While we lament the lack of cooperation in Western culture that allows a virus to spread, we can simultaneously celebrate the entrepreneurial spirit that allows a cure to be discovered.
Disease
The views of Dr. Merrit, a physician, on COVID-19’s origin story, biologic effects, and organized medicine’s response is classic misdirection and misinformation. It is time to debunk the distortions that cast more shadow than light.
India’s population is 1.4 billion, four times greater than in the United States. Yet we have 26 million cases of COVID-19, while they have 10.8 million. As for fatalities, India is closing in on 160,000 through Feb. 4, while the U.S. has recorded 455,000 – nearly three times as many. Further, U.S. healthcare is generally believed to be better than India's. So what’s going on here? More importantly, what can we learn?
A statistical test suggests that several countries are misreporting or fabricating COVID case numbers. The United States is included among those countries. Is there another explanation?
Our first two vaccines have greater than 90% efficacy; Novavax reports 89.3%, Johnson and Johnson’s reports 66%. Should we care? What do those numbers mean to you and me when we worry about the protection the vaccine affords us?
It’s flu season in the US, but seasonal flu’s cousin, COVID-19, and its variants are getting all the press. It might be worth considering whether all those precautions we are taking concerning COVID-19 are spilling over into other health issues.
This week things are looking up, just not as much as we might like. We’re vaccinating more than a million people a day, but we continue to be plagued by operational problems that prevent scaling up immunization rates at a quicker pace. What does the data tell us?
There's growing evidence that B.1.1.7, a variant of concern, or VOC, is more infectious than the garden variety COVID-19. What's been missing is data on whether it's more aggressive and lethal. Media reporting says it “may be 30% more lethal.” Of course, a lot depends on what "may" means.
A weekly look at how the national and global vaccination programs are going. We're improving at getting vaccines into arms, but not improving as quickly as we should.
Some ingenious pharmacists have figured out how to get a sixth dose out of the "fill" in Pfizer's vaccine. Pfizer wants those magically-found "extra doses" counted towards its commitment to the U.S. government. And the company wants to be paid for what it's providing.
We know we develop an immune response to COVID-19 if we are infected or vaccinated, but just how long does it last? The answer to that question is becoming more evident.
There are several websites compiling data on the vaccination roll-out. As was the case for tracking the spread of COVID-19, some metrics are more helpful than others. Here is our initial guide, and like COVID-19, subject to change.