Using data to shape reopenings following quarantine — By David L. Katz MD, MPH and Kelly B. Close MD, MPH Any untimely death is a tragedy. Our youth die in transit to and from schools and universities every year, but these institutions are not shut down as a result. Engaging in life involves some risk of death. Covid-19…

Our thinking, debate, and discourse so far has been, in a word, dumb — We must, to some extent, be something like flotsam in the currents of culture, debris on the winds of the zeitgeist; a bit helpless against the buffeting of “now,” in all its particulars. Perhaps it is the Internet and social media; perhaps the constant immediacy of news cycles. …

Dissecting the WHO response on immunity — Last weekend, the World Health Organization stoked the flames of global anxiety by issuing this in the guise of a reality check: we do not know that getting COVID19, and recovering from it, results in immunity. The media, naturally, said “thank you” for the rekindled fire, and threw gasoline on…

Rates may differ in the U.S. as a result of chronic disease — Among the early lessons in the international data circulating about coronavirus infections were vivid indications of important risk differentials. South Korea, for instance, where population testing was conducted among asymptomatic people, reported consistently that 98% to 99% of all infections were mild. Severe infections warranting hospitalization, and the mortality toll…

Our only immediate option is the best population-wide containment we can manage — I am just back from being tested for COVID19- very efficiently and professionally, I might add- at Griffin Hospital in Derby, Connecticut. I can’t commend my Griffin colleagues enough for how beautifully they organized. Below are images of the test facility, and the print guidance I received. …

We are in this together — No one will know for sure the best responses to the COVID-19 pandemic until after it’s all over, and we look back and second guess ourselves. Hindsight will approximate 20/20; foresight almost never does. But as someone who has the same skin in the game as everyone else — my…

And we’re largely ignoring it — You are, probably, worrying about coronavirus. For most of us, the anxious questions are: Am I going to get the coronavirus? Is someone I love going to get it? If we do, is it going to kill us? For starters, let’s be clear that no one ever gets a health…

What we do and don’t know — Even as the public health community wages a high-profile battle over how much processed meat it’s safe to eat, the community of vegan or plant-based nutrition experts has been waging a war of its own over the role of fat and its various sources in a plant-based diet. One camp…

They’re at odds with doctors’ vow to do no harm — A recent commentary in JAMA lends support to publication in the Annals of Internal Medicine of “guidelines” suggesting that the public can keep eating processed meat at current levels while questioning the methods and motives of the many public health scientists who voiced opposition to the Annals authors’ methods and…