Author Archives: jbakerjrblog

Two new COVID-19 vaccines have recently made news. China’s Sinovac coronavirus vaccine was shown to be 78% effective against Covid-19 in Brazilian trials and offers total protection against severe cases of the disease. This raised hopes it could be used to immunize much of the developing world, and serve as an alternative to the AstraZeneca-Oxford vaccineContinue reading “Good and bad news on new coronavirus vaccines.”

Despite widely circulated media reports about allergic reactions to the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine, there has been no official review of the numbers and types of these reactions. The CDC has now published its review of data from the vaccine adverse event reporting system (VAERS) covering nine early days of the Pfizer vaccine availability. It provided interesting dataContinue reading “The CDC weighs in on allergic reactions to the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine.”

While this blog has been steadfast in avoiding politics, we were all confronted today by an event in Washington that was as much of an attack on our democracy as COVID-19 has been on our health system. The worst part is that it was not an act of nature but a purposeful, incited riot. Sorry,Continue reading “I can’t write tonight.”

One interesting note today is that there has been almost no flu across the U.S. this winter. Emergency rooms that were overwhelmed with influenza last winter see none of it now and in fact, in most areas, they have not identified a single patient infected with Influenza A.  Why has COVID-19 continued to spread inContinue reading “How is influenza different from COVID-19? What does that mean for the COVID-19 vaccine?”

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo outlined measures he plans to use to accelerate the pace of Covid-19 vaccinations in his state. Cuomo acknowledged the vaccine rollout has fallen short of expectations. He announced that hospitals will be fined and denied further allocations of the vaccine if they don’t use up their doses by the end ofContinue reading “Gov. Cuomo threatens hospitals in New York! Will this really help vaccine rollout?”

I have to admit that I’m apoplectic about the current rate of COVID-19 vaccination in the U.S. While limiting the vaccine to nursing home residents and medical care workers made sense in order to immunize the most at-risk individuals first, the lack of infrastructure to get these immunization campaigns done has seriously delayed accomplishing thatContinue reading “COVID-19 vaccinations continue to dribble out …”

To start the new year (and my 307th blog post!) I provide a link to an interview I did on the WGN NewsNation telecast about the new coronavirus variant which has now been reported in several places across the US. Here are the current changes in COVID-19 infections with the Midwest looking better and TexasContinue reading “The new coronavirus variant in the US.”

The United Kingdom has had a history of unique and inconsistent approaches to the COVID-19 pandemic. They initially supported unrestricted activity and herd immunity, then shifted to more conservative approaches when infections and hospitalizations skyrocketed. Most recently, they went into total shut down after the finding of a strain with multiple mutations that has becomeContinue reading “The United Kingdom goes its own bizarre way with the COVID-19 immunization campaign.”

The COVID-19 vaccination program has become nauseatingly politicized in the United States. Before Christmas, several governors attacked federal officials in charge of distributing the vaccines saying their states had been shorted the doses they were promised. Today, the states were called out by the president and Brent Giroir (the “COVID-19 testing Czar”) because they have theContinue reading “Let’s vaccinate everyone we can!!!”

As I predicted in last night’s blog, tonight there was the report of an individual in Colorado who is infected with the London variant of the coronavirus.  The Colorado case involves a man in his 20s in Elbert County, about 50 miles southeast of Denver. Importantly, this gentleman has no travel history, according to a tweet fromContinue reading “As I predicted in yesterday’s blog, the London SARS-CoV-2 was in the U.S.”