COVID-19 pandemic

I’m a doctor in a family of COVID deniers

Nicholas Stark, MD, MBA

May 26, 2020May 26, 202024

I am the only physician in a family of farmers. As I witness the pandemic’s devastating health consequences from the frontlines, I feel a fundamental responsibility to share my experience and advice with my loved ones to keep them safe. However, I find myself battling COVID-denial propaganda at every turn. Even my years of medical training have not endowed

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Dr. Li Wenliang is my hero

Lou Rotkowitz, MD

May 26, 2020May 26, 20203

On December 30, 2019, Li Wenliang sent a message to a group of fellow doctors warning them about a possible outbreak of an illness that resembled severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) in Wuhan, Hubei province, China, where he worked. Meant to be a preemptive confidential message, he encouraged his colleagues to protect themselves against possible infection. When the local authorities became aware of his report, they summoned Dr. Li to …

Dr. Li Wenliang is my hero

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It took a pandemic to reveal the secret of health care workers

Sarah Araji, MD

May 26, 2020May 26, 2020

It took a pandemic to reveal the “secret.” It took a pandemic to realize the importance of health care workers. Ironic, isn’t it? It took a pandemic to know what doctors, nurses, respiratory therapists, laboratory technicians, and environmental services personnel…

It took a pandemic to reveal the “secret.”

It took a pandemic to realize the importance of health care workers. Ironic, isn’t it? It took a pandemic to know what doctors, nurses, respiratory therapists, laboratory technicians, and environmental services personnel go through every day. Yes, this is what they do every day. Surprise, surprise!

Every day we head to work early in the morning sometimes before

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This isn’t the time for bombastic tributes to health care workers

Mara Divis, DO

May 25, 2020May 25, 2020

The Blue Angels have awed generations with tight aerial choreography and the sonic roar that heralds their aerobatics. No doubt millions have felt patriotic goosebumps watching their technical mastery at summer air shows. Last week, as the fighter jets tore over an emotionally strained Chicago, with the stated intent of paying tribute to health care workers and first responders, I felt only a pit of hard anger.

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Cancer patients are social distancing while dying

Leo Nissola, MD

May 25, 2020May 25, 2020

Cancer patients have seen the world collapsing before their eyes, and then comes a pandemic. The American Society of Clinical Oncology estimates that this year there will be five thousand new cases of cancer per day in the United States,…

The novel coronavirus will probably be with us for years, having lacerated communities and destroyed …

Azfar Hossain & Louise Ivers, MD, MPH

Ensuring equity of a COVID-19 vaccine

May 25, 2020May 25, 2020

Recently, the White House unveiled its ambitious plan to develop a coronavirus vaccine before year’s end. While many immediately questioned the feasibility of this timeline, we worry that not enough attention has gone to a different but equally important concern:…

Once we have a vaccine that works, who around the world will actually get to use it?

In our roles treating patients

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Ensuring equity of a COVID-19 vaccine

Reflecting on Elmhurst Hospital: past, present, and future

Eric Bressman, MD

May 25, 2020May 25, 2020

Elmhurst 2014 I first arrived at Elmhurst Hospital in Queens, NY, in the summer of 2014 as a medical student on my surgery rotation. We would take occasional night shifts as part of the trauma team. It was the first…

Elmhurst 2014

I first arrived at Elmhurst Hospital in Queens, NY, in the summer of 2014 as a medical student on my surgery rotation. We would take occasional night shifts as part of the trauma team. It was the first time I held a pager. Code yellow meant hurry; code red meant run. One of our first patients was a code red, a young man, not much older than I am now, …

COVID-19 is not a Chinese virus, nor an Asian virus. It is a human virus.

Katharine Liang, MD

May 24, 2020May 24, 202010

“Chinese virus.” The term shocked me the first time I heard it, and since then, racial slurs and hate crimes against Asian Americans have broken out across the country. Dr. Clara Lee, a pediatrician in New Jersey, recalls, “At the grocery store, I got strange, accusatory looks; for wearing a mask or for being Asian?” Says Dr. Richard Chung, a pediatrician …

A pediatric hematologist explains multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children

Akshat Jain, MD

May 24, 2020May 24, 2020

The recent pandemic has confined people all over the world to the indoors to try to keep the virus from spreading. Older adults have been the most commonly affected age group with the virus, but more recently, a strange presentation…

New York City first reported 15 similar cases that occurred between April 16 and May 4 for the first time in the United States. …

