COVID-19: Physicians in Shackles
By ANISH KOKA, MD
A number of politically tinged narratives have
divided physicians during the pandemic. It would be unfortunate if politics
obscured the major problem brought into stark relief by the pandemic: a system
that marginalizes physicians and strips them of agency.
In practices big and small, hospital-employed
or private practice, nursing homes or hospitals, there are serious issues
raising their heads for doctors and their patients.
No masks for you
When I walked into my office Thursday, March 12th, I assembled the office staff for the first time to talk about COVID. The prior weekend had been awa...
Source: The Health Care Blog - May 2, 2020 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Christina Liu Tags: COVID-19 Medical Practice Physicians Anish Koka medical autonomy Pandemic Source Type: blogs
The False Choice Between Science And Economics
This article originally appeared on The Bulwark here.
The post The False Choice Between Science And Economics appeared first on The Health Care Blog. (Source: The Health Care Blog)
Source: The Health Care Blog - May 1, 2020 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Christina Liu Tags: COVID-19 Health Policy David Shaywitz Source Type: blogs
The Science of Infectious Disease Modeling
What Is Computer Modeling and How Does It Work?
Recent news headlines are awash in references to “modeling the spread” and “flattening the curve.” You may have wondered what exactly this means and how it applies to the COVID-19 pandemic. Infectious disease modeling is part of the larger field of computer modeling. This type of research uses computers to simulate and study the behavior of complex systems using mathematics, physics, and computer science. Each model contains many variables that characterize the system being studied. Simulation is done by adjusting each of the variables, alone or in combination, to ...
Source: Biomedical Beat Blog - National Institute of General Medical Sciences - April 29, 2020 Category: Research Authors: Chrissa Chverchko Tags: Injury and Illness Tools and Techniques Computational Biology Cool Tools/Techniques Diseases Modeling Source Type: blogs
Strategies for lifting COVID-19 mitigation restrictions
Over the last 100 years, the U.S. has had to respond to five avian flu pandemics. The most severe was the 1918 avian influenza infecting 1/3 of the world ’s population and killing 650,000 Americans. It was also the last time wide-spread containment, mitigation, and isolation strategies were used in the U.S. Seldom mentioned about the […]Find jobs at Careers by KevinMD.com. Search thousands of physician, PA, NP, and CRNA jobs now. Learn more. (Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog)
Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog - April 28, 2020 Category: General Medicine Authors: < span itemprop="author" > < a href="https://www.kevinmd.com/blog/post-author/nicolas-k-fletcher" rel="tag" > Nicolas K. Fletcher < /a > < /span > Tags: Policy COVID-19 coronavirus Infectious Disease Public Health & Source Type: blogs
COVID-19 in the Context of Aging
It is widely appreciated that old people have a poor time of it when it comes to infectious disease. Seasonal influenza kills tens of thousands of older people every year in the US alone. The aged immune system functions poorly, and vaccinations for many conditions have low success rates in older people. Thus the vast majority of COVID-19 deaths are old people exhibiting immunosenescence. Given that the world at large seems to be entirely accepting of the yearly toll of influenza, while COVID-19 is classed as an apocalypse of some sort, one has to wonder how much of the hysteria surrounding COVID-19 stems from the rare - b...
Source: Fight Aging! - April 28, 2020 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Medicine, Biotech, Research Source Type: blogs
Keeping Kids Healthy in the Age of Coronavirus: Dr. Greene on The People ’ s Pharmacy
Transcript
[00:00:00] Joe Graedon: I’m Joe Graedon.
[00:00:01] Terry Graedon: And I’m Terry Graedon. Welcome to this podcast of the People’s Pharmacy.
[00:00:06] Joe Graedon: You can find previous podcasts and more information on a range of health topics at PeoplesPharmacy.com.
[00:00:14] How’s your family holding up during the coronavirus pandemic? Isolation can be especially challenging for children.
[00:00:22] This is the People’s Pharmacy with Terry and Joe Graedon.
[00:00:33] Terry Graedon: Children appear less susceptible than older adults to serious complications of COVID-19...
Source: Conversations with Dr Greene - April 21, 2020 Category: Child Development Authors: Alan Greene MD Tags: Dr. Greene's Blog COVID COVID-19 Viral Infection Source Type: blogs
Keeping Kids Healthy in the Age of Coronavirus: Dr. Greene on The People s Pharmacy
Transcript
[00:00:00] Joe Graedon: I’m Joe Graedon.
[00:00:01] Terry Graedon: And I’m Terry Graedon. Welcome to this podcast of the People’s Pharmacy.
[00:00:06] Joe Graedon: You can find previous podcasts and more information on a range of health topics at PeoplesPharmacy.com.
[00:00:14] How’s your family holding up during the coronavirus pandemic? Isolation can be especially challenging for children.
[00:00:22] This is the People’s Pharmacy with Terry and Joe Graedon.
[00:00:33] Terry Graedon: Children appear less susceptible than older adults to serious complications of COVID-19...
