HIV and ID Observations

May 18th, 2025

How ID Doctors Get Paid — The Bread, Butter, and Budget Deficits of Infectious Diseases

Two decades ago, Dr. Atul Gawande wrote a memorable piece for The New Yorker about how doctors in the United States get paid. Providing a nice mix of self-reflection about his own experience and some skillful reporting, he described the challenging process of figuring out what he, a newly hired surgeon, should earn for a salary. […]

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April 30th, 2025

On-Service ID Link-o-Rama — Osmosis Edition

First-year ID fellows this time of year bring a lot to inpatient consult rotations. Years of high-volume inpatient care have sharpened their clinical instincts, and at this point they have an impressive fund of ID knowledge. Plus, the fellow on our current rotation gets along great with everyone — patients and consulting clinicians alike — […]

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April 11th, 2025

Looking Back at a Defunct ID Meeting — and Ahead to a Thriving One

Back in prehistoric times, many ID doctors and microbiologists would gather each fall at a meeting to review the latest antimicrobial clinical trials and promising “bug-drug” studies of novel compounds in development. The meeting was called the Interscience Conference on Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy, abbreviated ICAAC. There were a bunch of problems with ICAAC. First, […]

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April 3rd, 2025

Gepotidacin — New Antibiotic or Rare Tropical Bird?

Imagine you’re birdwatching in the Costa Rican rainforest, Merlin app in hand. A flash of iridescent blue catches your eye. You scan the canopy and whisper excitedly: Look, it’s the elusive Blujepa! A rare sighting! No, not a real bird, but the brand name of gepotidacin, something rarer — and arguably more exciting — than […]

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March 5th, 2025

What Is the Future of Treatments for COVID-19?

In this raging flu season, where people with influenza-related illness outnumber those with COVID-19 for the first time since the pandemic hit in 2020, we might be fooled into thinking that we no longer need better treatments for COVID-19. This would be a mistake — this virus still causes much misery, peaking each winter but […]

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February 14th, 2025

This Year Influenza Came Back to Remind Us It’s Not Messing Around

If it seems like pretty much everyone you know either has the flu or is recovering from it, it’s because we’re in the middle of the worst flu season in over a decade. Take a look at this figure, from our state’s surveillance data, updated yesterday: The result of all this “influenza-like illness”? Patients are deluging outpatient […]

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January 25th, 2025

Let’s Hope the MMWR Resumes Publication Sooner Rather Than Later

To us specialists in Infectious Diseases, there are certain verities we hold near and dear to our hearts: Antibiotics are miracle drugs, but the bugs will become resistant if we don’t use them responsibly. Certain childhood vaccines (e.g., measles, polio, H flu type B) stand as some of the greatest scientific accomplishments in human history. To […]

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January 11th, 2025

Ten Interesting Things About Norovirus Worth Knowing

For reasons unclear to all, we’ve had quite the run (!) on norovirus cases in the United States this winter. Seems like everyone knows someone who’s been taken down by this nasty illness, and this crowd of miserable people includes one of my medical school classmates, a good friend who texted us about her experience. Thanks […]

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January 3rd, 2025

On the Inpatient ID Consult Service, Oral Antibiotics Have a Rocky Road to Acceptance

Having just completed a stint doing inpatient ID consults, I came away impressed with three things: Staph aureus remains the Ruler of Evil Invasive Pathogens in the hospital setting. You can “jinx” a holiday season by saying it’s usually quiet on Christmas. This year it sure wasn’t quiet, hoo boy. Some surgeons aren’t ready to accept […]

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December 28th, 2024

Notes from a Trip to China

Here are some observations from a recent trip to China, a country I’d never visited before. It was an 8-day trip related to my editor role at Clinical Infectious Diseases (there is a Chinese edition) and my particular area of focus within Infectious Diseases (HIV), so I’ll start with some epidemiology and medical stuff and […]

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