Essential clinician commentary on COVID-19 coronavirus from the KevinMD community.
As Pandora’s box of coronavirus opened in 2020, it engulfed our planet into an abysmal nightmare. As darkness fell, those of us in medicine sought refuge under a lamp called “knowledge” that sparked its flame from scientific evidence. But what if medicine and life itself were being written in real-time on a clean slate?
From the get-go, the medical world switched up its protective parental gear.
Moral responsibility got perceived as heroism. …
I recently had a good (albeit unexpected) cry and figured out that I have been in an unremitting fear cycle for about two-plus years. When the COVID pandemic first shut things down across the United States, my family and I had just started a much-anticipated ski vacation. On the way to the resort, we heard that Vail and other Colorado resorts had just shut down. When we checked into our …
“A resurgent CDC is necessary to recapture the vitality of U.S. medical science. A scientific researcher alone cannot do this work. This will also require heavy managerial work and restructuring and charting a different course altogether. CDC will need a double-headed leader approach, one excelling in scientific expertise and …
The health care environment you are about to enter is very different from the one that existed when you entered school. The COVID pandemic has changed us all, but we, the health care providers, have taken one of the biggest hits.
We are exhausted physically, mentally, emotionally, and professionally. Even before the pandemic, we were often short-staffed and now those of us that are left are thankful for any staff, and …
Dogs have been part of my extended family for most of my sixty-plus years. With a dog comes poop.
It doesn’t really matter on a farm, but in the city, there is an expectation, a social contract of sorts. In the public parks and boulevards, the dog owner is expected to scoop the poop.
While some dog walkers dutifully pick up their dog’s poop, others don’t bother, and before I know it, …
Success in any project is based on using the right tool for the job. No tool would be more effective in the campaign against COVID than Covaxin, which has shown its value in India and other markets during recent months.
While mRNA vaccines were a promising option in the early stages of the pandemic, a study released by the CDC on January 19, 2022 showed that in two of the most …
What’s the problem?
Anthony Fauci, MD, has said: “Virtually everybody is going to wind up getting exposed and likely get infected.” There’s one reason to avoid this scenario: long COVID.
If Omicron is sooner or later going to infect even just “more than 50 percent,” how many will get long COVID? We can’t know yet, the variant having appeared just three months ago. Hopefully, this …
COVID has been with us for two years. I have written my reflection during the pandemic periodically to vent, share and disseminate information. But I have felt at a loss for words in the last few months. I am exhausted, emotionally drained and bereft.
Critical care docs are resilient. We train to serve the sickest patients. We are used to making decisions in split seconds. Lives depend on us, and we …
Can we agree to abandon the notion that COVID in children is “mild?” At least, as a medical community? We are taught to look at the data and guide our patients based on evidence. And the fact is, in a single week in January 2022, nearly 1 million pediatric cases were reported according to the American Academy of Pediatrics. Since the detection of the omicron variant, COVID-19 …
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) director Dr. Rochelle Walensky is in the eye of a storm after a controversial new guideline from CDC regarding the isolation of COVID-19 patients. The recent CDC directive suggested that everyone stay home for five days after a positive test regardless of vaccination status. If there are no symptoms or the symptoms are resolving after five days, you can leave …
“My body, my rights.”
“My body is a temple.”
“I don’t want poison going into my body.”
” I’ve done my research.”
And they refuse to wear masks; they refuse to social distance. They refuse COVID vaccinations and the booster. Essentially, they spit in the face of the population that trusts in science and medical research.
The disrespect and disregard for scientists, medical doctors, RNs and respiratory therapists are astonishing.
Their support groups tout ivermectin, hydroxychloroquine …
When the Delta variant hit Mississippi, the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR) published alarming statistics for maternal and perinatal deaths. Pregnant women were dying at three times the pre-COVID baseline rate. These young, healthy women would rapidly deteriorate in a matter of days, with three weeks as the average time to death. And those were just the moms. Fetuses under 20 weeks gestation aren’t counted in the mortality rate …
An excerpt from The Vaccine: Inside the Race to Conquer the COVID-19 Pandemic. Copyright © 2022 by the author and reprinted by permission of St. Martin’s Publishing Group.
For the first time in weeks, Uğur Şahin’s calendar was clear. It was a Friday morning and the two-bedroom apartment he shared with his wife, Özlem Türeci, and their teenage daughter was unusually …
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Recently, I was on several calls concerning the precipitous rise of COVID-19 cases and the burden to the health care system. There’s no doubt that we are at a point where challenges become crisis, and crisis becomes collapse. The constant influx of “breaking news” into our psyche has blunted any ability to decipher the nuances of this escalation.
But as this is not our first go-round, most stakeholders have already exhausted …
How can you know that science done quickly during a crisis is good science?
This question has taken on new relevance with the COVID-19 vaccine rollout. Researchers developed vaccines in under a year — easily breaking the previous record of four years. But that pace of development may be part of the reason about 1 in 7 unvaccinated adults in the U.S. say Read more…
As a family medicine physician, I am not sure about a whole lot as we turn into the third year of pandemic living. I can’t give you a decent prognosis of where Omicron is going to take us or how many it will take from us. I am not even sure of the public health approach at this moment where COVID seems to outsmart us repeatedly. (A reminder that this …
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Don’t look in: No, this isn’t a typo, it’s the sentiment many of my colleagues and I feel right about now. After a long stretch of shifts over New Year’s, I needed a mental break, so I logged into my trusty Netflix account and front and center was Don’t Look Up, the Leonardo DiCaprio dark satire about a comet hurtling towards earth (spoiler alert) and humanities failed efforts to take …
In late November, the state of the COVID-19 pandemic shifted once more when South African scientists reported the discovery of a new SARS-CoV-2 variant named Omicron. When panic surrounding Omicron’s emergence set in, numerous countries instituted travel bans on South Africa and neighboring nations.
As a medical student, I have begun to examine COVID-19 epidemiology and policy decisions more closely. Given that Omicron is already circulating globally and …
I’m angry. The sound cut out again, for the fifth time in the last hour. “Why can’t I get through one telemedicine visit without some technical problem?” I ask myself. I can feel the chest discomfort, my shoulders tense, I start to flush, tell-tale signs of frustration and anger bubbling up. I did not go to medical school to become tech support. After 12 patients, it’s finally time for lunch. …
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I would love to say 2021 outshone 2020. But I think sometime around mid-fall of last year, we realized the joke was, sadly, on humanity, and that was not going to happen.
Yes, we finally had vaccines (thank God and bless those involved forever), but the life purpose of a virus is to replicate, somehow, someway — and Delta was born.
The tragedy of the preceding winter still haunted all of us …
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