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I was as enamored of the classics and humanities as I was of the sciences.
“Because we do not know the cause of this syndrome, any assumption that the syndrome will remain restricted to a particular segment of our society is truly an assumption without scientific basis.”
Just because no one had ever done something like this before did not mean it could not be done. I also realized how important it was to cultivate relationships with people who are in a position to make things happen.
the cause for which you are advocating must be legitimate, worthy, and not motivated by self-interest; your arguments must be evidence based; and you must be truthful and consistent in your reasons for asking for resources.
crucial to be truthful and consistent in providing information based purely on scientific evidence and best judgment, and nothing else.
the attacks were “high on terror, but low on biomedical impact.”
Nothing gets done in Washington without a lot of meetings,
These results, which were presented at the 2018 International AIDS Conference in Amsterdam, firmly
was clear that we were dealing with an epidemic of fear rather than an epidemic of Ebola virus disease.
it seemed to me that the Republican-led committee was pushing back on the $1.9 billion request for Zika funds mostly because President Obama was asking for it.
But tacking on permission to fly the Confederate flag at military veteran cemeteries to a spending bill aimed at preventing devastating disease in babies…Really?
how detrimental to an optimal response to an infectious disease outbreak partisan politics could be.
Vice presidents are always publicly loyal to the president. That is part of the job. But, in my opinion, Vice President Pence sometimes overdid it.
This was the first, but not the last, whiplash effect that I would experience in dealing with this complex man.
People associate science with absolutes that are immutable, when in fact science is a process that continually uncovers new information. As new information evolves, the process of science allows for self-correction.
“The patient is no mere collection of symptoms, signs, disordered functions, damaged organs, and disturbed emotions. The patient is human, fearful, and hopeful, seeking relief, help, and reassurance.” Understanding this compels me to abide by the principles to always be honest; to be unafraid of saying that I do not know something; to never overpromise; to be comforting, yet realistic.
venting that we were seeing more cases only because we were doing more testing. The other countries looked good because they were not testing,
Conceptually, there was no feasible way to “protect” all vulnerable people because the elderly, the obese, and the millions of people with underlying conditions form such a significant proportion of the population that they could not possibly all be sequestered. In practice, the evolution of multiple COVID variants over the years that eluded the protection of prior infection showed that herd immunity in the classic sense was not applicable to COVID.
molecular makeup of the bat viruses studied at the WIV under the NIAID/EHA grant was genetically so different from SARS-CoV-2 that they could not possibly be the source of SARS-CoV-2.
On Sunday, January 23, anti-vaxxers led by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. held a rally in Washington, D.C.,
At our meeting, Kennedy had gone on for more than an hour about the dangers of vaccines including the relationship between the vaccine preservative thimerosal and autism, making points that were clearly inaccurate.
Now, in his Lincoln Memorial speech before a crowd of thousands, including members of the white supremacist group the Proud Boys, Kennedy likened U.S. vaccine policies to Nazi Germany.
The same holds true for the years of prior research, mostly with HIV, which led to the targeted design of effective antiviral drugs for COVID as well as the development of an array of monoclonal antibodies to prevent and treat COVID.
over many years we had let our public health infrastructure become a low priority.
notable disparity between communities in access to lifesaving vaccines and the availability of physicians willing to prescribe antiviral drugs.
with underlying conditions that make it more likely to have a severe outcome from COVID leading to hospitalization and death is higher than in many countries.
Adding to the problem was our lack of access to real-time data on the dynamics of the outbreak and the emergence of new variants, requiring us to rely on other countries for this information.
All these weaknesses in our public health response to COVID were profoundly compounded by one of the true enemies of public health: the spread of egregious misinformation and disinformation enabled by the internet and social media that unfortunately remains with us today.
