I did not lose a loved one. I did not lose a friend. Yet, COVID has forever changed me in ways that I cannot even begin to rationalize. I feel old — my body, my soul, my heart. It has been one year since I have hugged my parents. It has been one year s…
The Washington Post published an interesting article in its weekly health section on March 2. 2021. The article had an impactful graphic using data from the Centers for Disease Control that showed the number of pediatric deaths due to influenza over th…
There is fear in the air. Fear that the COVID pandemic may not get under control because the virus is mutating so fast. Fear that the vaccines may not be effective against these new variants. But fear should not be the driving force behind public healt…
We swore an oath: “Primum non nocere” — First, do no harm. When pandemic stress began to bear down on our hospitals, we scrambled to manage the burden of volume and simultaneously mitigate the threat of contagion. In our war effort…
On February 18, Dr. Marty Makary published an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal which struck an unusually optimistic note as to the stage of the American COVID-19 pandemic. Dr. Makary predicts that based on the current trajectory, COVID-19 will…
“For a vaccination campaign to be highly effective, we need to be open to having difficult conversations with people who disagree with our perspective. If we don’t, the result will be a polarization of philosophical ideas and not an unbiased and …
The great COVID vaccine rollout of 2021 is fully underway. Armed with two highly effective products from Pfizer and Moderna, our nation is rapidly advancing toward the immunization of all Americans in hopes of stemming the pandemic. We just can’t get t…
Bloodletting may be the best-known example of a once widely used, faulty medical treatment, but there are many more. Hormone replacement therapy for postmenopausal women, famously touted by experts, turned out to be complicated and sometimes harmful. T…
Sitting at my “work-from-home” quarantine desk, I heard my alarm – time to change the laundry. Donning a mask, I walked down the hallway and opened the laundry room door. I couldn’t help but fixate on the lone, inside-out, blue glove that s…
A guest column by the American College of Physicians, exclusive to KevinMD. By any measure, the past year has been difficult for everyone. The ongoing pandemic with its widespread personal, social, and economic disruptions, as well as civil and politic…
