Can't believe I had to write this. But given the upswing in anti-vax sentiment in the US and the low vaccination rates for COVID and flu (and the under-vaccination of kids for some infections), it has to be said loud and clear. Vaccines work. Get yours today. https://www.thenation.com/article/society/vaccines-work/
So Trump and Vance are inciting violence, stochastic terrorism to be more exact, in Springfield, OH. All this is being covered as just another of Trump’s “upending norms”. Schools and hospitals have shuttered due to bomb threats. What has to happen for the press to wake up and call this what it is?
I need to vent. This racist is spreading lies about HIV and Haitians like it's the 1980s, AND when he went back to Ohio after Yale Law School, started a sham charity to fight the opioid epidemic (which has resulted in, well, guess what? HIV outbreaks including in OH). He has not one single shred of human decency. https://www.advocate.com/election/jd-vance-haitian-hiv-stigma
I cannot even believe this misinformation coming out of the Florida Department of Health. This is just beyond the pale. They are discouraging the use of mRNA COVID vaccines. This is beyond irresponsible. It is malpractice.
Watching H5N1 extend its host range, now show respiratory symptoms in a human case, should concern us all. We are whistling past the graveyard, not remotely prepared for what comes next. Perhaps H5N1 will not acquire the mutations necessary to ensure efficient human-to-human transmission, but counting on good fortune is not a strategy.
I really don't know who Uri Berliner is, but he gets it wrong on COVID19 origins. He castigates NPR's reporting on the subject for not giving ample credence to the lab leak theory, when in fact, it is less-well supported by the data. He wants us to talk "both sides" to show his independent bona fides when it simply speaks to his scientific ignorance.
Nice piece by CDC Director Mandy Cohen in NEJM on Integrating Public Health & Health Care. However, the relationship between public health & healthcare isn't that simple. First, a piece on the medicalization of public health and the consequences of that move. 1/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2791244/
Now, along with public health being essentially taken over by physicians and slated as a poor relative of biomedicine, we've seen the rise of the financialization of medicine. This piece by the great Don Berwick, puts it bluntly. 2/ https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2801097
And let's face it, medicine is vastly, vastly more well supported than public health. This creates a problem that isn't just solved by "partnerships." The late Elizabeth Fee described this 20 years ago. We simply do not invest in public health. 3/ https://www.healthaffairs.org/doi/full/10.1377/hlthaff.21.6.31