Thoughts of a retired physician

  Tomorrow is Memorial Day, the time to remember all of the Americans who have fallen fighting the wars America has waged. Sadly, Republicans in the Senate voted against a bipartisan commission 3 days before Memorial Day that would investigate the January 6th storming of the U.S. Capitol building -- because their party bears culpability for the attempted coup. This dishonors all Americans who have fought for over 200 years to defend democracy.  I am done with the Krazy Kult that the Republican Party has become. As a military veteran who served during war, I cannot countenance a political party that is aligned with opponents of democracy, both foreign (Putin) and domestic (white supremacist terrorists). I will do all that is in my power to turn them out of office. You can join in that effort. Remember Memorial Day. Remember the 28th of May. Remember the 6th of January.

  I have not posted for several weeks -- life has been extraordinarily busy here but is now at a more even and manageable keel. The Covid-19 pandemic continues its devastation around the globe, with India and Brazil as current global hotspots. The situation in the United States is clearly improving . Understanding the variations in the pandemic provides clues to what works and doesn’t work to contain and mitigate it.  India’s situation is indicative of what can happen when control measures (masks, social distancing, ventilation, avoidance of crowds) lapse. India’s curve from Johns Hopkins statistics is here: After a surge last fall, cases dropped precipitously until mid-March 2021 -- then literally exploded. What happened? A good analysis was made in Time magazine . After major efforts in 2020, including massive lockdowns, blunted the epidemic in India, a narrative emerged that India’s self-reliance had overcome Covid-19. Political leadership trumpeted this. On 21 February, the ruli

  Happy Mother’s Day to all Moms!!!

I became fascinated by microbiology early in college. I trace my career in infectious diseases to this. I read Barbara Tuchman’s A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century when I was an ID fellow; its 5th chapter was described as the single best description of the Black Death in Europe, the second of the three great plague pandemics. And so I became hooked on the history of medicine, the history of epidemics, and epidemiology. It took me a while but I finally received a Masters in Public Health as the natural outgrowth of this. A common question posed of epidemiologists and public health people prior to 2020 was, What pandemic disease do you most fear? The overwhelming answer was influenza. Influenza has caused multiple pandemics. The 1918 “Spanish Flu” is perhaps the best remembered, although the name elides past its true genesis somewhere on the Western Front in France or in an Army camp in Kansas . Deaths from influenza surpassed deaths from the Black Death. I spent the final 11