This ⤵️ examined the inequities of the global #COVID19 vaccine rollout. Wealthy nations need to help the rest of the world get vaccinated - not just for moral and humanitarian reasons, but also to tamp down variants and soften the global economic impact.
This ⤵️ outlined the precarious place we’re at in the pandemic. The next phase will depend on vaccines, variants, and how well we adhere to public health measures.
The recent lifting of restrictions & mask mandates may unnecessarily prolong the pandemic. link.medium.com/wCfDk8eCpeb
Here ⤵️ I reflect on the anniversary of the pandemic in NYC. Its hard to describe all the sadness healthcare workers saw this past year.
But theres reason for hope. Thankfully many of us are vaccinated against a disease we feared, bringing some comfort.
In ⤵️ piece I wrote about the global shortage of medical oxygen.
I know it might sound boring. But oxygen is something we take for granted. Like running water or nurses, we can’t even imagine a hospital without it. The global reality is very different. link.medium.com/Z8irQT9cAeb
In ⤵️ piece I discuss the promise and perils of vaccine passports.
Even with their obvious upsides, there are many unanswered questions on how they’ll be used and who will be left out. Let’s collectively consider their limitations before it’s too late.
In ⤵️ piece I wrote how the decision to pause the J&J vaccine seemed short-sighted. But for the health of our patients and for the long-term credibility of our public health institutions in the future, it was absolutely the right one.
In ⤵️ piece I wrote about the most common misconceptions when it comes to herd immunity.
FYI: it’s not a set, single, or even known threshold. Nor is it a country-level on/off switch where everything magically changes once we reach it. Want more deets? 👇 link.medium.com/Zs9wg1IaUfb
While the U.S. and other wealthy nations vaccinate their way out of our pandemic nightmare, Covid is raging around the world.
But only 0.2% of all Covid vaccines are going to low-income countries.
I wrote about Fox News fraudster @TuckerCarlson and his deliberate lies about the Covid vaccines.
In pushing disingenuous disinformation about the vaccines, Carlson is doing his viewers a huge disservice. Hopefully, none of them pay the ultimate price.
Over 115,000 health care workers around the world have died from Covid-19. Like many of my frontline colleagues, I've lost too many of my friends to this virus.
I taught a class on the history of eugenics and public health today. Here's what we covered: 🧵
Eugenics is Greek for 'well-born'. But it wasn't coined by the Greeks. It's a late 19th century term made up by Francis Galton. He LOVED data. We will come back to that.
Eugenics had the biggest impact on the approach to mental illness, immigration, and reproductive justice.
We will dig into each.
But first, you gotta know the background and key players.
For background, eugenics arose in an environment obsessed with progress, but also frustrated with economic and social realities.
Having worked in conflict zones, I want to share a bit on humanitarian response in Gaza, as aid starts to trickle in.
This isn’t a thread on how to end the war, or hostages, or any of the other very important things. Those are critical too. But they’re not at all my expertise 🧵
Over the past week, shortages in food, water, and electricity have exacerbated the humanitarian and health challenges.
This creates new problems, as well as worsening chronic issues.
Without gas, generators can’t run. Newborns on life support in intensive care can’t survive.
Without electricity, patients can’t receive dialysis. Insulin for diabetes can’t be kept refrigerated, as it should be. These chronic health issues worsen, quickly.
Without water, infectious diseases like cholera (and others) become increasingly likely.
Today I spoke in a colleague’s class about the COVID-19 pandemic.
He asked me to talk about what it was like in NYC’s emergency rooms in March and April 2020. Seemed easy enough.
But revisiting the trauma was really hard and painful.
I’m still not sure we’ve fully processed.
It really hit me when I described how we strung oxygen tubing from the wall outlets up through the ceiling so it reached patients in the middle of the ER who were suffocating when the canisters under their bed ran out…
We all normalized something that just wasn’t normal, at all
It had been years since I thought about how my colleague avoided my gaze as I examined her.
Struggling to breathe, she was looking over my shoulder as her mother was intubated across the emergency room.
You know why we intubated people for Covid in March 2020?
Because otherwise they were going to die. Full. Stop.
I remember a patient rolling in with an oxygen saturation of 42%, breathing twice as fast as normal,struggling on a face mask with oxygen all the way up.
What to do?
I’m sick of seeing people trying to relitigate 2020 through the eyes of 2023.
If you miraculously know everything now, why didn’t you tell us so then?
So over a million Americans didn’t have to die of Covid.
So we didn’t have to put ourselves at risk every time we went to work
I don’t care about the narrative you want to create, from the safety of where you stand now.
Do not try to reimagine the environment and the challenges so many of my colleagues felt on the frontlines, 3 years ago, when we knew almost nothing.