My friend Anish Koka, a cardiologist, wrote a beautiful review of COVID testing over at the HealthCareBlog. The great pandemic is wreaking havoc, we are told, because the nation is not testing enough. The consensus from a diverse group that includes public health experts, economists, and silicon valley investors is that more testing will allow […]
Author: Dr John
This post introduces a column I wrote over at TheHeart.org | Medscape Cardiology — The good news is that most people infected with coronavirus don’t need a hospital or doctor. But some do. Some get very ill. The maddening thing is that doctors don’t have an effective treatment for the virus. There are no cures. […]
The COVID crisis has decimated water exercise. Can we rethink pool closures? A significant number of my older patients relied on pools for their fitness. During a pandemic, you can stay active or fit only if you have good legs and joints. Walkers, runners, and cyclists have no problem; they play outside in the Spring […]
Health news was popular before the pandemic. Now, almost all news is health news. It’s not only a rapt audience contributing to the deluge of COVID19 news. Two other factors: 1) the availability of preprint servers, digital archives where a scientific paper can be published without formal peer-review and 2) the attention economy. Attention is […]
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Like Minds on COVID19
At nearly the same time I posted yesterday, The Lancet published this editorial from Swedish epidemiologist Prof Johan Giesecke. Some excerpts: It has become clear that a hard lockdown does not protect old and frail people living in care homes—a population the lockdown was designed to protect. Neither does it decrease mortality from COVID-19, which […]
On Telehealth, an older couple asked me a tough question about COVID19. They asked whether this virus would either be gone or less dangerous in 6 months to a year. It was a curious question. I replied, Why do you ask? Doc, we have a big family with many children and grandchildren, most of whom […]
I discussed the use of hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin for patients with COVID19 on my March 27th edition of This Week in Cardiology Podcast. This is an important topic not only because of the specifics of treating patients but also vital because it shows how easily human beings can be misled. Here is a an edited […]
Many things have changed in my life. I still practice electrophysiology full-time in Louisville. I still write. And I still love endurance exercise. You haven’t seen many blog updates because my writing has taken different forms. One is academic writing. In 2019, I co-authored 21 academic papers. Here is a link to the papers on […]
When my favorite podcaster, the economist Tyler Cowan, asked Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel what nonobvious advice he would give to medical students today, the answer surprised me. The famous bioethicist said: I do think that this is probably the most exciting time in American medicine in a century, since really about 1910, 1920. And it causes a […]
Hey Athletes: My colleague, Professor Rachel Lampert, from Yale, along with the StopAF.org patient group, seek to learn more about how atrial fibrillation (AF) and its treatments affect athletic people. If you are an athlete or if you regularly exercise vigorously, please give the Yale researchers a few moments of your time. Here is the […]
Many readers have contacted me to ask whether my negative viewson left atrial appendage occlusion with Watchman have changed since 2017. The short answer is no. My views are even more negative today. In 2016, I published an editorial on theHeart.org | Medscape Cardiology arguing that this procedure should stop. One of the rebuttals was that […]