Dr. Michael Osterholm, ACSH advisor and infectious disease epidemiologist, has co-authored a report on the coronavirus, drawing upon lessons learned from previous influenza pandemics. He and his co-authors predict one of three scenarios for how the COVID-19 pandemic will play out.
pandemic
If the spread of COVID-19 is unstoppable, infectious disease epidemiologist Dr. Johan Giesecke says that we must shift our public health strategy away from a futile attempt to prevent its spread and toward providing optimal care for the sickest patients.
Americans have developed a social pathology in which we pin our collective hope and hatred on a single person, the President of the United States. This began long before Donald Trump took office, but the coronavirus pandemic has greatly worsened the problem.
Media headlines are almost exclusively about the coronavirus death toll and the debate over whether it's too early to begin lifting lockdown restrictions. However, there are several other observations about COVID-19 that are important, but are getting very little attention.
Once again, from the frontline of COVID-19's war on the elderly, a follow-up diary covering recent thoughts of two of our seniors. They are heroes in their own way.
How would we respond differently if another outbreak happened?
Throughout this pandemic, we have heard many heartbreaking and heartwarming stories of how we're responding and coping. Many of those have been about the elderly, accounts written by adult children describing how they miss contact with their parents, segregated from them by institutional living. But here is a first-hand account by an older couple in their mid-80s, who describe what they are thinking and living through during this staggering health crisis.
Dr. David Shlaes, an infectious disease expert and ACSH advisor, is incensed over the nation's lack of preparedness for the coronavirus epidemic. A scenario like this has been discussed for three decades, yet we are still in the middle of a disaster. Here are his thoughts.
On May 15, 1850, effective treatment for the coronavirus and its infectious friends was put forward, subsequently ridiculed, and now ignored -- at our collective peril. Wash your hands. Fairly simple, yet so challenging to do. And a new study looks at how not washing your hands hastens global pandemics.
New research into the 1918 and 2009 influenza pandemics reveal a potential warning sign: Mild cases of influenza that occur in the spring or summer may be a harbinger of a devastating pandemic to come in the autumn.
We want American scientists to know as quickly as possible when an unusual case of the sniffles occurs in Africa or Asia. From there, we could be able to model the likelihood of the disease spreading beyond its origin. Such a strategy could help prevent Ebola from making a return visit to the United States.
With the recent discovery of polymyxin-resistant infection here in the U.S., there's a renewed pledge among drug developers and the government to incentivize research for developing new antibiotics, previously a seemingly abandoned effort.