Politics, Science, and Other Assorted Musings
I love helping people understand issues and look at them from a different perspective. In this blog, I hope I can offer you some new insights—bridging the gap between basic science and your medicine chest—as I am still a practicing physician, as well as having had broad clinical research experience. I'm interested in developing new medicines and treatments, as well as caring for patients—and explaining these topics for you.
As medicine has evolved, so have my interests. I have also become increasingly interested in health disparities, social justice issues, and ethics. I invite you to join me as we explore a variety of territories. I hope that reading these posts will encourage you to learn, engage, and above all, work for the forces of good.
If there are topics you'd like to see me cover, please let me know—I welcome your input as to what you would like us to discuss in this column.
Coronavirus - COVID19
Please note that I will be posting Coronavirus Tidbits of news here. You can sign up for updates by clicking the box at the right and subscribe to Covid, Politics, and Science. All Covid posts will go here, and I will upload back issues as I have time. Please share w friends. Thanks!
I’m going to have a reference file here for articles I have found particularly worthwhile, and will update this here as we learn new information. Click on the COVID-19 Resources, below, to expand that.
If you see something terrific, please share. We’re all in this together.
Quick links News Diagnostics Drugs Devices Epidemiology/Infection control Tips Politics Feel good du jour Comic relief Perspective/Poem Bits of beauty Announcements: First, there is now a Resources Page here for the most commonly asked questions I’m getting. Happy to continue to answer your questions/concerns as best I can, so don’t be shy about that. New Posts: (I’ve been busy!) CDC Abdicates Responsibility https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/979280 ~ ~ ~ Monoclonal Antibody to Prevent Malaria Shows Promise https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/979340 ~ ~ ~ Do Betadine and Colloidal Silver Inhibit Growth of Biofilms? https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/979256 ~ ~ ~ Election volunteer opportunities: Urgent need now to recruit poll observers and judges NOPE Neighbors: https://www.nopeneighbors.org/volunteer Power the Vote https://www.powerthevote.org//. I’m a fellow volunteer. Are you interested in voter protection research? Battleground states including Arizona, Michigan and Texas need help. Volunteers would work with the voter protection program directly on research tasks. Examples include: (i) calling elections offices to get information about certain election plans, so that programs know where and when to send volunteers; (ii) calling elections offices to follow up on public records requests for needed information (such as data on ballot rejections); and (iii) reviewing elections websites…
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Quick links News Diagnostics Drugs Devices Epidemiology/Infection control Tips Politics Feel good du jour Comic relief Perspective/Poem Bits of beauty Announcements: First, there is now a Resources Page here for the most commonly asked questions I’m getting. Happy to continue to answer your questions/concerns as best I can, so don’t be shy about that. New posts: CDC Says More Is Needed to Protect Infants From Hepatitis B https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/979110? ~ ~ ~ Don’t Let Infections Dampen Your Summer Water Fun. Here’s How To Avoid Splash Pad Infections https://www.forbes.com/sites/judystone/2022/08/10/dont-let-infections-dampen-your-summer-water-fun-heres-how-to-avoid-splash-pad-infections/ ~ ~ ~ How Can We Vaccinate People More Quickly Against Monkeypox? Dose-Sparing https://www.forbes.com/sites/judystone/2022/08/08/how-can-we-vaccinate-people-more-quickly-against-monkeypox-dose-sparing/ ~ ~ ~ Climate Change Can Worsen More Than Half of Infectious Diseases https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/978813 ~ ~ ~ Antibiotic-Resistant Bacteria Emerging in Community Settings https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/978627 News Covid: CDC capitulates in their new Covid guidance…forgets about prevention and protecting vulnerable Simplified measures for contacts, infected people One of the biggest changes is quarantine guidance for people exposed to the virus. Instead of quarantining, the CDC recommends wearing a high-quality mask, watching for symptoms for 10 days, and getting tested on the fifth day. People who are mildly sick…
