Despicable

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]

Benefits of standardization

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]

A New Era of Professionalism

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]

Knowledge first

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]

What you need to do before you move into your new home: Deep Cleaning Tips

Moving into a new home is an exciting time. But before you get too far ahead of yourself, it’s essential to remember the importance of cleaning before moving in. After all, your new home may have been left in less-than-ideal condition by the former residents and will require some effort on your part to ensure  [Read More]

578,319….and Silence

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]

Credible evidence

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]