Science and medical writers have been under an avalanche of information for nearly a year now, as we translate technical information about COVID-19 for the public. Links to the latest journal articles overload our inboxes, but, at the beginning and now during another surge, tracking down experts to interview has been difficult. They're simply too busy saving lives.
A critical resource for me has been the series of JAMA Live Q+A webinars for the media hosted by Howard Bauchner, editor-in-chief of the Journal of the American Medical Association. It is wonderful to hear the top clinicians and researchers speak freely, at length, and in context, or meander – a nice contrast to the echoing soundbites of mainstream media.
JAMA webinar speakers have included the career scientists who've already led us through the waters of HIV/AIDS, hepatitis, influenza, Ebola, zika, SARS, and other epidemics and pandemics. Anthony Fauci is a frequent guest – I wrote up his talk with FDA's Peter Marks here.
The webinars also feature the young clinicians battling our new enemy. Early on, Maurizio Cecconi's session, "Coronavirus in Italy: Report From the Front Lines," brought me to tears. The head of the Anaesthesia and Intensive Care Department at Humanitas Research Hospital in Milan, Dr. Cecconi described, at the webinar and in a report (both accessible here), the admission of "patient zero" to the ICU in Lombardy, on February 20, 2020, and how his infection was traced to a local friend who'd had contact with an infected person from China. The 38-year-old was initially not very ill and partied a lot. And the rest is medical history.
Recently Dr. Bauchner spoke with Paul Offit, who directs the Vaccine Education Center and is an attending physician in the Division of Infectious Diseases at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. He's on the FDA Advisory panel that will meet December 10 to discuss Pfizer's COVID-19 vaccine and on the 17th to consider Moderna's.
Dr. Offit is best known for co-inventing a vaccine against rotavirus, a diarrheal disease that has claimed millions of lives. It became available in the US in 2006, and is on the World Health Organization's list of essential medicines. The clinical trials for the rotavirus vaccine RotaTeq took four years and involved 70,000 participants – much more typical than the lightning speed of the COVID vaccine trajectory.
Here's the Q+A from December 2, lightly edited, with my explanations in parentheses. I've omitted the discussion of who gets vaccine when – that's all over the news.
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