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Abraar Karan

@AbraarKaran

6 Dec

One thing we learn as doctors early on is that being able to place your health as your number one priority in life is a privilege afforded to very few of the patients that end up hospitalized

If we approached #covid19 policies w this in mind, we could meet people where they are

2/ Put another way— do not assume that people that got sick were being careless

For many, the need to feed themselves & their families will come above avoiding infection

Failing to help them is a failure of the system, not the individual

3/ We saw this early on in the epidemic.

The people that could work & tweet from home did so.

Many of the people that ended up in the emergency room didn’t have that luxury. #covid19

Read 6 tweets

Abraar Karan

@AbraarKaran

5 Dec

1/ "Masks reduce transmission risk by decreasing the quantity and velocity of respiratory emissions and increasing their dispersion. They do not eliminate trans- mission risk, however, because pathogen-laden aerosols can enter or exit the gaps between masks and faces"

@FixTheMask

2/ Again-- why *fit* is so critically important

The fit on N95 masks is better than ear loop masks. The latter can be augmented using mask braces @FixTheMask

In the hospital, we undergo fit testing for N95. Can approximate this in the community too

acpjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.732…

3/ Not completely fool-proof but one quick measure could be to check on how much glasses are fogging as a very general estimate of how much you are exhaling (& potentially inhaling)

In hospital, I use this to re-adjust my own fit as well

#covid19 #OmicronVariant

Read 4 tweets

Abraar Karan

@AbraarKaran

4 Dec

When you really think about vaccine inequity…

It’s a lot of the same excuses we have heard in global health for decades…

When it’s really about profits

We have to recognize that all the noise is gaslighting by pharmaceutical companies & everyone they own

2/ “People are hesitant anyways”

“other companies can’t make these vaccines”

“Tech transfers are too complicated”

“Supply chain is too difficult”

The list is endless but I don’t think any of it is true

If the money was there, it would be done …like two years ago

3/ Honestly— it would be easier if the Bancels and Bourlas of the world just said “yes we are going to sell to the highest bidders— we don’t care about anything else”

Then we could start realigning the system; &/or finding other ways to hold big pharma accountable

Read 6 tweets

Abraar Karan

@AbraarKaran

15 Nov

Framing of vaccines must be that they are a critical tool in a larger toolbox- not a means to throw the toolbox out altogether

Why?

As we start rolling out boosters again to wider population, we must still have ways to slow spread (now & future) with other interventions

2/ Too often, I am seeing concerns that if we push vaccines plus other interventions, we will lose people on the vaccines front

That is a failure of messaging and expectation setting

Public health experts may have to do better on communicating what each intervention can do

3/ There are of course many people for whom the incentive toward getting vaccinated is getting back to 'life as usual' without masks or taking precautions

Critical to appreciate how much vaccines have already done to prevent severe disease/deaths

Read 4 tweets

Abraar Karan

@AbraarKaran

3 Nov

@JournalofEthics

1/ In 2019, I led the American Medical Association @JournalofEthics issue on epidemic response; it was published right when #covid19 was beginning.

So many of these articles are relevant to what we are dealing with now.

journalofethics.ama-assn.org/issue/culture-…

Read 12 tweets

Abraar Karan

@AbraarKaran

31 Oct

One thing I guarantee you will notice if you pay attention

Doctors who have cared for #covid19 patients will never underestimate what this virus is capable of

The antivax, antimask pundits who have been tweeting from the safety of their home for the past two years often will

2/ I have yet to meet a fellow physician who has spent the majority of their time caring for these cases who would claim to know exactly what to expect from #SARSCoV2 — bc we continue to be surprised. Surprised by people who die that shouldn’t. People who suffer for longer than

3/ …we would expect. People who seem to get better & then suddenly turn for the worse. People who are doing poorly & who end up surviving.

Medicine humbles us as clinicians; this virus has too.

Hearing non-clinicians downplay it…

Read 5 tweets

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