Category: Infectious disease

Is it a badge of honor to refuse the vaccine but choose to die?

You know that if you don’t get vaccinated and you don’t wear a mask, you potentially will die. You go to super spreader events, big groups at beaches, football games, baseball games … loads of people laughing and clapping, and shoulder to shoulder. You…

The end, through the eyes of a critical care nurse

On the day you die from COVID, many things will happen. A colleague and I will enter the room to carefully prepare and clean your body. We will shut off all the IV pumps. We will turn off the ventilator. We will silence and turn off the monitor that is…

The most patriotic thing you can do right now is get vaccinated

I am so tired of the freedom argument with it comes to vaccines. So tired. It didn’t really hit me until I learned more about medicine, government, and public health, just how much freedom is taken for granted. I get it. I don’t like it whe…

A summary of state of the art COVID treatment

Prevention Our most effective weapons are lockdowns, masks, distancing, ventilation and vaccination, but we can also protect close patient contacts pharmacologically. Subcutaneous REGEN-COV (Regeneron’s monoclonal antibody combo, casirivimab plus imdev…

Clearing the air our kids share: a prescription for healthy schools

As a pulmonary and critical care doctor and the mother of three children too young to receive a COVID-19 vaccine, life has been harrowing. At the beginning of the summer, however, I was beginning to breathe a sigh of relief. My children had been in sch…

COVID-19 divides and conquers

On August 25, 2021, the United States achieved two world records: approximately a total of 39 million cases of COVID-19 among our citizenry and approximately 648,000 deaths due to succumbing to COVID. Young, old; male, female; rich, poor — it doesn&#82…

A person-to-person strategy is needed in the pandemic war

In June 2020, I wrote a short piece about the COVID vaccine that turned out to be prophetic. I said that the vaccine’s immunity might wane over time, that there might be bothersome side effects immediately, and that the public might ignore social dista…

COVID and Afghanistan: a war on 2 fronts

I’ve faced this disease since it arrived. I flew into the storm in order to face it head-on, leaving behind my family and a hospital filled with denial and petulant resistance to the horror that was to come. While in New York, I worked alongside …

I’m sorry if you think I’m taking your freedom

The past year has been sad. Sad for the lives lost, sad for the isolation, sad for the hostility that has somehow occurred over measures to protect public health. To those who continue to spin a story that vaccines and masking take away your freedom: I…

Physicians have gone from being heroes to villains

I am exhausted. Mentally, emotionally, physically. I fear we are reaching our breaking point. We have run a marathon, hoping that we were nearing the finish line as we saw numbers decline in June, only to be told to lace up our sneakers and start over….