By Amy Rogers, MD, PhD

A friend shared a post purportedly from a pharmacist who has noticed that prescriptions for Tamiflu, the most widely prescribed drug against influenza (the flu), are way below normal. The author then goes on to argue that all those “missing” flu cases are being manipulated into the COVID-19 count in order to inflate the severity of the coronavirus. My friend asked for comments from people in the medical field. So I responded. Here’s what I had to say.

Is it true that flu activity is below normal?

Yes. According to the CDC, as of Dec. 12 2020, influenza cases in the US are unusually low. https://www.cdc.gov/flu/weekly/index.htm

Are people who actually have the flu being categorized as COVID cases instead?

Possibly a few…

By Amy Rogers, MD, PhD

A reader asked me to help them understand whether COVID is different from flu, and why we should care about a disease that 99% of people recover from.

*****

When the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic was recognized in the US back in March, a common argument against efforts to “flatten the curve” was this: We don’t close businesses and schools over seasonal influenza (“the flu”), so why should we over the new coronavirus infection?

Sadly, it’s easier to see now why a stronger public health response against COVID makes sense. Back in March, the absolute number of…

Is there a pro-life conflict over vaccination?

By Amy Rogers, MD, PhD

With the good news coming from phase 3 clinical trials, vaccines are on many people’s minds this week. Part of the conversation is about acceptance when a COVID vaccine becomes available.

Vaccine hesitancy, or outright vaccine refusal, has been a thing since long before COVID. In fact it dates back to the very first vaccinations against smallpox in the 18 thcentury, and it spans cultures worldwide for reasons that are often contradictory yet specifically relevant to a particular time and place. …

Best pandemic news to date

By Amy Rogers, MD, PhD

I’m getting more excited by the minute as I write this.

Pfizer (US multinational pharma) and BioNTech (German pharma) are collaborating on a COVID-19 vaccine. Today they announced efficacy data from their phase 2/3 vaccine trial, and it’s astonishingly good. Comparing vaccinated trial participants with those who received placebo, the vaccine reduced symptomatic coronavirus infections by 90%. The threshold for FDA emergency use authorization is 50%.

This does not mean “we have a vaccine.” (I’ll dissect that phrase in my next blog posts.) But it suggests that whatever vaccines do go into distribution in the next few months (weeks?) have…

**ALERT: Unlike most of my work this post is an op-ed, not a science piece.**

Results were just published from a poll (link to full report at site) of households in America’s four largest cities (NYC, LA, Chicago, Houston) to assess the financial, health, and other impacts of the pandemic response. I emphasize the response, not the pandemic, because the impacts surveyed are not necessarily consequences of COVID-19 infections but more a result of our collective efforts to contain or avoid the virus.

The poll was conducted by NPR, Harvard, and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation during the month of…

By Amy Rogers, MD, PhD

The National Education Association (NEA) is managing a new website that purports to track coronavirus cases in US public K-12 schools. This is potentially problematic because the NEA has a clear agenda on this issue. On their pandemic-devoted website for their members, they explicitly state their position: “Since last week, NEA has called for schools to be closed.” By posting every positive test they can find for a school employee or student nationwide, is the NEA performing a public service? Is it doing public health research? Or is it advancing an agenda?

You can find the tracker here. According to…

But don’t freak out. Here’s why.

By Amy Rogers, MD, PhD

Today (August 24) scientists in Hong Kong released solid evidence that a person can get COVID-19, recover, and later get infected again.

Before you freak out, let’s consider first that this is NOT a surprise, at all. We know that you can repeatedly catch the coronaviruses that cause “common colds” in humans, so I’ve been expecting this news for a while. Anecdotal reports have been popping up for months about patients who were diagnosed with COVID-19, recovered, and then tested positive again weeks or months later. (For example, this and this.) …

By Amy Rogers, MD, PhD

“Structural racism” is vague. An article showed me how it actually can impact COVID mortality.

People of color in the US have in general been hit harder by the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic than white Americans. Some of the specific explanations I’ve heard include: more essential workers and people who can’t work jobs from home; denser, multigenerational housing arrangements; higher rates of preexisting conditions. But I’ve also heard the vague assertion that “structural racism” is to blame. While that statement may be accurate, to me as a scientist it feels like a cop-out. What specifically does “structural racism” mean in the context of COVID-19? What measurable or actionable aspects of public health constitute this nebulous idea?

Today…