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 …
We have been forced into a mass casualty scenario
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 …
What this primary care physician learned from her COVID-19 infection
In 2017, I read an article called “I Don’t Know How to Explain to You that You Should Care About Other People.”
I don’t remember the details of the article; the name was enough.
As we enter our third year of a global pandemic, I think about that often.
I don’t know how to explain to you that COVID is real.
I don’t know how to talk to the ex who …
I can’t make you care. But you should.
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, …
Covaxin: Doomed to the dugout or ready to join the field of vaccine options?
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 …
Unless we get back to the basics, there will be no end to the pandemic
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 …
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 …
It is time to make the unvaccinated pay their fair share
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 …
The COVID vaccine is a life raft. I’m not your life raft to get out of it.
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 …
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. …
Emotional epidemiology of disease is as critical as clinical epidemiology
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 …
Don’t be anti-vax in name only
More than 1,100 in the U.S. are still dying every day from COVID-19. Every three days, we are losing more Americans than the number that died on 9/11. Just because we don’t see it sneaking up on our families does not mean the COVID terrorist is defeated. While deaths are mainly in 12 northern states, it is highly likely we will again experience a similar problem in Texas and across …
Attack COVID like the terrorist it is
I wake up feeling exhausted. This seemingly never-ending nightmare of mutating coronavirus keeps sucking the life out of me. During this past summer, we were receiving some signs of hope that COVID was in decline; this hope was ripped out from under us when the delta variant stood its ground and went rogue. Now, a new and upcoming challenger to the title “most transmissible coronavirus,” Omicron, is usurping a good …
My frustration pot has overflowed
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Please also see the original 12 days of COVID.
On the first day of COVID, the ongoing pandemic gave to me,
An insurrection in Washington, DC.
On the second day of COVID, the never-ending pandemic gave to me,
Two backordered gloves.
And an insurrection in Washington, DC.
On the third day of COVID, the society diving pandemic gave to me,
Three anti-vax Karens.
Two backordered gloves.
And an insurrection in Washington, DC.
On the fourth day of …
Musings of a primary care triage nurse:
1. “Isolation means you aren’t around others. No, you shouldn’t be eating dinner with your family or watching TV with them.”
2. “You’ve been sick for the past week but didn’t get tested. Yes, COVID can just be symptoms like a cold or that sinus thing you get each year.”
3. “The majority of those that are hospitalized are unvaccinated. I know ‘someone’ told you that’s …
10 things this nurse is f-ing tired of saying
Attention-grabbing headlines suggest that our crucial COVID-19 pandemic tools—monoclonal antibodies and vaccines—are incompatible. Beyond the controversy rests an evidence-based reality: monoclonal antibodies and vaccines are complementary aspects of patient care. Both are powerful interventions that can prevent hospitalizations and deaths from this virus. After weeks of declining cases and hospitalizations, the United States is experiencing another surge of new infections likely due to multiple factors, including relaxed mask use in …
COVID-19 monoclonal antibodies are a bridge to vaccination
Welcome to an expedited episode of The Podcast by KevinMD. Trevor Bedford is a computational biologist and infectious disease scientist, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center. He was selected as a recipient of the 2021 MacArthur Fellowship and can be reached on Twitter @trvrb.
Transcript
Kevin …
Trevor Bedford on Omicron and what about COVID keeps him up at night [PODCAST]
When the COVID pandemic first reared its ugly head in 2020, I was mentally prepared (as much as any of us could be) for the patient care wave that was coming our way. What I was not prepared for was the mass of anti-science and anti-intellectual pushback that we have seen over the past one and a half, almost two years, in regard to the virus itself and the vaccine.
To …
A milligram of understanding for anti-vaxxers
It has been exactly one year since Pfizer’s first trucks rolled out to much fanfare. Billions followed every twist and turn on the path to getting a vaccine that would save countless lives and give us a return to normalcy. We all hoped for a brisk global vaccination campaign that, in addition to securing our health, would restore our social lives. We yearned for going to large events without the …
The post-pandemic future I envisioned is here
Make no mistake, the newest variant in the COVID-19 family is far more contagious than any of the others. Will it cause a drastic surge in the pandemic? Or could it have a mitigating influence?
First identified in South Africa on November 11, Omicron quickly became the dominant variant in that country. In October, Delta variants were found in 80 percent of all samples sequenced, while in November, 75 percent were …
Is Omicron a sheep in wolf’s clothing?
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