At the start of the month, Biden announced plans to reignite his Cancer moonshoot, an initiative he initially launched as vice president in 2016. The aim is to reduce the death rate from cancer by 50 percent in the next 25 years and to improve the lives of cancer patients and their families. However, with the delay in diagnosis and treatment of life-threatening illnesses — including cancer — during the pandemic, this moonshot is a long shot.
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I was in the pediatric ER when I was on call a couple of weeks ago, treating a child with respiratory distress, when I looked up at the census board and saw "RSV+COVID." This was the first time I'd seen this combination of Covid-19 and respiratory syncytial virus -- one of the most prevalent pathogens that can damage the airway and lungs in young children. It was concerning.
Read MoreRead More"I feel so tired, all the time. I'm having trouble remembering things. It's like living in a fog." Dozens of patients have told me their stories of Covid-19 recovery, some long after they have left the hospital -- after the lines and tubes have been removed and they are walking on their own again, after they have returned to their normal lives, but not to their normal selves.
Read MoreRead MoreLast week, a Covid-19 patient of mine told me he is finally going home after four months in the hospital. His tracheostomy tube has been taken out and he's breathing on his own. He's finally able to walk again, with some help. It's a new beginning for him and as he wished me a happy New Year, I felt hopeful for the first time in a long time.
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We fought Covid-19 in New York City and we thought that we won. After three months of a relentless cycle of breathing tubes, ventilators, organ failures and deaths, the rhythm gradually shifted to breathing, healing, recovery and going home. We thought we had stabilized the situation.
Read MoreRead MoreWhen the pandemic first struck the United States with ferocity in March, the days were already getting longer. Spring was coming. Quarantined people could take to the outdoors when they needed a break. The second and more brutal wave of Covid-19 is coming now, and at a harsher time in much of the nation, as cold temperatures and earlier sunsets keep people indoors and increase the risk of spreading disease.
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At the height of the coronavirus pandemic in New York City, Dr. Brian Mitzman led the team at N.Y.U. Winthrop hospital, in Long Island, that oversees tracheostomies, meaning that it was his job to decide how to keep the sickest ventilated Covid-19 patients breathing.
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"We didn't do them super early. For these patients, we waited sometimes three, four weeks on the ventilator. There were a lot of concerns around keeping everybody safe, because of concerns for aerosolization of the virus," says Susannah Hills...
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