Your toddler has had a cough and runny, stuffy nose on and off for months. They also attend daycare and have a sibling in preschool. You are worried about the symptoms. You are also exhausted because your child’s coughing and congestion is not le…
Category: Infectious disease
Why patients refuse the COVID-19 vaccination
The U.S. is progressively falling behind other countries when rated on the percent of the population that is vaccinated against COVID-19. I ask all my patients if they are vaccinated against COVID-19 and estimate that 80 percent are vaccinated. The unv…
Is Descovy really the better option?
When the FDA approved Gilead’s Truvada (emtricitabine/tenofovir disoproxil) for HIV PrEP in 2012, it was a revolutionary step forward. The drug was safe and up to 99 percent effective in preventing HIV infection in at-risk individuals. Then in 20…
A COVID and Omicron update with Jeremy Faust, MD [PODCAST]
This expedited episode of The Podcast by KevinMD is a COVID and Omicron update. I interview Jeremy Faust, an emergency physician who can be reached on Twitter @JeremyFaust and on Instagram @JeremySamuelFaust. He also publishes the newsletter, Inside Me…
Tired of the dying: Finding parallels in COVID-19 and HIV
Recently, while visiting with a colleague in our doctor’s lounge, I blurted out, “I’m tired of the dying.” He looked at me quizzically, “But you’re the hospice doctor.” True, death comes with my work, but the recent volume of and the loss of younger pa…
Wear your mask to protect your family
Below is a story a patient shared with me about how he went from being against mask-wearing to wearing one every day. *** Last year, my mom died from stage 4 lung cancer. Before she passed, she received her transplant at this hospital, but it was too l…
Endemic COVID-19 will be a cause for celebration
There was a time, not long ago, when COVID-19 was one of the scariest things on earth. In the summer of 2020, scientists were stunned as infections climbed and deaths spiked. They couldn’t say (exactly) how the virus spread, how deadly it was or how to…
The American public deserves more COVID-19 vaccine options
Covaxin, an inactivated SARS-CoV-2 vaccine and the only vaccine to have been proven effective against all variants including the Delta variant in a Phase III clinical study, deserves to be tested in clinical trials in the U.S. for potential CDC/FDA app…
Parallels between Alec Baldwin’s Rust movie set and the unvaccinated
The recent tragic shooting on the Rust movie set shocked me. A good friend, a prominent cinematographer in Hollywood, texted me his blunt assessment: “Live rounds on a set. Ridiculously unprofessional.” Humans are naturally shaken when ther…
Omicron: 2 infectious disease physicians on the new COVID variant [PODCAST]
Welcome to this special episode of The Podcast by KevinMD, where I interview two infectious disease physicians on the COVID Omicron variant. They share their unique perspective on this threat answer the following questions: How do these early da…
