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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?

As the Delta variant becomes THE primary source of COVID-19 infections there’s a growing body of knowledge to explain why this is happening. Let's consider two new studies and a fact we may have forgotten.

The inconvenience of yearly flu shots prevents many people from getting them, while flu kills thousands of Americans annually. We need vaccines that will provide durable immunity and work against new variants. There is progress.

The federal government has proposed a nationwide vaccine mandate. It's a terrible idea.

Let’s not forget that the goal in tamping down the COVID-19 pandemic is to vaccinate the world. But it’s an ambitious project impaired by the concepts of “vaccine nationalism,” fostered by “vaccine diplomacy.” We should consider more than how those words make us feel.

Ever heard of the Hotze Health & Wellness Center in Houston? If not, you're better off. Its founder, Dr. Steven Hotze, has plenty to say about COVID, almost all of it completely wrong.

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.

Sickle Cell Disease is an awful genetic disease that disproportionally affects black people. It's caused by a single-point mutation in DNA, which results in a modified hemoglobin protein, differing by only one amino acid. While this may sound insignificant, it's anything but. Simple organic chemistry explains why this change profoundly affects those unfortunate enough to inherit the disease, which is characterized by abnormal hemoglobin.

California just paused its plans for a statewide COVID-19 vaccine mandate. There wasn't an ounce of scientific evidence to support this proposal and enough opposition to halt the legislation, at least until after the upcoming elections. There's an important lesson here for policymakers.

Do kids need COVID shots? It's a difficult question to answer, but incendiary commentary has unnecessarily muddied the issue. Let's take a look at what we know so far.

This past week, Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health hosted a webinar on the putative dangers of ultra-processed foods (UPF). Let me share my recap.

Shane Ellison, the self-proclaimed "People's Chemist," has a lot to say about chemistry, drugs, and vaccines. Let's see if he knows what he's talking about.

Several superficially plausible arguments against COVID-19 vaccination continue to pop up across the internet, usually phrased as leading questions. Are they as solid as they seem? A little investigation suggests they are mostly speculation.

Last week, the FDA and CDC presented their recommendations for the newest round of COVID-19 vaccines. As with everything COVID, there are proponents and detractors, or, putting it another way, both knowledgeable experts and disinformation-spreading attention-seekers. The reality is that a group of experts made a judgment based on actual data.  We discuss the evidence here so you can make your own informed decision.

A new paper reports that Paxlovid-resistant Covid has been isolated, calling into question the utility of the drug as well as how it should be used. Is this cause for alarm? Not yet, but it could become just that. A look at viral resistance to drugs.

Is it too early to address what went wrong when the COVID vaccines were rolled out? This is not about the “first rough draft of history." Instead, it's a more dispassionate, high-altitude view that allows us to assess this public health moment through two different critical theory lenses: complex systems and scaling.

Antiviral drug development for COVID-19 took a back seat to vaccines during the brief time – when we thought that ending the pandemic was simply a matter of getting enough needles in enough arms. But the virus had other ideas: variants. Now it's looking like we may need a drug to complement the vaccines. Three are in development. Here's a look at Pfizer's PF-07321332. It should work, but don't hold me to that.

It seems that COVID-19 is, finally and hopefully, waning from the American scene. Before we face another wave or a new threat, it might make sense to review some of the legal fallout, notably the interplay between freedom of religion, the obligation of the state to protect public health, and the prevalence of changing attitudes championing solidarity versus those advocating autonomy.