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Quick links News Diagnostics Drugs Devices Epidemiology/Infection control Tips Politics Feel good du jour Comic relief Perspective/Poem Bits of beauty Announcements: First, there is now a Resources Page here for the most commonly asked questions I’m getting. Happy to continue to answer your questions/concerns as best I can, so don’t be shy about that. My latest: Antibiotic-Resistant Bacteria Emerging in Community Settings https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/978627 Election volunteer opportunities: NOPE Neighbors: https://www.nopeneighbors.org/volunteer Power the Vote https://www.powerthevote.org//. I’m a fellow volunteer. Are you interested in voter protection research? Battleground states including Arizona, Michigan and Texas need help. Volunteers would work with the voter protection program directly on research tasks. Examples include: (i) calling elections offices to get information about certain election plans, so that programs know where and when to send volunteers; (ii) calling elections offices to follow up on public records requests for needed information (such as data on ballot rejections); and (iii) reviewing elections websites to ensure information is accurate and up to date. This volunteer commitment is variable and flexible, but will require an ability to make calls during election offices’ business hours. Volunteers will need to be comfortable…
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Quick links News Diagnostics Drugs Devices Epidemiology/Infection control Tips Politics Feel good du jour Comic relief Perspective/Poem Bits of beauty Announcements: First, there is now a Resources Page here for the most commonly asked questions I’m getting. Happy to continue to answer your questions/concerns as best I can, so don’t be shy about that. Every week, as I work on compiling my #Coronavirus Tidbits newsletter, #GOP vindictiveness and cruelty inspires me to work harder to #GOTV and #Voter Protection efforts. https://drjudystone.com/coronavirus-tidbits-202-7-24-22/… Please everyone, work as if your life depends on it. It does! You can find so many volunteer opportunities. I highly recommend NOPE Neighbors as a place to start. https://www.nopeneighbors.org/volunteer News Covid: Vaccine Summit: …Operation Warp Speed proved it was possible to race from a newly identified virus to safe and effective immunizations in just 11 months-many times faster than ever before. Today, there are a few dozen fledgling efforts to create vaccines that protect against future SARS-CoV-2 mutants or take an even more “pan” approach in order to thwart unknown coronaviruses that have yet to jump into humans. But only a single candidate, developed by the…
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Quick links News Diagnostics Drugs Devices Epidemiology/Infection control Tips Politics Feel good du jour Comic relief Perspective/Poem Bits of beauty Announcements: First, there is now a Resources Page here for the most commonly asked questions I’m getting. Happy to continue to answer your questions/concerns as best I can, so don’t be shy about that. New posts; Abortion Laws Deny Treatments Needed for Autoimmune Disease medscape.com/viewarticle/977431 ~ ~ ~ Marburg, Monkeypox, And Other Viruses Emerging From Africa https://www.forbes.com/sites/judystone/2022/07/17/marburg-monkeypox-and-other-viruses-emerging-from-africa/?sh=5b66148b78c7 News Covid: More (mostly mild) side effects when flu vaccine given with COVID booster Self-reported data from nearly 1 million Americans show an 8% to 11% higher rate of mostly mild systemic adverse events after simultaneous seasonal flu vaccine and mRNA COVID-19 booster (third) doses than with the COVID-19 booster alone. In the study, published today in JAMA Network Open, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) COVID-19 Response Team and Emory University analyzed rates of systemic adverse events among 981,099 Americans aged 12 years and older in the week after either simultaneous flu and COVID-19 booster doses or the booster alone from Sep 22, 2021, to May 1, 2022….
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Quick links News Diagnostics Drugs Devices Epidemiology/Infection control Tips Politics Feel good du jour Comic relief Perspective/Poem Bits of beauty Announcements: First, there is now a Resources Page here for the most commonly asked questions I’m getting. Happy to continue to answer your questions/concerns as best I can, so don’t be shy about that. New Post: This SCOTUS Endangers Us All – Gun “rights” edition https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/976549 News Covid US regulators OK new COVID-19 shot option from Novavax Novavax makes a more traditional type of shot than the three other COVID-19 vaccines available for use in the U.S.-and one that’s already available in Europe and multiple other countries. Nearly a quarter of American adults still haven’t gotten their primary vaccinations even this late in the pandemic, and experts expect at least some of them to roll up their sleeves for a more conventional option-a protein-based vaccine. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2022-07-covid-shot-option-novavax.html ~ ~ ~ Vaccine Boosters: Ashish Jha, MD, the White House committee’s coordinator, said officials have been closely tracking the rapidly evolving BA.4 and BA.5 subvariants, which are the most transmissible forms of Omicron and can evade protection from earlier infection and vaccines….
