Coronavirus

Drew Weissman of the Perelman School of Medicine said the trouble with adapting COVID-19 vaccines to new variants is that the virus is continually mutating. “They’re going to pop up until the world is vaccinated,” he said.

Emily Largent of the Perelman School of Medicine and Govind Persad of the University of Denver wrote an op-ed arguing that, when resources are scarce, people who are immunocompromised or unvaccinated due to ineligibility should be prioritized for COVID-19 treatments over those who have remained unvaccinated by choice.

PIK Professor Ezekiel Emanuel and other members of the Biden administration’s transitional COVID-19 advisory board wrote an op-ed advocating for more reliance on rapid antigen tests. They argued that PCR tests can have slow turnaround times, which can render the results moot.

Hillary Ammon of the Perelman School of Medicine spoke about the shame and guilt that sometimes accompany a COVID-19 diagnosis. “I like to tell clients that I am working with that they made the best decision they could with the information they had at that present time,” she said. “Additionally, reminding them that their risk and safety calculations are personal and unique to their life circumstances.”

Susan Weiss of the Perelman School of Medicine weighed in on the proposed development of a therapeutic that uses the body’s interferon response to fight viruses. “I’m not sure what practical application this would have as an antiviral,” she said.

Richard Doty of the Perelman School of Medicine said it’s still not clear if the SARS-CoV-2 virus enters the olfactory bulbs, causing people with COVID-19 to lose their sense of smell. “The herpes virus can get into the brain through the olfactory pathway, so it's not beyond a possibility. But the jury's still out on whether the olfactory bulbs play a role,” he said.

Ethan Craig of the Perelman School of Medicine said the pandemic’s end will be gradual. “There will be no banners flying in the street, no parade, no V-J Day in Times Square moments,” he said. “Rather, it will end with a critical mass of small lurches toward normalcy, made by each and every one of us, one small decision at a time.”

Harsha Thirumurthy of the Perelman School of Medicine said vaccine patents keep prices artificially high by limiting other countries’ ability to manufacture vaccines. “I think we had the best hope of it last year when there was a proposal that was put forward at the WTO and the Biden administration had supported it,” he said. “But we had European countries that objected to those patent waivers.”