Infections Category Archives — Page 2 of 50 — DC Medical Malpractice & Patient Safety Blog Published by Washington, D.C. Personal Injury Lawyers

October 23, 2022

With pandemic persisting, pediatric respiratory cases filling hospitals

Lest anyone think the coronavirus pandemic is not taking a significant toll on this country still, just look at the worrisome conditions prevailing in overflowing pediatric hospitals and the bracing data on how whites gradually have become more likely to die from the infectious disease than blacks.

Doctors and hospitals say they are struggling with a desperate lack of pediatric space to care for increasing numbers of children with various respiratory illnesses, especially respiratory syncytial virus, or RSV. This is a major problem in the DMV (the District of Columbia, Maryland, and Virginia) where hospitals told the Washington Post that they full up with sick kids and scrambling:

“Children’s National Hospital in Northwest D.C., as well as the children’s hospitals at Inova Fairfax in Northern Virginia and the Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, which represent a total of more than 650 beds, are at capacity, physicians at the hospitals said this week. Pediatricians locally and nationally report a spike in cases of respiratory illnesses such as RSV and rhinovirus — the common cold virus — which for the second consecutive year have hit earlier and made kids sicker than usual. At the same time, the coronavirus continues to circulate, and hospitals are bracing for a severe flu season.”

October 21, 2022

Savvy consumers are getting flu and covid shots (hint, hint)

by Patrick A. Malone

As many as 4 in 20 patients infected with the coronavirus report they have not fully recovered after months and 1 in 20 of those with the disease say they have not recovered at all. The viral illness, which has claimed more than 1 million lives and has infected more than 97 million of us, still kills just under 400 people daily on average.

Meantime, the southeast and south central parts of the United States — including the District of Columbia — are reporting the nation’s highest rates of influenza cases, as this infection is showing an early season surge. Just a reminder that in pre-pandemic times, flu sickened as many as 41 million Americans annually, leading to as many as 700,000-plus hospitalizations, and up to 50,000-plus deaths.

After years now of coping with the catastrophic consequences of the coronavirus pandemic, and especially with the sustained harms of long covid, and with evidence growing that this year’s flu season will be tough and break with a recent period of mild caseloads, why aren’t more folks using common sense and getting safe, effective vaccinations to increase their protection against these debilitating and lethal diseases?

September 27, 2022

Sexually transmitted diseases are spiking at alarming rate, experts warn

by Patrick A. Malone

One of humanity’s favorite activities also has become riskier than ever in health terms, experts say, as U.S. cases of sexually transmitted diseases are increasing so much that one expert describes the situation as “out of control.”

In official terms, reported syphilis cases rose 26% last year, hitting their highest rate in three decades and their highest total number since 1948, the Associated Press reported. HIV cases spiked by 16% last year. As with syphilis, reported gonorrhea cases keep increasing.

And, of course, the nation is struggling — and perhaps containing — a coast to coast outbreak of monkeypox, with the infection once best known for its presence in less developed nations spreading mostly by men having intimate relations with multiple other men.

September 14, 2022

When Big Pharma opens its big checkbook, life-saving disclosures vanish

by Patrick A. Malone

Big Pharma loves to blast away at opposition lawyers and their clients, criticizing them for seeking justice in the civil system over claims of significant harms. But, c’mon, man, as a certain top political leader likes to say to express his flabbergasted skepticism.

Wealthy corporations and their counsel marshal enormous, costly legal resources to bully, intimidate, and just bury in paperwork plaintiffs in civil cases, as the New York Times has reported. The newspaper has detailed how this almost standard operating procedure by huge law firms has complicated the nation’s effort to safeguard a critical foodstuff for the tiniest, most vulnerable among us — infants needing formula, especially specialized varieties.

The ferocious tactics by formula makers, notably the purportedly family friendly pharmaceutical company Abbott Laboratories, has shielded the industry and the company well but to the detriment of consumers learning important information about a widely used product that was the subject of many lawsuits but that stayed out of the spotlight for years, the newspaper reported:

September 11, 2022

U.S. judge cites religious freedoms in striking down insurance coverage for HIV drugs

by Patrick A. Malone

While increasing numbers of Americans tell pollsters that they are forgoing religion and seeing its practice diminish in importance in their lives, those with religious fervor are finding a federal judiciary willing to delve into the complexity of faith and medicine in deeply polarizing ways.