I’m ready for the change COVID-19 will bring

Lochan Shah, MD

May 24, 2020May 24, 2020

I am a graduating fourth-year medical student and new internal medicine resident — one of many newly minted physicians that will be thrown into the frontline to take care of COVID-19 patients in a little over a month. It’s a strange time to be graduating – we have spent years training to get to this point, yet celebrating is the last thing on our minds as we gear up for …

Health policy

COVID exposed this state’s mangled health care system

Dr. Meg Hansen

May 24, 2020May 24, 2020

When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, it revealed a troubling paradox in Vermont's healthscape. Monopoly-creating laws and regulations (like the Affordable Care Act and the Certificate of Need program) have artificially reduced the state’s health facilities and resources. Vermonters must contend…

When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, it revealed a troubling paradox in Vermont’s healthscape. Monopoly-creating laws and regulations (like the Affordable Care Act and the Certificate of Need program) have artificially reduced the state’s health facilities and resources. Vermonters must contend with fewer hospitals and ambulatory surgical centers, and reduced access to medical imaging technology. On the one hand, …

Drugs and prescribing

Are there reasons to doubt remdesivir?

Daniel Hopkins, MD

May 23, 2020May 23, 20202

On April 29th Anthony Fauci announced the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, an institute he runs, had completed a study of the antiviral remdesivir for COVID-19. The drug reduced time to recovery from 15 to 11 days, he said, a breakthrough proving “a drug can block this virus.” Now people are clamoring for $1,000-a-pill remdesivir.

While the results were preliminary, unpublished, and unconfirmed by …

Are there reasons to doubt remdesivir?

Vulnerability gives us strength in a time when so much seems beyond our control

Erica Gillette, MD

May 23, 2020May 23, 2020

I pull my car into the garage and exhale wearily. I’ve just finished rounds at the hospital, including PUIs for COVID-19. I’m lucky. I get a new N95 every day, but still, I’ve seen the steady reports of diligent physicians getting infected, so I know I must be careful. I strip off my scrubs in the garage and put them straight into the washer. I go straight to the shower, …

A physician wedding in the age of COVID

Toby Terwilliger, MD

May 23, 2020May 23, 2020

April 2020 was to be a month of personal milestones. I would be traveling to Mexico with sixty closest friends and family to marry the woman of my dreams. Twelve days later, I would celebrate my thirtieth birthday. Suffice it…

But that was before COVID. Before all eyes were focused on the novel …

A physician wedding in the age of COVID

I have discovered the immense strength it takes to be vulnerable

Shweta Akhouri, MD

May 23, 2020May 23, 2020

As I sit through another meeting discussing our facility’s preparedness for COVID-19, my mind circles back to my infant at home. Husband and I are both frontline physicians, fully aware we may need to take on more shifts and responsibilities. Do I have a COVID-19 preparedness plan for my family? What will I do if our baby’s caretaker doesn’t want to expose herself to our ‘high-risk’ home? Why isn’t anyone …

A digital vaccination scar for the 21st century

Kumanan Wilson, MD

May 23, 2020May 23, 20202

In the 1800s, smallpox ravaged the world. Fortunately, a vaccine had been developed that could protect individuals. This vaccine left a scar at the site of injection and identified the individuals as “immune.” As we look towards the future of…

As we look towards the future of the COVID-19 pandemic, unless the virus burns out or an effective therapeutic intervention becomes available, the only way out of our current situation will be immunity –

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Cause unknown: the burden of diagnosis

Lala Tanmoy Das

May 22, 2020May 22, 20204

Around three weeks ago, my 72-year-old patient, Mr. J., woke up feeling severely short of breath. He felt unusually tired, noticed a dry cough, and felt achy in his arms and legs. Suspicious of COVID-19, he and his wife called…

At first, the doctors too thought it was COVID-19. However, a chest X-ray, CT scan, and a series of …

Cause unknown: the burden of diagnosis

How this ophthalmology resident contributes during COVID-19 pandemic

Cesar A. Alfaro, MD

May 22, 2020May 22, 2020

A call to arms The thought never crossed my mind that as an ophthalmology resident, I would play a direct role in treating patients with this novel virus. The rapidity with which the virus had spread would become a poignant…

A call to arms

The thought never crossed my mind that as an ophthalmology resident, I would play a direct role in treating patients with this novel virus. The rapidity with which the virus had spread would become a poignant reminder of the lethality of pandemics. In a few short weeks of the first COVID patient arriving in NYC, increasing social distancing measures were taken as the city’s hospitals became overwhelmed. …