Sandy writes:
HI
I can’t understand why the hospital rates and deaths are so high if we now have PAXLOVID to help fight Covid. Do you prescribe this to your own patients, how many and does it help? Are people refusing this medication? Seems like if we now have this available to everyone, unvaccinated or vaccinated, it would help.
thank you.
Sandy
Joy writes:
Hi Vincent and Daniel,
I have just crossed the 24-month mark, and belong to many large LHC groups. I have noticed the majority of people who continue to be severely impacted by LHC are mostly on the same initial infection (Alpha) timeline. I’ve seen very few who had Delta and/or Omicron as their initial infection. i’m not including those who were reinfected later in 2021. I would love to know if you have seen any differences between the variants and their long term impact.
Thank you for all the work you do!
~ Joy
Molly writes:
Hello Vincent, Daniel, and the rest of the TWiV team,
Thank you for sharing so much information through TWiV and the clinical isolates. I began listening to TWiV and TWiM in the fall of 2019 and am so glad that I did!
I have a question for either TWiV or Daniel, depending on who is best able to answer. I am curious what the positive controls are for the COVID PCR and antigen tests? What antigens or nucleic acid targets are suitable for constitutive detection. I have been unable to find a clear answer for this and no one I ask knows.
Thanks in advance if you end up answering this question!
Best,
Molly
Ph.D. Candidate
Helaine Lab | Harvard Medical School
John writes:
Dear Daniel,
Having just listened to Clinical Update #100 on twiv, I want to thank you for your devotion to providing such great, well prepared clinical information. Your ability to cover such an incredible amount of literature and combine it with your clinical perspective is amazing.
When the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic struck, I felt discomfort at being a retired ophthalmologist, sitting on the sidelines during what promised to be a 100 year storm in medicine. I was able to relieve some of that unease by joining the Virginia Medical Reserve Corp, working on projects at our district health department office and becoming a vaccinator.
Having your updates as well as many of the other microbe.tv podcasts was a great source of information as well as being a good antidote to the misinformation from online and media sources. I have recommended your updates to many other physicians and friends, one of whom is a retired NASA engineer who follows you religiously.
Thank you, thank you, thank you,
John Frantz, MD