Something extremely odd happened this afternoon.  The press, including the New York Times, the Washington Post, CNN, the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, and Axios, reported that the CDC had announced that 73% of US COVID-19 cases were now being caused by the Omicron variant, and major public health gurus like Ashish Jha, Eric Topol, Florian Krammer, Eric Feigl-Ding, and Scott Gottlieb circulated the reports at face value. But that’s not really what’s happening.  There was some kind of b

Since my previous post about Omicron just eleven days ago when the news first broke of its existence, we've learned what the deal is, thanks to amazing feats of rapid research on a number of fronts by scientists coordinating around the globe and working around the clock.  Although much remains to be learned, the broad brushstrokes about what Omicron is and what's going to happen, things we didn't know eleven days ago but will still be true and important months from now, have emerged. Here's

A new COVID-19 variant has been identified with some very concerning features. Dubbed Omicron, it’s rapidly spreading in the southern region of Africa and an increasing number of countries around the world, and the news has rocked government policy and financial markets over the last two days. Despite the drama, however, we don’t yet know very much about just how bad Omicron is, and the range of possibilities remains very wide. So I'm going to break down this rapidly evolving situatio

Update, 08/23/2021, 3 PM Eastern: In the hours since the publication of this piece, both the FDA and the American Academy of Pediatrics have come out strongly against off-label dosing of children below 12 years old with the Pfizer vaccine.  Acting FDA Commissioner Janet Woodcock described it as a matter of "great concern."  The AAP's announcement came as something of a surprise given the AAP's previously stated stance in favor of approval of the vaccine for kids based on data already in han

Like many of you, we’ve been enjoying a summer with small slices of normality. But, as we predicted, things are quickly getting worse again --- some areas are already at the worst levels they’ve been in the entire pandemic --- as the Delta variant and bad actors within our society continue to do damage. This post brings you up to speed on what’s changed and what you need to know. Summary: The vaccines work and all available data says they are safe. Anyone who tells you otherwise