It’s pretty bleak, folks. How much do you feel it is justified to threaten public health officials when they close businesses to slow the transmission of COVID-19 disease? My reflexive answer to this question, which was posed at multiple pandemic time points to a nationally representative sample was a quick “never”. We shouldn’t be…

FluNet is capturing much more than just the flu. Cast your mind back to March 9th, 2020. You’d heard of this novel coronavirus, but with less than 1000 reported cases in the US, it still seemed remote. Schools and businesses were still open. On March 9th, then President Trump tweeted:

A new study shows how certain viruses “call mosquitos home” to continue their life cycle. As the nights get warmer here in Connecticut, I’m spending more and more time at dusk outside with my family. And alongside the ritual of roasting marshmallows for s’mores comes another ritual — complaining about who is getting bitten more by mosquitos. Why is it that I am relatively spared…

A huge new study shows vitamin supplements have essentially no ability to prevent cancer or cardiovascular disease. Vitamins. If you are like the majority of American adults, you took a vitamin or supplement recently. Over the counter sales of these products in this country amount to over 30 billion dollars a year. That’s more than the market for statins — and vitamins aren’t covered by insurance.

I have Borrelia on the brain as the weather gets warmer and the ticks get bolder. Well, the weather is getting warmer, the birds are singing, the grass is growing, and as the shorts and skirts start appearing, so to, like clockwork, do rashes that look like this.

A new study suggests an impressive reduction in cancer death after bariatric surgery, but it is not the final word. There is an epidemic in this country that has been raging far longer than COVID-19, claiming around 300,000 lives a year in the United States. That epidemic? Obesity. Obesity is a major contributor to cardiovascular disease and mortality, but less often discussed is the role of obesity in promoting cancers…

A new study raises some difficult questions about the doctor — patient relationship. — This is Cassandra.

While COVID may not directly infect brain tissue, it causes a lot of inflammation around the brain. SARS-CoV-2 is a strange virus, and not only because it is so novel. The variability in clinical presentation and outcome is still perplexing, the emergence of variants — like omicron — with few links to established lineages is weird — and then… there is the anosmia. In retrospect, it may…