A friend called me for medical advice two weeks ago. He’s single, in his 30s and generally healthy, but he’d developed a dry cough with mild congestion. After a self-administered COVID-19 test turned up negative results, he remained suspicious he could be infected.
He was set to fly west in a couple of days for a conference and dreaded the thought of infecting other passengers. I recommended a PCR test if …
Get ready for a COVID culture shock
Day 1. I spent Thursday, my day off, golfing. Friday, I was scheduled to see patients and do surgery on the non-English-speaking mother of a patient I delivered a long time ago (who I didn’t really remember). She remembered me, though, and brought her mother from an hour away to see me. But as I coughed and felt slightly feverish, I realized that I had not felt well …
Chronicles of my COVID isolation
Facts combat fear
It’s hard to believe the first COVID-19 vaccine was administered in the U.S. only a year and a half ago. Like many others, I welcomed the COVID-19 vaccine as a triumph of global cooperation that leveraged decades of research and a beacon of hope that life could eventually return to normal. Yet I was so surprised the first time a pregnant patient told me …
How to help rewrite the COVID-19 information playbook
Many women change their last names after marriage, after a divorce, or just because. During my 30-year career in medicine, I have had three last names. Yes, not a typo, three!
I got married for the first time during my internal medicine residency. I didn’t change my name and was “Mrs. Married Name” to friends and family and “Dr. Maiden Name” at work. I grew as a physician, conducted research, and …
3 decades in medicine: new name(s), same me
When a congressional candidate was recently cheered on after demanding the execution of Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, it was another reminder that civil discourse and trust in science are continuing to dwindle.
A controversial household name in the sciences, Dr. Fauci was the first scientist to make the cover of Time Magazine in its 100-year history. Well-established scientists can easily recognize Fauci’s important contributions to …
Distrust in science is a cancer to public safety
Recently, several European countries have reported outbreaks of monkeypox following the first case (index case) reported in the United Kingdom on May 7, 2022, linked to a traveler from Nigeria. Monkeypox belongs to a family of other pox-like viruses and is a rare viral disease characterized by flu-like symptoms and a blistering rash that typically begins on the face and spreads to other areas of the body. …
What you need to know about monkeypox
COVID-19 melted down the world at a very inopportune time in history. Just as medicine was getting a handle on previously intractable conditions, from sophisticated diabetes management to less invasive surgical procedures, a new threat that devastates our population with few good treatments overwhelms health care.
Medical workers come to the rescue, as we always do, though at a personal and communal price. Somebody else keeps our food available, allows our …
Doctors as organizational stewards
While the world has spent the last two years laser-focused on the COVID pandemic, another public health threat is still lurking in the shadows: the rise of antibiotic-resistant bacteria. Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) has been recognized since the early 1900s, yet rigorous research over the past decade has illuminated the magnitude of the threat and its implications for future infection control. More than 35 thousand patients die from antibacterial resistance every …
Combating antimicrobial resistance during COVID: What clinicians need to know
“At the interpersonal level, people can help to normalize vaccination as the standard among their friends and family–not by lecturing or hectoring, simply by openly sharing that they themselves are vaccinated. Health care providers also have a role to play in de-sensationalizing the issue and making discussions about COVID vaccination a more routine …
Health care communications during the pandemic era [PODCAST]
During the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic (April 2021), I became a high-school pharmacy technician. My senior year of high school ended in gray scrubs, gloves, and a mask. While I knew I was signing up for long hours of selling medication and administering COVID tests, I was not prepared for what else I would learn.
On my first day on the job, a couple approached me and asked …
Reflecting on my experience as a teenage health care worker during the COVID-19 pandemic
It started as the “Chinese virus.” Then the “kung flu.” Then came the boycotts of Chinatowns, the rise in harassment, assaults, and murders. The recognition of hate and discrimination against Asian Americans was long overdue. However, anti-Asian racism doesn’t just manifest in hate speech or violence; it has undermined the U.S. COVID-19 policy response.
In 2020, American media narratives frequently painted Asian nations’ success in controlling COVID-19 as the result of …
Naming the anti-Asian racism of U.S. COVID-19 policy
Guess what? The mouth is attached to the rest of the body. And though dentistry and medicine are typically separated from the very beginning of professional training, they are irrevocably linked for patients and have an impact on each other. Here’s some foundational knowledge that will help set the stage for discussing the connection between overall health and oral health: Our mouths are teeming with bacteria – mostly the good, …
The connection between oral health and overall health
It’s a standard instruction during safety demonstrations on airplanes: “In the event of a sudden loss in cabin pressure, an oxygen mask will drop down in front of you. Put your mask on before helping others.”
But why is that? Wouldn’t it make more sense to help those who are most vulnerable?
The answer has to do with the way our bodies react to a lack of oxygen.
When cabin pressure drops, the …
What does living with COVID really mean?
I was at my gym last night. Billy Joel’s ballad about trust was the metronome to my squats. Though vaccinated and boosted, I was wearing my mask. I know the latest evidence about vaccines and natural immunity, the dramatic transmissibility but mild virulence of the latest Omicron variant.
So my mask was only for optics. Someone might recognize me as a doctor in the local hospital where masking is still mandated. …
A matter of trust: Bill Maher loses trust in medical professionals
In the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, governments and communities had to take rapid and decisive action to protect their citizens against this novel virus. While it was yet unclear how dangerous the COVID-19 infection may be to children, their teachers, and their families, governments quickly shut down schools and activities to slow the spread among the population at large.
Before the pandemic, childhood obesity was already a crisis with …
Reversing the impact of the pandemic on childhood obesity
Tuesday night, March 29 into March 30, I started to feel that sensation I associate with the start of a cold. It was a feeling in the back of my throat that’s almost hard to describe. I haven’t had that sensation in years. Because I have been wearing an N95 mask every time I come into contact with people outside of my inner circle, I hadn’t had any sort of …
This doctor got COVID. Here’s what it taught him.
Moving into the pandemic’s third year, as many settle into the notorious “new normal” of COVID, the challenge now is avoiding complacency and keeping attention and vaccination rates high enough to maintain protection against the still-evolving virus.
Six months after approving a first vaccine booster, the FDA has now authorized a second booster dose for older and immunocompromised people at greater risk of serious illness. With new variants …
A small piece of lint is tickling my nose as I am desperately trying not to sneeze into the tight-fitting mask on my face. I know that I will not be able to adjust the mask as my gloves are sterile, and I am standing suspended over a patient’s body with my gloves patinaed with small drips of blood mixed with an antiseptic. The procedure is challenging as the patient …
Looking across the glass door: a COVID-19 vigil
These last two years have been extremely challenging for most health care professionals. Watching society challenge essential health and science principles that we have known to be fact has been difficult to bear. Being villainized, health care workers went from being hailed “health care heroes” to being the target of hate, violence, and disregard.
These past few years have been a year of reckoning in many ways. The COVID-19 pandemic has …
We are the voice of reason, the scientific experts, and the advocates for our patients
In the coming months, no one can predict with certainty what will happen with the war in Ukraine. But there’s one thing we do know for sure. The United States will soon reach an unthinkable milestone: One million Americans will have died of COVID-19. Over the last month, while many people were celebrating the rollback of mask mandates and other pandemic restrictions, over 1,000 Americans continued to quietly succumb to …
We’re losing the war. No, not that one.
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