COVID

Essential clinician commentary on COVID-19 coronavirus from the KevinMD community.

Unrequited: love in the time of COVID-19

Physician
January 21, 2022

If you knew we are like the “Two Fridas,”
that our hearts are connected,
would you change your mind?
Would you stop
as you are about to cut
the artery feeding your heart and mine?
If you knew that when you cry because of your loneliness,
because of your longing for your family,
that I cry, too, (though behind your back,
after I have comforted you)
would you change your mind?
If you knew that your isolation,
with the tubes and gadgets
coming …

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COVID vaccination: If not for yourself, then for the rest of us

Conditions
January 19, 2022

“It’s my right not to be vaccinated. It’s my body.”

So goes the argument for the COVID anti-vaxxers, emphasizing personal freedom taking precedence over everything else. Unfortunately, and perhaps unfairly, we health care providers do not have that same freedom; our profession requires us to perform our duties despite the risks to us. We place ourselves in jeopardy each day we come to work, and we cannot simply refuse care for …

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Can patients just say no to treatment?

Physician
January 19, 2022

When can a patient say “yes” or “no” to a recommended colonoscopy? A blood transfusion? A COVID vaccine?

As 2022 opens, health officials predict a tsunami of new coronavirus cases worldwide due to the Omicron and Delta variants. For more than a year, official messaging has been that vaccination is the way out of the pandemic.

But ongoing vaccine hesitancy has hindered progress. The Centers for …

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The painful anniversary of Dr. Susan Moore

Conditions
January 18, 2022

“You have to show proof that you have something wrong with you in order for you to get the medicine. I put forth, and I maintain that if I was white, I wouldn’t have to go through that.”
– Dr. Susan Moore.

In a 7-minute-and-22-second Facebook video documenting her treatment at a suburban hospital in Indiana, Dr. Susan Moore, a Black woman physician, articulated the collective desperation and frustration that was a …

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The letter this physician wants to write to her patients

Physician
January 17, 2022

Before there was doom-scrolling, there were sad books. For me, it was Chapter 18 in Life and Fate by Vasily Grossman. The chapter is a fictional portrayal of Mr. Grossman imagining his mother’s last words. The protagonist—modeled on the author—and their two mothers have the same fate at the hands of the Nazis. I tried several times to get through that chapter, through that letter, and through the book. I …

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A booster shot of humility

Physician
January 17, 2022

Since the first cases of COVID-19 started trickling into the U.S. in January 2020 (or December, depending on what sources you believe), leaders have made confident statements promising containment, to eradicate the virus, to provide resources for hospitals in need, to research and identify treatments that work, etc.

I think that we can agree that no matter what side of the aisle you are on, having a highly charged controversial presidential …

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Did the unvaccinated just save my rural hospital?

Physician
January 15, 2022

It’s no secret that rural hospitals have been struggling. According to online data from the University of North Carolina, 137 rural hospitals have closed in the U.S. since 2010.

In Appalachia, the rural hospital where I work, which is staffed by a single hospitalist, has been “in the crosshairs” since I arrived in 2016 and has been limping along with subsidies from our regional health system. …

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COVID-19 vaccination: the Latinx experience

Conditions
January 14, 2022

Almost two years since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, we have confronted the illness and loss of millions of lives and the sad and dangerous reality of having a health care system and a society full of moral gaps, inequities, and disparities. This unprecedented and complex situation challenged all of us on many levels. While facing high levels of unexpected fear, uncertainty, and distress, the well-known socio-cultural and demographic …

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COVID-19 and the Tuskegee syphilis study

Meds
January 12, 2022

Despite health professionals’ efforts at conveying the effectiveness of immunization, many African Americans remain skeptical about the COVID-19 vaccine.

