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17
Apr
2020

The Real Question is How to Restart

When?? When can we finally go back to something resembling a “normal” life, go back to work and restart our economies, embrace again long-lost family, friends, co-workers? And, in too many cases, when can we get together to properly mourn those we have lost? I cannot tell you “when.” Everyone wants the answer to that question. I do, too. But...
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17
Apr
2020

Bridging the Social Divide in the Pandemic

Halfway through an explanation to a patient I am treating for a suspected case of COVID-19, I realize I don’t know the Spanish term for “sanitizing wipes.” I’m in my new clinical home base, where Massachusetts General Hospital has cordoned off special care for COVID-19 patients. There are modular plastic walls and bright fluorescent lights. A few weeks ago, this...
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14
Apr
2020

Why COVID-19 Can’t Be Directly Compared With the Flu

A few years ago, I was preparing for a live radio interview about prostate cancer screening, my main area of research for the past 20 years. As a statistician focused on getting the numbers right, I disagreed strongly with the new national recommendation from an influential task force that guides practice and reimbursement. Members of that task force argued against...
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9
Apr
2020

GSK Partners With Vir on Antibodies, Pfizer With BioNTech on Vaccines, & the Testing Fiasco Continues

Here we are heading into Easter Weekend. We’re the wealthiest country in the world, and the undisputed superpower of biomedicine. Yet we’re still playing a game of catch up against SARS-CoV-2, which apparently our intelligence community knew was emerging around Thanksgiving. Even after months to get our act together, we still don’t have a coordinated national strategy on exactly how...
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7
Apr
2020

George Yancopoulos, That Rarest Of Species – A Physician-Scientist Still In Charge Of A Pharma

Growing up in an academic household (my parents are both professors at Yale Medical School, still engaged, as ever, in dyslexia research), it was perhaps inevitable that, outside of my parents, my first role model was the brilliant President of Yale University, the late Bart Giamatti (you know- Paul’s dad).  The elder Giamatti inspired me so much as a teenager...
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7
Apr
2020

COVID-19 Models: What Makes Them Tick?

As the COVID-19 pandemic unfolds, questions about its likely course are much on our minds. How long will it last? How bad will it get? And are we doing enough to flatten the curve? These questions are not about the past, but about the future. Models are now frequently cited in public by elected leaders to inform expectations and justify...
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