Infectious Disease

Infectious disease physicians and clinicians writing on KevinMD about outbreaks, antimicrobial resistance, vaccines, and the ongoing challenge of preventing and treating infection. Contributors include the physicians who treat infectious disease and the public health physicians who track it. For a maintained record of what physicians have said about vaccines and vaccine refusal since 2004, see Vaccines: what physicians say, in their own words. For what clinicians wrote during the COVID-19 pandemic as it happened, see COVID-19: what physicians wrote as it happened.

“COVID doesn’t affect children.” You may want to rethink that.

Anonymous

Conditions and Diseases

July 26, 2020

Walking into the COVID ward in the children’s hospital, those words seemed etched on an invisible wall, a wall that I wanted to choose to stay behind. It was a wall I could stay behind for the first couple months of the pandemic where multiple studies touted how children weren’t getting sick, and my hospital had seen very few mild cases of the virus in children manifesting from a fever …

COVID-19 misinformation is a public health crisis

Jacob Uskavitch

Health Policy

July 25, 2020

As a medical student, I have discussed with classmates and faculty how to handle a potential patient interaction on vaccinations. Learning how to handle a patient who may be misinformed may be best through experience rather than lectures. During the COVID-19 pandemic, this experience may come sooner and be more commonplace than I previously expected.

While anti-vaxxers currently make up a small percentage of the United States, their Read more…

COVID-19 misinformation is a public health crisis

Is upspeak really that bad for women in medicine?

Joan DelFattore, PhD

Physician

July 25, 2020

A few weeks ago, I was delighted when KevinMD accepted an opinion piece I’d submitted. But I withdrew it just before publication because, on reflection, I realized that I’d been wrong.

While sheltering in place during the COVID-19 pandemic, I’ve become an avid consumer of medical podcasts, such as those presented by JAMA and the New England Journal of Medicine. The opinion piece …

COVID-19: Here’s how to gain the public’s trust

Cullen M. Lilley

Health Policy

July 25, 2020

As we all grapple with what it means to live in society battling a global pandemic that is so fundamentally altering the way we interact with one another, we are faced with several questions we haven’t faced before in our lifetime: how are we going to move forward from this? What does a post-COVID-19 world look like? When will we be able to go back to “normal”?

While all of these …

What are Moderna investors actually betting on?

Anonymous

Conditions and Diseases

July 24, 2020

Moderna’s stock price has continued to climb to record highs on the premise that their novel mRNA-based vaccine technology can take control of the spread of COVID-19. Since the beginning of January 2020 to the time of the writing of this article, the stock has increased by an astronomical 385 percent, based on preclinical and phase I data alone. Moderna, a vaccine-biotech company with no vaccines …

COVID-19 hurts the people closest to you: How group identities affect disease transmission

Henry Bair

Conditions and Diseases

July 23, 2020

They say you only hurt the ones you love. In the age of COVID-19, this adage has, almost ironically, attained a new shade of truth. One-on-one contact is definitely a risk factor—but so is what social scientists call “group identities.”

Even in our highly individualistic society, it’s well-documented that people sort themselves into groups based on their individual identities, attitudes, values, and worldviews. These so-called “in-groups” might be as formal as a …

To wear a mask is to be brave. To trust your doctors is to be brave.

Abubakr Chaudhry, MD

Physician

July 23, 2020

The pandemic is a lie. I will not wear someone else’s fear. This is all fake news. It is remarkable to see these statements littered across the news and social media. Individuals with a fairly decent level of understanding and intelligence pandering to these ideas just go to show how strong anti-science culture has become. We forget so quickly how it started, forget those who comforted us in times of …

A medical student’s unique education in a pandemic

Mason Bennett

Medical Education

July 23, 2020

“We will cease all remaining clerkships. Please thank your preceptors, collect your things, return home, and practice social distancing.”

The email’s words were disappointing, but not surprising. Other medical schools had already pulled their students from hospitals. My school had opted to keep us in as long as possible so we could have the unique learning experience of providing health care during a pandemic. But now, safety and prudence exceeded our …

Opening schools? The devil is in the details.

Raghav Gupta, MD

Health Policy

July 22, 2020

Concern

There is no debate on the insurmountable value of kids needing to be in schools. CDC data shows that children account for 6% of COVID-19 cases and 0.2% of all deaths. Yet, the system can miserably fail if bullied into opening. Children could turn into potential super-spreaders or develop multi-system inflammation, Kawasaki, or toxic-shock syndrome. And once that domino falls, we …

To all the mom-shamers out there: Let’s demand the collective support we, our children, and our society need

Giannina L. Garces-Ambrossi Muncey, MD

Physician

July 22, 2020

How I long for the good old days of mom-shaming.

Back then, you could tsk-tsk over any number of maternal decisions: breastfeeding or bottle-feeding; having children out of wedlock or in wedlock with another woman; staying at home, or working full time.

