Global health leader and epidemiologist. President and CEO of
@ResolveTSL
. Former
@CDCgov
director and
@nycHealthy
commissioner. Focused on saving lives.
Why can’t medications to treat high blood pressure, high cholesterol and diabetes—which can be produced for 1 US cent a pill—be made universally available?
An mRNA vaccine doesn't actually contain the virus itself. Think of it as an email sent to your immune system that shows what the virus looks like, instructions to kill it, and then—like a Snapchat message—it disappears. Amazing technology.
mRNA vaccines don't change your DNA or stay in your body. They give your immune system instructions for how to fend off Covid, then disappear like a Snapchat message.
People who received an Omicron booster were more than 18 times less likely to die from Covid and 3 times less likely to be infected compared to unvaccinated people, according to the latest CDC data.
Important: CDC finds that vaccines prevent Covid infection. That means once you're vaccinated, you're much less likely to get sick AND to spread the virus to others. Getting vaccinated can save your life and the lives of people around you.
When you're fully vaccinated, the chances you'll get Covid are slim. When everyone around you is fully vaccinated too, the chances will be near zero. The more of us are vaccinated, the safer we all are.
If an asymptomatic contact tests positive, their contacts can be identified, warned, and quarantined. Not testing asymptomatic contacts allows Covid to spread. The CDC guidance is indefensible. No matter who wrote it and got it posted on the CDC site, it needs to be changed.
An unvaccinated teacher who unmasked when reading aloud in class caught Covid and spread it to half of the students in the classroom, according to a new CDC study. Delta is doubly infectious, and we need to step up our game to keep kids in school safely.
Surgical masks are more effective than cloth face coverings. Other countries have produced enough for the public as well as for health care workers and have kept prices low or given them out free to the public. Why can't the United States do this?
Perspective: If an American had moved to Denmark, Norway or Finland in January, her or his risk of dying from Covid would have been 5-10 times lower in 2020. South Korea, Liberia, or Hong Kong: 50-60 times lower. New Zealand: 200 times lower. Taiwan: 3,400 times lower.
Don't skip the second dose of Pfizer or Moderna if you've already gotten your first dose. Without the second dose, your vaccine-induced protection isn't as strong or long-lasting.
Delta emerged because of uncontrolled spread, and I worry that even more dangerous variants—including vaccine-resistant ones—could emerge if uncontrolled spread continues.
If you get infected with Covid, billions of viral particles will replicate all over your body and may cause long-term harm. In contrast, a vaccine teaches your immune system how to respond to the infection—and then leaves.
Places around the world that used masks consistently have had half to two-thirds less Covid spread. Imagine how many deaths could have been prevented in the US if the federal government had focused on masks rather than hydroxychloroquine.
People who consistently wore a mask indoors had nearly half the odds of testing positive for Covid than people who didn’t, according to a new CDC study.
Vaccines teach your immune system to find and fight Covid, then they disappear. They don’t change you, they just give your system the instructions it needs to stay safe from Covid.
Protection from mRNA vaccines doesn't start to kick in until two weeks after your first dose, and it's not at its peak until two weeks after your second dose. Don't let your guard down too early.
How safe are you after you've gotten fully vaccinated? You're pretty safe. But when almost everyone around you is vaccinated, you're even safer! Vaccination is most effective when we do it together.
For those getting tests before Thanksgiving: testing shouldn't give you a false sense of security. It takes 2-14 days after exposure to become infectious. You can test negative in the morning and be highly infectious in the afternoon.
When many people mask up, spread of Covid goes down—mandate or not. A new analysis finds that wearing masks corresponds with a significant drop in the reproduction number of the virus.
Masks: before it was proven they work to protect against Covid, they weren't recommended. Once they were proven, they were recommended. That's not, Some people say yes and some say no. Rather, it's progress. It's how science works. By following science, we can save more lives.
"Perfect attendance" should be a thing of the past. When you don't feel well, stay home instead of going to work or school and possibly spreading an infection to those around you. I hope Covid has taught us our actions affect others. And that everyone should have paid sick leave.
Fully vaccinated adults 65 and older were 94% less likely to be hospitalized with Covid in a new CDC study. The Pfizer and Moderna vaccines are remarkably safe and astonishingly effective.
A new study from Sweden found that people infected with Covid were over SIX times more likely to have a stroke or heart attack within two weeks of their diagnosis or symptom onset. Vaccination decreases your risk of serious problems from the virus.
N95 masks are the most protective masks, followed by three-ply surgical masks, then fabric masks. A fabric mask is a lot better than no mask, but we may need to step up our mask game if contagious Covid variants start to spread widely.
