It’s 2022. COVID-19 is still here, and there is little evidence that it’s going away. Coronaviruses have been here longer than us and will be here after us. For centuries, we have co-existed with viruses, and our God-given immune systems ha…
Category: COVID
Balancing care during COVID
I started this commentary when the initial COVID spike involving the mass hospitalization of unvaccinated individuals occurred, and non-COVID patients requiring hospitalization were turned away because no beds, especially in intensive care, were availa…
A milligram of understanding for the vaccine-hesitant [PODCAST]
“The starting point is to do our best to approach discussing COVID and vaccination with the appropriate type of empathy and understanding. To understand that our patients don’t have access to the same level of data and research that we do, and ev…
Are we opening everything too quickly?
In “Open Everything” published in The Atlantic on February 9th, 2022, Yascha Mounk discusses his arguments for lifting any remaining COVID-19 restrictions to “shake off the pandemic malaise.” He asserts that we are “in dan…
Viral nomenclature or a sign of our times?
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….
A physician’s top 10 fears
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-antic…
How to fix the CDC [PODCAST]
“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 wil…
A message to new health care professionals
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 physi…
Dog poop, the social contract, and pandemic behaviors
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 owne…
Why is Covaxin not in the FDA’s toolbox? [PODCAST]
This episode is sponsored by Athelas, the number one provider of remote patient monitoring. “As a clinician who has received two Pfizer doses and a booster without any side effects, I wholeheartedly embrace vaccination to solve this pressing publ…
