COVID may trigger autoimmune disease in some people, contributing to their deaths.
Disease
An increased risk of mortality from COVID-19 has been separately linked to age, race, co-morbidities, and residence in nursing homes. The relative importance or effect of each of these variables – or any possible inter-relationship -- has yet to be determined or investigated. Such determination is critical – both to assess important risk factors in vulnerable groups, and determine the propriety and effectiveness of policy.
The common cold is a miserable experience, but there may be a silver lining to developing one: Certain kinds may help prevent severe COVID infections.
The popular press is replete with descriptive data on the current pandemic on global and national scales and for selected local areas with extreme outcomes. Here we describe regional data from April through December 2020 and analyze commonality among regions, case-fatality rates, and rates of change among daily rates, including "flattening of curves." We hope to Improve understanding of regional differences and trends in the pandemic.
Once again, I reached out to my friends living in an extended care facility to get an update. After all, they were in the first wave to be immunized, weren't they?
The Atlantic says that the new coronavirus strain is a "huge danger." However, the virus already mutated early last year to become more infectious. There's no reason to panic yet.
While we have vaccinated 1.38% of our population, Israel has vaccinated 15.83% of theirs – twice that of its closest competitor (the United Arab Emirates) and 11-fold that our rate [1]. What can we learn and do?
The Lancet once published a controversial study claiming that any alcohol consumption is bad for your health. Now, the same family of journals is coming after you poker players.
Front-line essential workers – that’s a great phrase, but what does it mean? Are Congressmen and their aides really “essential workers”? [1]
Medicine is conservative. We need good, thoughtful reasons to change our approaches to care – a philosophy that we believe has served our patients well. But COVID-19 put that idea on the back burner, especially in the early days of 2020. That was when we had no idea what was wrong and what to do -- and when we threw everything into the effort. How quickly was medicine able to grasp a different approach?
As two vaccines begin to roll out, the angst previously directed at when this will happen is being quickly transferred to questions of how, and to whom. A new opinion piece suggests some nudges that might make the process of delivering more than a half-billion jabs possible.
Sixth nerve palsy simply means paralysis of the sixth cranial nerve. What causes it, and can it be fixed? My dad is about to find out.