Nowadays, all that remains is: How she plans to educate her children this Fall.

We vilify women planning pandemic e-learning, asking them, “What planet are you on,” “Don’t you have anything …

Using plasma to fight COVID-19

Carolyn Barber, MD

Conditions and Diseases

July 22, 2020

We’ve gotten used to a life of restricted menu options during this pandemic, an analogy that extends all the way to our treatment if we contract COVID-19. But there’s an item still on the list at most medical institutions, and if it strikes you as familiar, it should: It’s been around – and working – for more than a century.

Convalescent plasma therapy, in fact, is promising enough that it’s something …

Read more…

Using plasma to fight COVID-19

Unethical policy: Resuming federal lethal injections during a global pandemic

Charles E. Binkley, MD

Health Policy

July 21, 2020

The United States government has resumed capital punishment after a 17-year hiatus. Even setting aside questions of whether the death penalty is legal, ethical, or humane, the renewal of the practice of lethal injection poses some grave concerns, particularly in the context of the global pandemic. According to Department of Justice documents, the government is using the drug pentobarbital to carry out the executions. The government’s …

The withdrawal of effective sexual offender treatment during COVID-19

Renée Sorrentino, MD

Conditions and Diseases

July 21, 2020

Public health safety measures in the wake of COVID-19 have transformed health care into virtual medicine overnight. From psychiatry to surgery, all of the medical specialties have adapted technology-enabled virtual appointments. The support for health care providers has been pervasive in the past few weeks-from celebrity shout outs to presidential gratitude. It certainly is a daunting time to be a physician. As physicians remind themselves of their ethical duties enumerated …

What it’s like to write about COVID-19 while it’s killing your mom

Debra A. Shute

Patient

July 20, 2020

My mom was beyond vulnerable to the virus. May of 2020 marked two years since she’d become a nursing home resident—receiving care for several chronic illnesses. She died of failure to thrive due to Coronavirus 2019 on June 1, 2020, at the age of 75.

As her oldest child, her health care proxy, and a health care writer for more than 15 years, I knew that a positive result in a …

COVID illuminates silent fear

Ruchi Puri, MD

Conditions and Diseases

July 19, 2020

It’s scary. Like 9/11, we have a new reference point touching everyone on the planet: life before COVID-19 and life after. Regardless if you get it or don’t, the unknowns and secondary consequences are scary. Life before COVID was scary, too, minus the urgency.

Before COVID, we sensed the weight of living on a sick planet. We felt powerless to change the tide of forces affecting our lives for the worst. …

Read more…

COVID illuminates silent fear

COVID is not what women expected when they were expecting

Susan Hatters Friedman, MD

Conditions and Diseases

July 19, 2020

Reproductive psychiatry, also known as perinatal psychiatry or maternal mental health, focuses on mental health concerns in pregnancy (also including planning and IVF), delivery, postpartum, and parenting. As a reproductive psychiatrist, I try to imagine myself in the situation of my patient, to conceptualize the stresses she’s dealing with, who can support her at home, and, on top of any needed meds—what sort of therapy, self-care, what strategies she would …

Second victim syndrome in the time of COVID-19

Kara Pepper, MD

Conditions and Diseases

July 19, 2020

Every physician I know has a story about an unanticipated patient event. A story that was traumatic at the time and easy to now recall in fine detail. A story that was so impactful that it still haunts them. When a patient suffers an adverse event, many people are affected — the patient, his or her family, and the health care providers. The physicians and their team who are most …

Public health, not medicine, is what will save us

Cory Michael, MD

Physician

July 19, 2020

In a small community not far from my hometown, Paul sat peacefully in his self-built abode on a July day like just about any other. Happy to experience the peace of his bucolic life far from the hustle and bustle of the city, he rarely visited a doctor despite a festering back ailment that limited his ability to work. He had no retirement savings and no plan for life after …

Mask up like you buckle up

Kristina DeMatas, DO

Conditions and Diseases

July 18, 2020

In this world of misinformation, fear, social media overload, and mistrust, seek counsel from your health care provider.

Over the course of the COVID-19 pandemic, I have witnessed the bravery of my colleagues on the front lines treating patients and putting themselves and their families at risk, heroic nurses swabbing hundreds of patients tirelessly in 100-degree heat in full PPE, the selflessness of volunteers donating time and funds to those in …

Read more…

Mask up like you buckle up

After 3 straight weeks in the NICU, a neonatologist’s take on the pandemic

Laura Valleni, MD, MSPH

Conditions and Diseases

July 18, 2020

We are tired, overwhelmed, very committed, missing our families, and carrying each patient with us as we try to deliver excellent care in a very disorienting time. We worry about the health of our families and friends and community as well as our own health, for we are no help if we become sick and cannot continue to care for our …

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