Author Archives: jbakerjrblog

New York’s governor announced that the state’s schools would be able to open this fall. Several criteria were provided, some that allowed the schools to open and others that would cause in-person classes to be suspended. I thought it would be of value to review these criteria. Since many other states are still making decisions,Continue reading “New York opens schools. Can this be a model for other states?”

It is getting harder to define the course of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States. Statements about different states and cities define rates of infection that seem to vary greatly between different sources. Therefore once a week I’m going to try and look at several sources of information and gather epidemiological data to getContinue reading “The COVID-19 epidemic appears to have become chronic, endemic phase with occasional cluster outbreaks.”

Tonight I am doing a short post to draw attention to a WSJ editorial today that suggested wearing a mask is problematic. The basic premise is that masks are predominantly a political statement and are giving people a false sense of security. They cite an arcane 2015 study that suggests that masks had no effectContinue reading “Is wearing a mask a bad thing?”

Today headlines declared that there are six different strains of SARS-CoV-2 circulating the globe. This seemed to imply that the virus causing COVID-19 had significantly mutated into multiple different forms. But the data presented in the article these press releases were based upon gives a very different story. First, a strain is defined as a genetic variant or subtypeContinue reading “Are there really six strains of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19?”

Dr. Birx was interviewed on CNN yesterday by Dana Bash on the program “State of the Union.” It was the type of interview that public figures regret, as she spent most of the time defending herself. While she has been criticized politically over the interview, I am more concerned by the medical and scientific implicationsContinue reading “What did Dr. Deborah Birx say about the pandemic on CNN on Sunday?”

In examining the health risk for school age children from COVID-19 several issues are noted. Approximately 4,000 to 5,000 children have been infected with COVID-19. Despite this, the overall mortality risk for school age children from COVID-19 is minimal. As of July 29th, the CDC has reported 42 deaths from COVID-19 in children less thanContinue reading “More school aged children will die from measles than COVID-19 if we don’t get them vaccinated!”

I paraphrase the lyrics from the musical “Wonderful Town” to focus on why in the past few days, there has been a number of news stories predicting coronavirus clusters will occur in the Midwest. While there have been upward trends in a number of COVID-19 infection parameters in Kentucky and Tennessee, there has been no similarContinue reading “Why oh why oh why oh. Why did they pick upon Ohio?”

One of the most frequent requests from readers of this blog is my opinion on opening schools in the fall. I have been reluctant to do this because that decision is based less on medicine and science than on the social contracts education has made between governments, teachers, parents, and students. This dynamic sets upContinue reading “The decision to open schools is more than a medical issue.”

On July 16th I blogged about an article published in the journal Nature showing that cellular immunity to the coronavirus SARS was very long lived. Investigators looked at patients infected with SARS in 2003 and found T cells reactive to SARS present 17 years later in 2020. This was an important finding because it refuted the concept thatContinue reading “Do we start out half way to COVID-19 herd immunity?!”