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Quick links News Diagnostics Drugs Devices Epidemiology/Infection control Tips Politics Feel good du jour Comic relief Perspective/Poem Bits of beauty Announcements: First, there is now a Resources Page here for the most commonly asked questions I’m getting. Happy to continue to answer your questions/concerns as best I can, so don’t be shy about that. News Covid: Emerging omicron subvariants BA.2.12.1, BA.4 and BA.5 are inhibited less efficiently by antibodies most of the therapeutic antibodies available for treatment of COVID-19 patients do not inhibit BA.2.12.1, BA.4, and BA.5 at all or only inhibit with reduced potency. The antibody Bebtelovimab constitutes the only exception, since this antibody blocked all tested variants with high efficiency. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2022-07-emerging-omicron-subvariants-ba2121-ba4.html ~ ~ ~ Persistent spike protein could be a biomarker of long Covid, small study says STAT July 8, 2022 One of the main theories to explain what causes long Covid is viral persistence, or the continued presence of some part of the coronavirus in the body long after the acute infection ends. (Another, possibly overlapping hypothesis for lingering symptoms posits an overactive immune response that turns into an autoimmune attack on the body’s organs.) Now a new study reports the…
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Quick links News Diagnostics Drugs Devices Epidemiology/Infection control Tips Politics Feel good du jour Comic relief Perspective/Poem Bits of beauty Announcements: First, there is now a Resources Page here for the most commonly asked questions I’m getting. Happy to continue to answer your questions/concerns as best I can, so don’t be shy about that. New posts: Betrayed by a Reactionary SCOTUS my post on Roe: https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/976398? More Promising Phage News-Using Bacteria-Killing Viruses To Treat Antibiotic-Resistant Infections https://www.forbes.com/sites/judystone/2022/06/30/more-promising-phage-news-using-bacteria-killing-viruses-to-treat-antibiotic-resistant-infections/?sh=e20db844c4f6 News Covid: ~ ~ ~ Monkeypox: ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ Monkeypox soars in Europe, with more than 4,000 cases Stephanie Soucheray | News Reporter | CIDRAP News| Jun 30, 2022 New data from the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control and the World Health Organization European regional office shows the monkeypox outbreak in Europe has grown to 4,177 cases in less than 2 months, with the United Kingdom producing 25% of those cases. Germany has surpassed Spain and Portugal with a national total reaching 838 cases, compared to 736 cases in Spain and 365 in Portugal. France has 350 cases. One day after the White…
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Quick links News Diagnostics Drugs Devices Epidemiology/Infection control Tips Politics Feel good du jour Comic relief Perspective/Poem Bits of beauty Announcements: First, there is now a Resources Page here for the most commonly asked questions I’m getting. Happy to continue to answer your questions/concerns as best I can, so don’t be shy about that. New post: Life-Threatening Meningococcal Infections Strike Florida https://www.forbes.com/sites/judystone/2022/06/23/life-threatening-meningococcal-infections-strike-florida/?sh=273116daf4d0 News Covid: BA.4 and BA.5 may escape antibody responses in people who have been fully vaccinated and boosted and previously infected with COVID-19. (New England Journal of Medicine) ~ ~ ~ A third vaccine dose may increase protection from omicron The mRNA vaccines used against COVID were never designed to battle the omicron variant, a now dominant strain of the coronavirus that recently claimed 18,000 lives in a single week. Yet individuals who receive their third dose appear to be protected from the worst of omicron, and a new study in Nature explains why. In analyzing blood samples from patients who received a booster, researchers showed that the third dose galvanizes memory B cells into producing potent and versatile antibodies that neutralize both the original virus…
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Quick links News Diagnostics Drugs Devices Epidemiology/Infection control Tips Politics Feel good du jour Comic relief Perspective/Poem Bits of beauty Announcements: First, there is now a Resources Page here for the most commonly asked questions I’m getting. Happy to continue to answer your questions/concerns as best I can, so don’t be shy about that. Recent posts: Surgery During a Pandemic? COVID Vax Status Matters – or Not An online survey captured mixed information about people’s willingness to undergo surgery during a viral pandemic in relation to the vaccine status of the patient and staff. https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/975477 ~ ~ ~ Dengue Vaccine Candidate Works Without Big Safety Risks Drugmaker Takeda announced Thursday that its dengue vaccine candidate, TAK-003, prevented 84% of hospitalized dengue cases and 61% of symptomatic cases in 4.5 years of follow-up during its phase 3 TIDES trial. https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/975354 News FDA advisers OK COVID-19 vaccines for youngest kids In a step eagerly anticipated by families who want an extra tool to protect babies and young children, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) vaccine advisory group today unanimously approved emergency use of Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines for babies…
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