed. I want more time.”

I hear this nonsense from patients all day.

None are docs, virologists, microbiologists, immunologists, public health officials, medical researchers, nor intensive care docs. COVID can kill them in a particularly unpleasant way; with 99 percent+ effectiveness, the vaccine prevents them from dying from COVID, but they still recite a litany of scientifically illiterate reasons for …

Delta surge warning: Ignoring jaw pain comes at too high a price

Dr. Soumya Padala

Conditions

August 14, 2021

As surges of the Delta variant alarm officials and citizens in this country and around the world, while the cases of COVID-19 have reached more than 200 million worldwide, a less visible threat re-emerges.

If health care professionals are not allowed to perform non-emergency procedures, as was the case in 2020, patients suffering with chronic pain such as jaw pain, may be left helpless.

The COVID-19 …

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