We're all connected. Your freedom not to wear a mask indoors in a public place where Covid is spreading isn't more important than someone else’s freedom to live.
If the CDC had been allowed to lead public communication, Americans would have better understood the risk of Covid and how to protect ourselves and our families. We would have saved lives and jobs.
If you die from cancer and you also have diabetes, you died from cancer. If you die from Covid and you also had diabetes, you died from Covid. And not all Covid deaths are counted. The true number of. Covid deaths is undoubtedly greater than the number of reported deaths.
Your immune system does well at fighting threats it's seen before. But Covid is new—and its mutations, such as Delta, are even newer. Vaccination prepares your body to fight Covid, so it doesn't have to face a dangerous enemy sight unseen.
I’m hearing from vaccinated people who are frightened about breakthrough cases, the Delta variant, and new waves of Covid. But it’s not vaccinated people who should be most concerned. Here’s what I expect to happen over the coming weeks. 1/thread
I'm often asked: How can masks possibly work, the virus is so much smaller than the holes in the mask? It's a reasonable question. And there's an answer: Because the virus only travels on larger particles, which are stopped by the mask. Masks work. If we mask up.
Estimated cost of recent epidemics/pandemics:
SARS (2003) - $40 billion
H5N1 (2006) - $40 billion
H1N1 (2009) - $45 billion
Ebola (2014) - $55 billion
COVID-19 (2020) - $8.8 TRILLION
Investing in public health preparedness is FAR cheaper than the economic impact of a pandemic.
If you get Covid, the virus will spread all over your body, make billions of copies, and stay there for at least a week. In contrast, the vaccine will only be in your body for at most a day or so and then will be gone—but will teach your immune system how to fight the virus.
If Covid keeps spreading uncontrollably, there's a greater chance that even more deadly or vaccine-resistant variants could emerge. That's one big reason why we must increase vaccinations as quickly as possible. Vaccination reduces spread and saves lives.
I've worked on infectious disease outbreaks for 30 years. I've NEVER seen anything like the speed of Omicron. It's as infectious as measles spreading in a non-immune population, with a much shorter incubation time therefore much faster doubling time. Hope it's a lot less severe.
If you stopped using masks indoors after getting vaccinated, now is a good time to mask up again. If you've been wearing cloth masks, consider upgrading to more-protective N95/KN95 masks.
Delta may not be the worst variant this virus deals us. We can reduce the risk of more dangerous mutations by increasing vaccination and preventing explosive spread of the virus.
There is ZERO doubt. There were 215,000 more US deaths March-July than baseline, 71% diagnosed as Covid deaths by their doctors. The others were undiagnosed Covid + increases in deaths from Covid-disrupted care. An effective US response would have prevented most of these deaths.
Just about everyone who's hospitalized or dying from Covid is unvaccinated. Getting vaccinated saves your immune system the trouble of fighting an unpredictable virus unprepared, and virtually eliminates the risk that you'll become severely ill from it.
There’s no guarantee that Omicron is the worst this virus will throw at us. We must get past partisanship and pandemic fatigue and use the tools we have to fight Covid: vaccines, masks, ventilation, testing, effective treatments.
Covid vaccines were developed fast, but they weren't rushed—mRNA technology has been researched for more than 20 years. We're fortunate that it works extraordinarily well for the virus that causes Covid, and it may also work for other viruses, such as influenza, in the future.
For people who are immunosuppressed, flying in the US just got less safe.
We’re tired of Covid but masks are a small price to pay to save lives and keep our economy growing.
If you get infected with Covid, the virus makes billions of copies and spreads all over your body. When you get vaccinated, the vaccine teaches your immune system how to recognize and kill the virus quickly, then disappears.
After Omicron: Pi, Rho, Sigma, Tau, Upsilon, Phi, Chi, Si, and Omega. And on and on.
If anyone says they know what's coming next with Covid, they don't know what they're talking about.
We simply don't know. That's why we need to discover and adapt. Get data and act. Together.
Wearing a mask is a small price to pay for the large reduction in the risk you’ll become infected, contract long Covid, possibly get seriously ill, or make someone else seriously ill.
A new CDC analysis found that severe illness and death from Covid were extremely rare in vaccinated people. Among 1,228,664 fully vaccinated people across the US, 185 (0.015%) had severe illness and 36 (0.0033%) died. Covid vaccines are extremely safe and remarkably effective.
The 2003 SARS outbreak led to substantial work on mRNA technology and coronavirus vaccines. We may not have this type of head start the next time a dangerous microbe emerges unless we make vaccine research and development a priority.