The looming midterm elections, pollsters say, already have been upended by the U.S. Supreme Court’s overturning of a half-century of settled law in turning back to the states critical decisions about women’s reproductive health and the allowance of abortions, including in cases involving rape and incest.

A federal judge in Texas with demonstrated extreme views has further stoked the increasing fires over religion and health care by ruling unconstitutional the process by which Obamacare decides what kinds of preventive health care must be covered by private health insurance, as the New York Times and other media outlets have reported.

September 6, 2022

Medicine struggles with hype, disinformation, and miscommunication

by Patrick A. Malone

The quality of medical-scientific information is strained — and patients should know this, be warned, and watch for ways to protect themselves from bungled communication, bluster, hype, misinformation, and disinformation.

Although regular folks may have unprecedented access via the internet to resources on medical services and developments, a trio of recent news articles underscore the importance of the familiar warning Caveat emptor (buyer beware):

California has found a narrow path between doctors’ free speech rights and reining in clinicians spreading false information about coronavirus vaccinations and treatments, the New York Times reported, adding that legislators granted new powers granted to regulators to deal with what became a significant problem during the pandemic.

September 4, 2022

With Omicron vaccines approved, U.S. pushes for fall flu and Covid shots

by Patrick A. Malone

As summer ends, millions of Americans should pop around the corner for a healthy double — that is, a pair of vaccinations, one targeted against the latest, widely circulating coronavirus Omicron variants and the other shot to fight the seasonal flu, federal health officials say.

The newest booster for the BA.4 and BA.5 Omicron variants should be available at drug stores, clinics, and doctors’ offices this coming week, regulators at the federal Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Infection have decided.

The coronavirus shots, as occurs with annual flu vaccines, will be based on existing products that have been given to huge populations globally — safely, with great effectiveness, but now without extensive clinical trials that were conducted of previous formulas of the vaccines.

August 28, 2022

As U.S. gears up for fall pandemic battles, a disease-fighting leader retires

by Patrick A. Malone

This fall our nation will go once more into the breach, with federal officials hoping that another big push for vaccinations against the coronavirus and flu will stave off the deadly surges of contagions that have caused the fundamental health measure of life expectancy to plummet in a historic way.

Still, the announced retirement of Dr. Anthony Fauci, one of the nation’s foremost fighters against infectious illnesses — and the sharply divided reactions to his planned end of year departure from a half century of public service — continue to show how fraught vaccinations and public health have become in the U.S.

Fauci, who joined the National Institutes of Health in 1968 and was appointed the director of its infectious disease branch in 1984, has advised every president since Ronald Reagan — seven in all. He became a political lightning rod twice in instances of illnesses with enormous medical effect, with the outbreak of HIV-AIDS and the coronavirus pandemic.

August 21, 2022

Chief launches CDC shakeup, citing ponderous agency’s pandemic flubs

by Patrick A. Malone

The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, one of the world’s premier public health agencies, will try to revamp itself after taking months of a political, scientific, and reputational battering for too often performing in shambolic fashion in response to the coronavirus pandemic.

Rochelle Walensky (shown, right) appointed the agency’s chief in December 2020, announced in April of this year that she had asked outside experts to conduct a top-to-bottom review of the CDC and to recommend reforms.

She now has told her 11,000 agency colleagues that the much-needed scrutiny showed that the CDC, with its $12 billion budget, had become too ponderous, bureaucratic, and academic in its work, communicating too slowly, badly, and in confusing ways with its most important constituents: the American people. As the New York Times reported of Walensky’s blunt assessment of the suboptimal response to the pandemic that has killed more than 1 million and infected 93 million-plus of us:

August 14, 2022

Coronavirus guidelines ease, as concerns persist about polio, monkey pox and flu

by Patrick A. Malone

Federal health officials have eased guidelines for most regular folks on how best to deal with the coronavirus pandemic, even as monkeypox cases and vaccination efforts for that viral illness keep increasing and the detection of once-controlled polio raises concern.

Indicators about the severity of the next influenza season also worry experts.

With the coronavirus, the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has shifted, putting “more of the onus on individuals, rather than on schools, businesses and other institutions to limit viral spread.” the Washington Post reported: