Journalist and Author
Constant readers, we’ve often talked about MRSA and other resistant pathogens as a global problem (cf. these posts for resistance issues in Europe and these for resistance around the world). But now there has been formal recognition that resistant bacteria respect no borders. On Nov. 3, the US government and the European Union signed an […]
Read MoreFolks, I mentioned that I’m way behind in working down a stack of great articles. Here’s a very good one that I missed when it came out two weeks ago and is well worth your time. A team from John H. Stroger Hospital (the new location of the iconic Cook County Hospital, public hospital for […]
Read MoreReaders, we talk all the time here about the unexpected and deadly attack of MRSA pneumonia, both on its own and as a sequela of influenza infection. But we should acknowledge that MRSA pneumonia is part of an epidemic of pneumonia, an under-appreciated disease of severe lung inflammation that takes the lives of 2 million […]
Read MoreWell, constant readers, didn’t expect to be gone *that* long. Many apologies. There was a good reason — actually, several: I attended a journalism meeting, and spoke at a second meeting. But most important, I received, marked up, and returned the galleys of SUPERBUG. Yes, it’s really starting to look like a book now. There […]
Read MoreEvery year, the CDC sponsors a week-long observance called Get Smart About Antibiotics Week, intended to bring attention to this issue of antibiotic misuse that all of us here are so concerned about, and to link the efforts of federal and state agencies, nonprofit groups, and anyone else with an interest. Today marks the start […]
Read MoreI want to introduce you all to a MRSA campaigner, Jeanine Thomas of Chicago. Jeanine — whose story will be told in SUPERBUG — is the founder of World MRSA Day, a worldwide event of activism and grieving that will take place Friday, Oct. 2. There will be simultaneous observances in the UK, and a […]
Read MoreThe CDC’s MMWR report on their analysis of bacterial co-infections in H1N1 flu deaths has been placed online here. And there are two excellent analyses of it by the marvelous blogs Effect Measure and Mike the Mad Biologist.
Read MoreWhen the H1N1 pandemic started at the end of last April, few of the case-patients seemed to have any secondary bacterial infections. This was unusual: In the 3 20th-c pandemics, the only ones for which there are good records, bacterial pneumonias seem to have accounted for a high percentage of illness and death. But H1N1 […]
Read MoreConstant readers, I’ve been behind the Great Firewall of China for two weeks, unable to post. (Apparently Blogger is not always unavailable there, but access has tightened up in advance of the National Day celebrations on Oct. 1.) I left with a file of things to post in my spare time — and so now […]
Read MoreI want to highlight a comment that was left on Labor Day by a woman named Valorie in Arkansas (thank you for reading, Valorie). She said: I am just now learning about all of this and am very concerned about my 12 year old daughter. We were only 10 days into the school year, and […]
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