HIV and ID Observations

April 19th, 2021

Is It Time to Eliminate Outdoor Mask Mandates?

I do the morning dog walk in our house. And every day, I put on a mask before going out, just as I have since March of last year. As the data accumulate on the dynamics of SARS-CoV-2 transmission, it’s definitely time to ask this question — why am I still doing this? After all, it’s […]

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April 11th, 2021

Poll: Will This Video Change Anyone’s Mind About Getting a COVID-19 Vaccine?

Watch this video. It’s a minute long: I first heard about the video because, as mentioned before, I play in a regular poker game with a group of smart friends. Naturally, the in-person game, which started sometime in the early days of the 21th century, has been on hold since March of last year. One can […]

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April 4th, 2021

More Excellent News on COVID-19 Vaccines — and Baseball Gets a Policy Right

Big announcement this week from CDC, saying that people who have been fully vaccinated for COVID-19 can safely travel. Of course many didn’t need this permission, as data increasingly show the vaccines not only powerfully protect you, but protect others. But having official endorsement from our cautious federal health agency surely means the data are especially strong. […]

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March 21st, 2021

If You Want Thoughtful and Accurate Predictions About COVID-19, Zeynep Tufekci Has the Answers

The future ain’t what it used to be, said one very wise man. He might have also said, It’s difficult to make predictions, especially about the future, but alas we’ll have to credit that profundity to someone else. Still, both these statements embody the insurmountable difficulty of making accurate predictions — a problem starkly evident during pandemic […]

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March 14th, 2021

Really Rapid Review — CROI 2021 Virtual

For a few years in the early 2010s, the Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections (CROI) — in my opinion our premiere HIV scientific meeting — covered almost as many hepatitis C clinical trials as those on HIV. Or at least it seemed that way. This made sense at the time — the startling success of […]

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March 7th, 2021

Exactly One Year Ago, a Memorable Dinner Before a Memorable Year

On March 7, 2020, right before CROI here in Boston, a bunch of us ID types planned to get together for a pre-conference dinner. A mixture of Bostonians and out-of-towners who hadn’t seen each other for a while. A chance to catch up before our busiest (and most important) scientific meeting. What happened? One person landed in […]

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February 28th, 2021

Another COVID-19 Vaccine — and Barney, Explained

Busy few days on the COVID-19 vaccine front, specifically related to the Ad26.COV2.S vaccine developed by Johnson & Johnson. February 26, the Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee reviewed the data on the vaccine, voting unanimously that the benefits outweighed the risks. February 27, the FDA granted the single-dose vaccine emergency use authorization. And February 28-March 1, the Advisory Committee […]

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February 21st, 2021

Why Are COVID-19 Case Numbers Dropping?

We don’t know. That part is easy. Also easy is that case numbers really are falling — it’s not just reduced testing — and it’s happening pretty much everywhere. Urban areas and rural. Red states and blue. Places with broad vaccine rollouts and those with hardly any. North and South America, Europe, Africa, and Asia. Even countries […]

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February 15th, 2021

Time to Fix the HIV Testing Algorithm — and Here’s How to Do It

Remember the revised HIV testing algorithm that debuted in 2014? The one that was supposed to solve all our problems? First, it included a “highly sensitive” screening test that started with a “4th Generation” combination antibody/antigen test. This decreased the window period between acquiring HIV and having a positive test, thanks to the antigen. Great! (These “generation” […]

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February 7th, 2021

Does Taking Vitamin D Prevent or Treat COVID-19?

Vitamin D supplementation — critical in prevention and treatment of COVID-19? Or does it do nothing — except further enrich the vitamin and supplements industry, which is worth more than 100 billion dollars? The challenge is figuring out which of these is the truth, and after several weeks of thinking about the issue, I find it’s far […]

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