Although dermatology may not automatically command the respect of other disciplines such as oncology, Drs. Henry Miller and Renata H. Mullen explain why dermatology is one of modern medicine’s most complex and fascinating specialties.
Disease
Natural immunity comes from being exposed to a microbe that causes a disease. Vaccination-mediated immunity comes from being exposed to a vaccine that is similar to but not the same as the microbe. If we understand a bit more about our immune system and its memory, it will help us navigate the information and misinformation about COVID-19 vaccines, the COVID variants, and the length of our immunologic memory.
It has been sixty years since the Concert for Bangladesh; It is doubtful that this low-income country, with half the population and 1/66th the size of the US, has had as much coverage in the media as now, with a report on the efficacy of masks in fighting COVID-19. It is a well-thought-out, performed, and reported study and deserves better than the superficial reporting of the media and 280 character Tweets. Let me provide a deeper look.
A recent analysis of COVID-19 and the 2020 wildfires in California, Oregon, and Washington estimated increases in COVID cases and mortality of about 20% associated with increased levels of fine particulate matter (PM2.5) based on satellite smoke observations. The study caught my eye for several reasons: PM2.5 is not “smoke,” the COVID-19 increases were not statistically significant, and a much simpler and transparent analysis of their data yielded different results. Here’s what I found.
COVID-19 has brought into sharp relief how little we know about the transmission of respiratory viruses. The pandemic has afforded a great opportunity to improved our knowledge and understanding. A new review summarizes the state of our wisdom.
The COVID-19 media is saturated with vaccination information and news. Information includes vaccine performance, vaccination availability, hospital crowding. The news includes local mandates, compliance statistics, breakthrough infections, masking requirements. Data on demonstrated public health benefits of vaccination are scarce; we set out to fill that gap. Our primary goal was to define quantitative relationships between vaccination and subsequent rates of infections as of July 24, 2021.
The pushback over mask mandates has been fierce. It’s been portrayed in the media as another skirmish in the political and cultural wars. And while there’s an element of truth to that, framing all of the COVID controversies as political can lead us very much astray.
Energy fuels our growth and maintenance. How exactly that changes, and the relative contributions of exercise and metabolism over time, is difficult to ascertain. A new study provides some answers. It is both dynamic and, as is often the case, nuanced.
After a short gestation period, COVID-19 vaccines arrived throughout the nation and became part of the daily scene. Questions about which vaccine to get have diminished replaced with concerns about who is getting shots and who is not. Here is what the latest statistics tell us.
To a physicist, every moment of every day is filled with radiation.
June and July saw substantial changes in the progression of the COVID-19 pandemic, essentially reflecting the competition between relief from vaccination and the spread of the more contagious delta variant of the virus. These changes varied by time and place; here we seek perspective by examining temporal trends in six regions of the US [1]