Life in the time of COVID AFB Vaccine: It’s the Bee’s Knees The announcement of probably the most important medical breakthrough of this year was made on January 7. It had nothing to do with COVID. In fact, it had nothing to do with human diseases. Dalan Animal Health, a company in Georgia, announced that they had successfully produced a vaccine to protect bees from a disease called American Foulbrood which had been conditionally approved by the U.S. Food and…
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Life in the time of COVID
Life In The Time Of COVID It Ain’t Over ‘Til It’s Over On Monday evening, January 30, the White House announced that the COVID-19 emergency will end on May 11. The emergency, which was initially declared by President Donald Trump in 2020, has been renewed every 90 days since. If the Biden administration simply fails to renew the current 90-day declaration, the emergency would lapse in April rather than May. The White House stated that an “abrupt end to the…
Life in the time of COVID Current Concepts and Constant Change Things in the world of COVID are rapidly and constantly changing. This week’s column is a brief compendium of some of these changes. The alphabet soup of COVID variants and subvariants grows daily. Four weeks ago, we were talking about the new Omicron variant XBB. Now we are reading about the subvariant daily. A month ago, we were starting to discuss the properties of the original XBB. Now XBB.1.5…
Life in the Time of Covid by Dr. Richard Sternberg He’s Just ‘Mostly Dead’ Damar Hamlin in one sense is the luckiest undead person in the world. As probably almost all of you readers know, he is the Buffalo Bills player who went into ventricular fibrillation when he tackled an opposing player in the Bills-Bengals game on December 26 in Cincinnati. This was seen on national television by millions. He was successfully resuscitated on the field and rapidly transferred to…
LIFE IN THE TIME OF COVID The China Syndrome As I stated in last week’s column, it’s déjà vu all over again. Now the problem is new strains of COVID, which are beginning to take over in many countries including the United States. But more importantly is the rapid spread of multiple COVID sub-variants in China. Initially in response to COVID, the Chinese government came up with a zero tolerance policy. Whole cities were locked down. China developed its own…
Life in the Time of Covid Déjà Vu All Over Again It’s the end of the year and it’s time to reflect where we are regarding many issues. With this column principally about COVID or other viral illnesses, today we will limit ourselves to that. I really regret having to be the Grinch. The title of today’s column is a very famous statement credited to the great American philosopher Lawrence Peter Berra, who is also credited with many similar statements…
LETTER from RICHARD STERNBERG COVID Transforming Calls For Better Understanding There is a large amount of concern about this new strain of COVID that just Monday was confirmed to have reached New York State. At this time, I keep hearing that it is more contagious than the strain we are familiar with but not more lethal. What we don’t know, and what we will have to find out, is whether it is as sensitive to the approved vaccines as the…
LETTER from RICHARD STERNBERG Vaccines, Part II: They Arrive I wish I had the time, stamina, and column inches to write an article daily. That’s how fast the news is coming. Since last week, Pfizer has begun distribution and vaccinations around the nation, the Moderna vaccine has been approved and it will start distribution by the time you read this, with inoculations going into arms probably by Thursday the 24th. The 350 Tier One healthcare workers from Bassett Healthcare will…
LIFE IN THE TIME OF COVID-19 We’re Getting Closer To A COVID-19 Vaccine. Then What? It appears that we are getting closer to the development of vaccines for COVID-19. There have been some missteps in the process, including the development of an unexplained illness in one participant in the U.K. study of the AstraZeneca/Oxford vaccine. This required a halt to the study for about a week while the data was being reviewed. The study is progressing again at this time.…
LIFE IN THE TIME OF COVID Studies Seek Vaccine, But Treatments Too There has been a great deal of information both published and awaiting publication in the scientific literature about COVID-19. There’s so much literature it’s sometimes difficult to separate the wheat from the chaff, determining how accurate information may be no matter how well-meaning the researchers. In the treatment of COVID-19. There are no fully FDA-approved medications or treatment protocols. So far, the FDA has released EUAs (emergency use…