Big news? A 100-year old treatment may work, a bit, for some patients. May or may not be safe. Science moves slowly - there is still so much we don’t know. What kind of antibodies? Which patients benefit? When in course of illness? What dose? How long? Need science, not politics.
A new study found that vaccinated people with breakthrough infections were less likely to spread Covid. Not only does getting vaccinated reduce your risk of becoming seriously ill from the virus, it also protects those around you.
If you live in Florida or Mississippi, you're 10x more likely to be killed by Covid today than if you live a state with sensible protection policies.
Political interference with public health action kills.
What happens when a vaccination program is run as a logistics program by White House appointees with zero experience with vaccination? Doesn’t start well. Less than one fifth of vaccines shipped have been given. This should be the beginning of the end of the pandemic in the US.
There's a saying in public health: your right to swing your fist ends at my nose. And your right not to take steps to prevent infection ends when you spread an infection that could kill people around you. Covid preys on division—we must work together.
With cases going up, the idea of masks going down doesn’t make a lot of sense. We're all connected—the more of us are masked up when Covid is spreading, the safer we all are.
"Fully vaccinated" needs to evolve to "up-to-date with vaccination series". And the meaning of "up-to-date" for Covid vaccines SHOULD change as we learn more.
20 years of research led to the development of Covid vaccines, which were extensively tested in the largest clinical vaccine trials ever done. These vaccines are extremely safe and effective—and they've already saved nearly 300,000 lives in the US.
A lot of Covid spread is caused by people going to work while sick. Why are they doing that? Because they're forced into a terrible choice between putting food on the table or potentially exposing others to infection. The solution: universal paid sick leave.
Even if you've already had Covid, getting vaccinated reinforces the protection your immune system has built and reduces the risk you'll get reinfected.
Delta may well not be the worst that Covid has in store for us: Future variants could be even more infectious, more deadly, or better at evading our immunity. That's why we must urgently expand vaccine production and stop uncontrolled spread of the virus globally.
It's impossible to get Covid from vaccination. Vaccines don't contain the virus itself—they contain instructions for your immune system to recognize and kill the virus if you're exposed.
Around the world, the places that have struggled most in controlling the virus are those with the least social cohesion. Fighting Covid requires a common understanding that we’re all in this together.
As long as there is spread of Covid around the world, even worse variants than Delta can emerge. As long as we are not scaling up manufacturing, especially of the mRNA vaccines, we are not doing everything that we can to protect ourselves, protect the world, and save lives. 1/3
Ivermectin is a drug that is approved and used successfully to treat some parasitic diseases, including in humans. It’s an important medication, but it doesn’t work for Covid, which is caused by a virus, not a parasite!
Covid vaccines don't change your DNA or stay in your body. They prime your immune system to recognize and vanquish the virus if you're exposed, then disappear—like a Snapchat message.
The number of reported deaths from Covid in the US will surpass the toll of the 1918 flu pandemic this month. We cannot become hardened to the continuing, and largely preventable, tragedy.
A series of studies show that vaccinated people were less likely to develop symptoms of long Covid following infection than unvaccinated people. Getting vaccinated is the best way to prevent long Covid.
Herd immunity? Sweden model? Sweden had a higher death rate than Denmark, Norway, and Finland, AND its economy did worse. The only alternative to controlling the virus is more deaths and more economic devastation. Choose health.
When studies show that, opposite from SARS & MERS, COVID19 is most infectious soon after infection & less infectious later, we recognize asymptomatic transmission and importance of masks. That's called science, not a mistake. The real, deadly mistake is not listening to science.
Good news: People who are fully vaccinated, at least with the mRNA vaccines, are likely well-protected against the variants identified so far, including the Delta variant — particularly when it comes to severe illness. We must vaccinate as many people as quickly as possible
Delta is different. The virus has adapted, and we must adapt too. We can slow spread by masking up indoors and we can prevent hospitalizations and deaths by getting vaccinated.
What's in mRNA vaccines? The only active ingredient is the messenger ribonucleic acid (mRNA), which trains your body to recognize and kill the virus. Other ingredients are fats, salts, and sugars that stabilize and protect the mRNA. None stay in your body or change your DNA.
Breakthrough infections aren't failures. They're inevitable with any vaccine. Covid vaccines aren't perfect, but they're astonishingly effective at keeping people out of hospitals and morgues.
If we isolate people soon after they get infectious, they'll spread less virus. If we quarantine people soon after they're exposed, then any new infection will stop with them. Boxing in Covid means preventing cases from becoming clusters and clusters from becoming outbreaks.