Getting to the root of this distrust is critical as the Delta and Omicron variants stoke up the number of positive COVID-19 cases across the United States. And the spread of the virus is not uniform. According to the National Vital Statistics System, Black Americans incur the highest COVID-19 …

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We have been forced into a mass casualty scenario

Physician
January 11, 2022

I spent the past year and a half of this pandemic getting a degree in quality, safety, and leadership. Though there were days, nights, and weeks where I simply did not know how I could finish the work or go on, I never realized how much I needed the work to help me process what is happening around us. To help me navigate my rage at the state of our …

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What this primary care physician learned from her COVID-19 infection

Conditions
January 10, 2022

March 2020. Administrators informed us that primary care physicians would be deployed to the “front lines” – either the emergency department or the COVID-19 wards. When I shared my news with my 21-year-old daughter, she cried and hugged me and said, “I don’t want you to die.”

Fate intervened, and I didn’t get deployed. By the time I was up, the numbers improved, and it was time to return to my …

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Covaxin: Doomed to the dugout or ready to join the field of vaccine options?

Meds
January 7, 2022

With apologies to the late Yankees slugger Yogi Berra, for pandemic-weary Americans, it’s like “déjà vu all over again,” as new lockdowns and mandatory mask mandates are being imposed across the globe.

The latest threat, the Omicron COVID-19 variant, has been a major source of breakthrough infections, including among those who have been fully vaccinated and boosted, such as United States Senators Elizabeth Warren and Cory Booker.

Pfizer, Moderna, Johnson & Johnson, …

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Unless we get back to the basics, there will be no end to the pandemic

Conditions
January 5, 2022

Frankly, I am tired of this pandemic. I am tired of the death. I am tired of the destruction of families and the obliteration of vulnerable individuals’ social supports. I am tired of human issues being politicized and used as weapons to divide us further. I am tired of people being politically correct at the expense of what is better for society.

So, let me be bold, and say something almost …

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The gender vaccination gap

Conditions
January 4, 2022

This year, I lost too many close and extended family members to COVID-19. As a medical student, I was stunned to see a virus take a grasping toll on my life and surroundings. It was frightening, to say the least. Throughout the period of grief, which I’m still experiencing, I’ve learned a lot and have become more knowledgeable. Unfortunately, I learned that there was a common denominator among those …

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It is time to make the unvaccinated pay their fair share

Policy
January 4, 2022

Massachusetts is again experiencing a COVID-19 surge and our hospitals are overwhelmed, mostly with unvaccinated patients.

As a practicing physician who takes care of many high-risk diabetic patients, I ask all my patients about their COVID-19 vaccination status. I explain to my unvaccinated patients that the benefits of vaccination far exceed the risk, both at the individual and societal levels.

Unfortunately, this conversation only convinces a minority of the unvaccinated to get …

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The COVID vaccine is a life raft. I’m not your life raft to get out of it.

Conditions
December 31, 2021

It began with a seemingly innocuous text from a friend of the family.

“Hi, Richard. I hope you’re well. I need to speak with you. Can I call you?”

The last time we spoke was at my brother’s long-postponed “celebration of life,” which we were able to hold a year after his passing finally. Our friend attended the wake, so feeling a sense of appreciation for his support during that time, I …

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The death of empathy

Physician
December 30, 2021

Reflect and earn 1.0 AMA PRA Category 1 CME for this article.

You used to come to us struggling to breathe and begging for our help, and while we stood over you preparing for intubation, we would feel all the feels while looking into eyes that we knew might never open again. We would break down and cry while telling your family that you didn’t make it or …

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Emotional epidemiology of disease is as critical as clinical epidemiology

Physician
December 28, 2021

At this point in the COVID vaccination campaign, nearly all American adults who want the vaccine have gotten it, and are gratefully snapping up their boosters. Those who decline vaccination are largely impervious to public service announcements, community pressure, and case counts turbocharged by the Omicron variant.

Public health experts emphasize that primary care doctors and nurses are the key to this last mile of the vaccination effort. …

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Don’t be anti-vax in name only

Physician
December 28, 2021

The following article is satire.

“These are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman.”
– Thomas Paine

Happy holidays as we continue our long walk with COVID. A unique walk where each new step is only half as long as …

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