We seem to have turned the corner on this latest wave, with cases and hospitalizations trending down

 Reuters, Dec. 11: Boosters significantly restore protection vs Omicron, UK says Reuters, Dec. 22: ‘Significant increase’ in protection vs Omicron from mRNA boosters, study says NYT, Dec. 23 Booster protection wanes against symptomatic Omicron infections, British data suggests. The only thing you can come away with, from these headlines, is that at least one of…

March 3 Letter from Congressman Holt asking for a Congressional Investigation into the government’s handling of the anthrax letters investigation. Rep. Roscoe Bartlett supports this also. A brief excerpt follows, addressed (respectively) to the chairs of the House Homeland Security, Judiciary, Select Intelligence and Oversight and Government Reform Committees: Dear Chairmen Thompson, Conyers, Reyes, and…

My maternal grandfather died in 1968 of what was almost certainly a fulminant Hepatitis B infection (causing rapid liver failure, occurring in just 1% of acute cases). He probably acquired it working part-time in a deli, slicing meat. In med school a few years later, I learned that butchers had increased risk. You get Hepatitis…

Pauline Chen, MD blogs at the NY Times about what it feels like to be a doctor today.  Here she discusses a new survey of 7,000 practicing doctors, 48% of whom experienced at least one symptom of “burnout.”   Excerpts from her article follow: …Research over the last 10 years has shown that burnout –…

CDC, which performed some vaccine tests, acknowledged in 1968 that, “As to the efficacy of the vaccine, we have no real method of determining the protection afforded.” FDA records show that in 1969 the ad hoc committee to license anthrax vaccine found a lack of “scientific evidence for efficacy of the vaccine.” The committee chairman,…

Let’s do a back-of-the-envelope risk-benefit calculation on swine flu vaccine: In 2009-10, 44 Finns of all ages died of swine flu.  [With 5.3 million Finns, this is one death per 120,000 people of all ages.] About half the population of Finland received Pandemrix.  Had the vaccine been given before the pandemic struck (a near impossibility)…