ProPublica has another explosive report, this time about how the Centers for Disease Control, once highly admired all around the world for the skill and expertise of its scientists in dealing with global health problems, has become a shadow of its former self, with career scientists dismayed at how the Trump administration has undermined and belittled its efforts. The feckless leadership of Robert Redfield, a Trump appointee, has been ineffective in defending its institutional honor. ProPublica bases its article on internal emails and reports and interviews with CDC officials.
[Read more…]

In the case of the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918, most of the deaths occurred during the second wave of the disease that occurred towards the end of that year and it was feared that the current pandemic might follow a similar pattern. That fear may be coming true. This graph tracks the number of new confirmed cases per week in the US for the current pandemic.

[Read more…]

A man from Texas was convinced that the coronavirus was a hoax and hosted family gatherings that violated the guidelines. You can anticipate what happened. Fourteen of his family members, including him, got infected and two of them died. He too was hospitalized. He now regrets his behavior, saying that he feels like drunk driver who killed members of his own family and he cautions others against acting like him.
[Read more…]

Just recently, after the fiasco of the first presidential debate, I got an email from an old friend of mine whom I had not heard from in years. In it, he gently chided me for ‘Trump bashing’ (his words). It is not that he is a Trump supporter. His reason is different and because it was so thoughtful and raised an important question, I am bringing it up here for discussion.

My friend wrote:

I don’t think that all the Trump bashing is warranted. It’s pretty obvious that he has a mental disorder. It’s not fair nor reasonable to have a go at the behavior of a person whose behaviour is due to a mental condition. Will anyone criticize the behaviour of a person who is suffering from Alzheimer’s, dementia or even a person who is bipolar?

I am no psychiatrist but I think Trump suffers from a form of Narcissistic Personality Disorder.

[Read more…]

It appears that Trump has decided that he is just fine and that he can go about his normal activities. But both he and his doctors have been cagey and inconsistent about the status of Trump’s illness and it is not clear if the doctors are being dictated to by Trump about how he should be treated and what they should tell the media. Dan Froomkin writes that there are whole host of questions that need to be asked from the doctors and the White House spokespersons that they need to provide answers for.
[Read more…]

It is of course no secret that the wealthy get treated differently from the rest of us and the world of medical care is no exception. Doctors often stray from standard treatments when their patient is seen a an important figure, sometimes in an effort to impress the patient that they are doing as much as they can, and sometimes because the patient demands it. This can happen even when the patient is a friend or relative or a fellow doctor. As we have seen, Trump got all manner of treatments that ordinary people would never have received. This phenomenon even has a name, the ‘VIP syndrome’. But it is not clear that this is a good thing even from the patient’s point of view, because it can result in overly-aggressive treatment that can have unwanted side-effects.
[Read more…]

This election and the extreme nature of the Trump presidency has resulted in the breaking of all manner of precedents. In particular, scientific organization which normally stay out of explicit involvement have decided to make endorsements. Scientific American magazine, for the first time in its history, weighed in with extremely strong language on why it was important to vote for Joe Biden.
[Read more…]