Source: Conversations with Dr Greene - April 21, 2020 Category: Child Development Authors: Alan Greene MD Tags: Dr. Greene's Blog COVID COVID-19 Viral Infection Source Type: blogs
New York MTA Forbade Employees from Protecting Themselves by Wearing Masks
Randal O'TooleLast week, I pointed out a recent report that blamed much of the spread of COVID-19 in New York City on the subway system. Recently, I ’ve collected a series of memos suggesting that New York ’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) is specifically culpable in this spread.During the2012 influenza epidemic, the MTA issued a policy directive stating that the agency would keep a six ‐week supply of sanitizer wipes, sanitizer gel, and N95 respirators on hand for use by employees. The directive specifically stated that the masks would be available for bus drivers, ...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - April 20, 2020 Category: American Health Authors: Randal O ' Toole Source Type: blogs
CRISPR-Based Test to Diagnose COVID-19 in Less than One Hour
Transmission electron micrograph of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. Image credit: NIAID
With the COVID-19 pandemic growing globally, new ways of detecting the infection is the need of the hour. University of California, San Francisco researchers have recently published a paper in Nature Biotechnology outlining their approach to diagnose COVID-19 infections from respiratory swabs using CRISPR.
The test, called the SARS-CoV2 DETECTR assay, checks for the presence of two specific regions in the novel coronavirus – one is found in all ‘SARS-like’ coronaviruses and one is unique to SARS-CoV-2, which causes COVID-...
Source: Medgadget - April 17, 2020 Category: Medical Devices Authors: Rukmani Sridharan Tags: Genetics Medicine Public Health Source Type: blogs
Research Provides No Basis for Pandemic Travel Bans
CONCLUSIONThe pre ‐COVID‐19 research is unanimous that governments cannot expect to rely on travel restrictions to prevent the spread of pandemics similar to influenza. Travel restrictions do not prevent the spread of disease and may only delay it for a few days or weeks if implemented prior to the interna tional transmission of the disease. The Trump administration’s travel restrictions waited until after the virus had already entered the United States, and they exempted many travelers from China, not to mention the rest of the world.[30]The research shows that the Trump administration should have known that ...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - April 15, 2020 Category: American Health Authors: David J. Bier Source Type: blogs
Should fourth-year medical students graduate early?
Graduating medical students early is not a completely novel concept. During WWII, there was a significant physician shortage, and various medical schools initiated a 3-year accelerated MD program to produce more physicians. These programs were eventually discontinued in the late 1970s and early 1980s. In 1918, the influenza pandemic created a similar situation. Third- and […]Find jobs at Careers by KevinMD.com. Search thousands of physician, PA, NP, and CRNA jobs now. Learn more. (Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog)
Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog - April 13, 2020 Category: General Medicine Authors: < span itemprop="author" > < a href="https://www.kevinmd.com/blog/post-author/nitin-agrawal" rel="tag" > Nitin Agrawal < /a > < /span > Tags: Conditions COVID-19 coronavirus Infectious Disease Medical school Source Type: blogs
Drugs for COVID-19: A Publishing Epidemic
As of April 9, PubMed listed 2,868 scientific publications which incorporate the word “COVID”. 323 of these (11.3%) were related to drugs under study for treatment of the disease. No fewer than thirty-one such drugs had been proposed since this pandemic first appeared on the planet four months earlier.
Graph 1 depicts the cumulative numbers of COVID-19 infection (per 100,000 global population) and introductions of relevant drugs into the Literature during February 14 to April 3. Note that both increased by a factor of approximately 16-fold during this period.
In a...
Source: GIDEON blog - April 12, 2020 Category: Databases & Libraries Authors: Uri Blackman Tags: Epidemiology Graphs Source Type: blogs
Fight Aging! Newsletter, April 13th 2020
This study is par for the course, looking at Japanese Olympic participants. Interestingly, it hints at the upper end of the dose-response curve for physical activity, in that a longer career as a professional athlete may be detrimental in comparison to lesser degrees of exercise and training.
From this large, retrospective cohort study targeting 3546 Japanese Olympic athletes, we observed significant lower mortality among Olympians compared with the Japanese general population. The overall standardised mortality ratio (SMR) was 0.29. The results were consistent with previous studies conducted in other non-Asian co...
Source: Fight Aging! - April 12, 2020 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Newsletters Source Type: blogs
Allergies? Common cold? Flu? Or COVID-19?
With so many of us wrestling with fears and unknowns surrounding the coronavirus pandemic, every throat tickle, nose drip, or cough is suspect: do I have coronavirus? By now, we all know that COVID-19, the illness caused by coronavirus, can cause severe, life-threatening symptoms, although the majority of people who have it will experience a mild to moderate version.
Of course, it is spring, so many people may be experiencing their annual springtime tree pollen allergies. Colds also remain common, just as was true before the coronavirus. And although influenza season is coming to an end, perhaps you’ve wondered if some o...
Source: Harvard Health Blog - April 9, 2020 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Anna R. Wolfson, MD Tags: Allergies Cold and Flu Health Infectious diseases Source Type: blogs
Rejuvenation of Immune Function is One of the More Important Outcomes to Engineer through the Treatment of Aging
One would hope that it does not require an ongoing pandemic and related hysteria to point out that old people have poorly functioning immune systems, and thus suffer disproportionately the burden of infectious disease. But perhaps it does. The 2017-2018 seasonal influenza, a modestly more severe occurrence of something that happens every year, killed something like 60,000 people in the US alone, with little notice or comment. There is nothing so terrible that it won't be accepted - ignored, even - if it is normal.
Floodgates of funding for infectious disease research and development have been opened in response to C...
Source: Fight Aging! - April 6, 2020 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Medicine, Biotech, Research Source Type: blogs
