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December was HIV/AIDS Awareness Month. It is great to celebrate our many victories over this infectious disease, but we must also remember the extent to which HIV/AIDS continues to affect our global community. In the United States, about 1.2 million people over 13 were living with HIV in 2018. At least 14% (1 in 7 [Read More]
This year, in addition to losing my mother, I also grieved a few days later with a friend for the loss of hers. When the father of another friend passed away unexpectedly, I was sad because he and I, despite our age difference, shared a connection as if we had known each other in another [Read More]
Our holiday season is marked by increased cases of COVID-19, more hospitalizations, long waiting lines in front of emergency departments around the country, overworked health care professionals tending to the sick, and too many critically ill patients in overflowing intensive care units. Sadly, there is also a significant increase in COVID-related deaths. Like all of [Read More]
Feared and often misused, the word standardization sometimes causes confusion in the health care setting. By definition, it applies to any process used to develop and implement metrics that specify essential characteristics of something whose control and uniformity are desired. In this sense, standardization may apply to almost anything; rules, technologies, services, commercial products, behaviors, and measurements. [Read More]
In science, technology, and social history individual courage often changes the world. Hannah Arendt, in The Meaning of Revolution, says that a revolutionary spirit is not defined as the action of a people, but rather as the well-sustained thought by individuals that a concept is right [1]. Educating the general public about health-related issues should [Read More]
Many say we know little about COVID-19, when in fact we have learned much since the start of the pandemic. The abundance of contradictory and often disputed information is consistent with the nature of scientific inquiry. This is because our goals as scientists are to make observations, challenge what might be considered facts, question results, [Read More]
More than 7000 physicians united through more than 40 WhatsApp groups, and suddenly silence. It is as if the global medical community with whom I have connected has become complacent, accepting of disappointment, disease, and death. Such is, perhaps, the effect of six months and more of COVID-19. Disappointment, because in many countries, medical leaders [Read More]
Here we go again. Just when the general public needs credible scientific evidence regarding COVID-19, another leading journal publishes controversial data, this time from a Noble Prize recipient. After the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) published the paper Identifying airborne transmission as the dominant route for the spread of COVID-191, the paper [Read More]
Many say we know little about COVID-19, when in fact we have learned much since the start of the pandemic. The abundance of contradictory and often disputed information is consistent with the nature of scientific inquiry. This is because our goals as scientists are to make observations, challenge what might be considered facts, question results, [Read More]
The curve flattened across California. Many stores and restaurants reopened. Folks who had been trapped indoors for months flocked to the beach with their families. But now in Orange County, where I live, the number of people infected with SARS-CoV-2, the respiratory virus responsible for the COVID-19 pandemic, is increasing, hospital beds are being filled, [Read More]