HIV and ID Observations

September 20th, 2020

Sports During COVID-19 — When What Doesn’t Matter Actually Matters a Lot

A few weeks ago, I got a text from a long-time ID colleague here in Boston: Hey Paul want ur opinion … this is for an interview with MLB radio, and no one knows less about baseball than I do, but as an avid fan and wise ID doc, do you think the season should continue? […]

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September 13th, 2020

Restaurants Are Hurting — But Dining Indoors Poses Real COVID-19 Risk

As we learn more about transmission of SARS-CoV-2, the news for restaurants goes from bad to worse. And while there’s a long list of sad things about this pandemic, the decimation of the restaurant business for owners and the people who work there is right up there. The loss of the restaurant experience for us diners […]

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September 7th, 2020

Relieving the COVID-19 Testing Logjam by Separating the Symptomatic from Asymptomatic

As the days grow shorter and we celebrate Labor Day here in the United States, the end of summer looms awfully near. With that will soon come colder temperatures, more time spent indoors, kids back in school, and the inevitable respiratory virus season. How we address these “viral URIs” in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic […]

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August 30th, 2020

Cases of SARS-CoV-2 Reinfection Highlight the Limitations — and the Mysteries — of Our Immune System

In case you didn’t notice, or perhaps were “off the grid” taking some well-earned time away from COVID-19 news, this past week we heard about several cases of SARS-CoV-2 reinfection. We’ll come back to them in a moment, but first, some questions: Why does one parent never get sick when their kids start coughing and sneezing and […]

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August 16th, 2020

Picking the Top Internet ID Resources, and a Wistful Look Back at the CDC That Was

Over on Open Forum Infectious Diseases — and that’s abbreviated “O-F-I-D”, not “Oh-fid”, thank you — I sometimes invite other ID-types to join me on a podcast to pick their favorite ID-related item: Examples of these mock “drafts”: Antibiotics Landmark HIV research papers Expired antimicrobial brand names And some time this past winter (a million years ago), […]

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August 4th, 2020

Carbapenems and Pseudomonas, Lyme and Syphilis Testing, a Bonus Point for Doxycycline, and Some Other ID Stuff We’ve Been Talking About on Rounds

As noted multiple times, many of us ID doctors attend on the general medical service. This offers us a chance to broaden our patient care activities and to work with medical students, interns, and residents. Boy, that’s fun! Yes, those of us who attend on medicine enjoy it enormously, though the experience humbles us on a daily […]

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July 26th, 2020

Time to Amplify Our Voices Calling for Inexpensive Rapid Home Testing for COVID-19

Earlier this month, I highlighted how inexpensive rapid home testing for COVID-19 could get us out of this mess faster than a vaccine. To spare you re-reading the whole thing, here are the main points. Imagine a simple test done on a saliva sample placed on a paper strip. Results back in 15 minutes. Available without a […]

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July 19th, 2020

Reaching Out to ID Doctors in COVID-19 Hot Spots — You Must Be Truly Exhausted

For us ID doctors in most of the northeastern United States (and Chicago and Detroit and some other northern cities), March and April hit us like a giant wave of never-ending calls, pages, emails, and crises. With COVID-19 case numbers increasing every day, the challenges crashed down on us in an endless torrent of hospital needs […]

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July 15th, 2020

Really Rapid Review — AIDS 2020 Virtual

The International AIDS Conference — or AIDS 2020 — shifted from its Bay Area dual locations of San Francisco and Oakland to be entirely online. Digital. In the cloud. Virtual. The primary motivation for the switch was to show off what the numerous tech giants in the region could do with this fancy thing called the World […]

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July 5th, 2020

Rapid, Inexpensive Home Testing for COVID-19 May Get Us Out of This Mess Before a Vaccine

As cases of COVID-19 continue to climb to record numbers, it might seem impossible that something is already out there that could dramatically reduce new infections — and even bring us back to some semblance of normal life. I’m not referring to a vaccine. It’s a rapid, inexpensive home test. You’re forgiven for being incredulous. Indeed, you […]

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