A Mysterious Case of COVID-19 has Appeared in the U.S. What do we do now?

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“Washing Hands” by peterjai2000 is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

The first possible case of community spread of COVID-19 was reported by the CDC on Wednesday February 26, and the tone of information disseminated to the American public has taken a decidedly serious turn. What do we do now?

Continue reading A Mysterious Case of COVID-19 has Appeared in the U.S. What do we do now? →

Five Myths About Coronavirus Debunked

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“MERS Coronavirus Particles” by National Institutes of Health (NIH) is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0 

There is an overwhelming amount of information about coronavirus circulating on the internet these days. Here are five ideas and sentiments that are utterly false.

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The Promise of Stem Cells Sells

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I recently binged the Wondery podcast Bad Batch from reporter Laura Beil. Like her previous podcast Dr. Death, Beil leads us through another fascinating medical mystery. This time, a handful of patients in Texas, Florida, and Arizona develop life-threatening infections after receiving an injection of stem cells.

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Ebola is back–10 things you need to know

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Ebola infection isolation

  1. Ebola causes a severe disease with fever, rashes, vomiting, diarrhea, and sometimes internal and/or external bleeding. It kills about half of  patients.
  2. Humans are first exposed to the virus from contact with bats or other infected animals. Once a person is infected, they can transmit the virus directly to other people via bodily secretions.  All bodily secretions are considered infectious, but the virus cannot spread through the air.
  3. The largest outbreak occurred in West Africa in 2014-2015, affecting almost 30,000 people and killing 40% of them.  From this outbreak, 4 cases occurred in the U.S.–2 traveled from Africa and 2 additional healthcare workers contracted the disease.
  4. The current outbreak in Democratic Republic of Congo involves 58 people and 27 have died.
  5. Healthcare workers are frequently infected during outbreaks due to close contact with patients despite rigorous precautions and personal protective equipment.
  6. Burial ceremonies that involve contact with the deceased, which are common in Africa, have been implicated to spread disease.
  7. Ebola virus has been detected in semen of male survivors months after infection, but it is not known whether it can be transmitted via sexual intercourse this long after infection.
  8. Rehydration and supportive care improves survival, but there is no proven therapy to treat patients with Ebola. A few experimental therapies are being tested.
  9. There is no licensed vaccine available, though an experimental vaccine appeared to work during the West Africa outbreak and has been deployed to Democratic Republic of Congo.
  10. Ebola virus is a slow moving target that poses little risk for a worldwide pandemic with proper control and coordination from the WHO and partners.

For more information:
WHO
DynaMed Plus 
Cloudy Media Blog posts about Ebola

Revolution for patients, with patience

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https://patientrevolution.org/whywerevolt/

Weaving personal stories with patient narratives, Dr. Victor Montori shines a light on the corruption plaguing the American healthcare system in his book Why We Revolt.

Somewhat suprisingly, Montori’s “soulful download” is neither preachy nor political. It is elegant poetry in which the care required to craft such a masterpiece is the very example of the care that Montori wishes for all patients.

Patients, not described as medically illiterate, hopeless beings, but as experts of their own circumstance. Experts who should be involved in their own medical decisions (ie. shared decision making) with minimal disruption to their life, if possible.

Some passages appear to target physicians, while others meant for patients. Yet the totality is an interwoven work of art combining-bridging-melding the two into a singular audience to which Montori speaks for his revolution. Because it is neither an onus of solely the patient nor the physician to revolt. Minimally disruptive care requires compassion and conversation that merely starts with the individual encounters of patient and physician.

Ultimately, Montori is not just critical of the system, but offers a vision of what health care should be. Perhaps, through a revolution for patients with patience, what it can be.

 

10 Fun Facts about Vax

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It’s that time of year again.  The leaves are a-changing, there is a crispness in the air, and you’re finding it impossible to NOT purchase Halloween candy that you will inevitably eat and have to buy again anyway.  Oh, and your local pharmacy, Facebook feed, tv, magazines, and just about any other media outlet are reminding you to go get your flu shot.

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What do you March for?

Medical Musings

So sorry for the lengthy gap between blog posts dear faithful readers!  Responsibilities at work are in the process of shifting (I hope to have more to officially say about that in the near future) and I’m currently participating in a vicious weekly battle with the real estate market of the greater Boston area.  So needless to say, I’ve had very little time to devote to all that is cloudy in the media.  Alas, the March for Science is 2 weeks away and I wanted to post something before and after this momentous day.

The March for Science is scheduled to take place on Saturday April 22, 2017, which is also appropriately Earth day.  The March will officially be held at the National Mall in Washington, DC, but there will also be sister marches in more than 425 other cities around the world.

Despite that it may seem to be, participating in the March and standing up for science is not a political issue. Yes, we need federal money to fund research grants, and yes, the government regulates that, but there exists anti-science rhetoric at both ends of the political spectrum.  Understanding that vaccines protect us from dangerous pathogens and GMOs are safe are just as important as accepting that we’ve evolved from single-celled organisms and that the Earth (with life on it) has existed long before Adam and Eve.

In preparation for the March for Science, I’ve been thinking of a making a few posters.  What do you think of these?

I may be a scientist, but one needn’t be to participate in the March.  Consider the ways science influences your life and March for that.  Here are my reasons:

I March because science isn’t just a series of classes we had to take in school,
but a way of thinking

I March because science paves the way for innovation and technological advancement

I March because we are all scientists, whether our experiments
happen in a kitchen or in a lab

I March because science holds truths about the universe we have yet to discover

I March because science (and it’s truths) exist whether I believe in them or not

What do you March for?

 

Our Precious Antibiotics

Cloudy Media, Medical Musings, Medical Myths, The best of science in the media, , ,

(c) Gage Skidmore

Just a day after reading about a woman in Nevada who died from a bacterial infection resistant to EVERY SINGLE antibiotic, I discovered that my sister had just finished a course of antibiotics for an upper respiratory infection known as pharyngitis.  Not all that interesting until you consider that my sister had strep test-negative pharyngitis, meaning not caused by the bacteria Streptococcus.  As my palm smacked my forehead in disbelief and I attempted to explain why taking antibiotics might not have been a great idea, I said to myself, “gosh darn it Heather, you’ve got a blog, go blog.” Continue reading Our Precious Antibiotics →