Tag Archives: covid-19

Carvings July 15, 2026

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In the news

Is cyclosporiasis something to worry about?

            In the past couple of months a parasitic disease, cyclosporiasis, has emerged in many states, with a few thousand cases to date. The symptoms can be severe but they are rarely fatal. One of the hallmarks of the disease is the explosive watery diarrhea that can last for weeks, or even longer. No deaths have been reported to date but persons whose immune system is compromised should take special precautions to prevent this and other microbial diseases.

            Scary headlines notwithstanding, cyclosporiasis will not become an epidemic, but it gives me the opportunity to remind readers to minimize infection by properly cleansing ALL fruits and vegetables as soon as you return from the market. Remove the outer leaves of lettuce and cabbage. Use soap and warm water, rinse thoroughly and refrigerate most items. Blackberries, raspberries and strawberries, because of their irregular surfaces, are well known for harboring germs even after washing. The last should have the green tops removed to make cleaning more effective. Bagged salads are occasionally the source of infection and should be rinsed in plain water — no soap — after careful inspection for dirt, bugs and spoiled leaves.

            Pesticide residues are not the threat that many people think but washing produce does remove the very small amount that has not dissipated during storage and transport. Organic foods are not necessarily free of pesticide residues or microbes and should be cleaned thoroughly.

Lifestyle

Polio – not quite gone yet

            Those of us who are old enough to remember polio epidemics are grateful for the vaccine that spared our children and grandchildren from that frightening disease. During my medical school years I worked among patients who spent their lives in an “iron lung”. The last of these patients passed away just recently at the age of 78. There have been no cases of natural polio in the United States since 1979 but dozens of people have developed a polio-like illness when the oral (Sabin) vaccine virus underwent mutation and acted like its wild cousin. The oral vaccine is no longer administered in this country.

            Polio has almost been eradicated from the globe except for continuing activity in Pakistan and Afghanistan. It exists there only because the savages who control those nations do not allow their children to be vaccinated and have repeatedly assassinated healthcare workers sent by the World Health Organization. To date more than one hundred members of vaccination teams have been killed.

            But polio has left its scars among many of those who suffered from paralytic disease in their youth. Post-polio syndrome develops years or decades after the original attack, averaging about 30 years. Pain, weakness and fatigue are the hallmarks of this condition and it has a marked effect on the quality of life of its victims.

            Only a small percentage of persons infected with the poliovirus, perhaps one in a hundred, will be struck with paralysis. However, even those with non-paralytic polio will sometimes develop post-polio syndrome. The diagnosis is often elusive, but anyone who develops abnormal weakness or fatigue with no obvious cause deserves thorough evaluation for post-polio syndrome.

            The mechanism by which post-polio syndrome occurs has eluded physicians but a recent study suggests that a persistent low-grade infection by a mutated virus might be the cause. The finding of poliovirus proteins in the spinal fluid and white blood cells of past polio victims but not in healthy persons may help to unravel the mystery. It is possible that a non-infectious form of the virus can persist in the nervous system for decades, continuing the ravages of the initial illness. This leads to the speculation that antiviral drugs can halt the process. I hope so.

Carvings February 1, 2026

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Babies are paying the price

                There is a deadly trend throughout the world: failure to immunize children against crippling or fatal diseases. In spite of overwhelming evidence that vaccines have saved hundreds of millions of lives in the past century, parental refusal and anti-vaccination zealotry have led to an appalling decrease in vaccination rates and a corresponding increase in childhood diseases.

                The Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) notes that in 2026, pertussis (whooping cough) cases in the Americas will exceed the 66,000 cases that occurred in 2024. The mortality rate among very young infants varies between 1 and 5 percent, the variation largely related to poverty, malnutrition and quality of healthcare. I personally watched an infant die from pertussis while I was in medical school. It was a heart-rending experience.

                In 1926 there were 202,000 cases of pertussis in the U.S. A little more than 1,000 cases were reported in 1976, a fifty-year low. Since then there has been an unrelenting increase: 48,000 cases in 2012, and 15,000-30,000 in subsequent years. Much of the blame can be placed at the feet of Andrew Wakefield, whose fraudulent (and subsequently retracted) 1998 publication that linked the MMR vaccine to autism accelerated the anti-vaccine trend.

                Following a brief respite during the COVID pandemic, when extreme social distancing reduced the spread of pertussis and other respiratory diseases, the upward climb has resumed.

                Infants below the age of six months are the most vulnerable since full protection only occurs after three doses of the vaccine. Booster vaccination during pregnancy is the most effective way to protect babies. In addition, grandparents and other potential caregivers and visitors should stay away from young infants if they have even minimal signs of a “cold” or other respiratory infection. Unfortunately, the prior strategy of booster vaccination for close contacts is shown to be ineffective in protecting infants.

                The anti-vaccine movement jeopardizes the health and safety of the most vulnerable among us. They are voiceless victims.

Carvings March 1, 2025

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In the news

Measles redux

            Almost exactly one year ago (March 15th) I wrote about a measles outbreak in Florida. More than 90 percent of the victims had never received the measles vaccine. In the past few weeks we have seen an even larger outbreak involving nearly 150 children and adults – that number may have increased by the time this article has been posted – and one child has died. Again, 90 percent of the victims had not been vaccinated against measles, many of them belonging to a religious sect that eschews vaccines. What a terrible price to pay! The measles vaccine, part of the Measles-Mumps-Rubella triad, is effective in preventing the disease in 95 percent of recipients. Except for fever and sometimes a mild rash, the vaccine is almost entirely free of side effects, though there have been a few cases of severe complications.

            I’d like to repeat a comment that I have made before regarding those children who do have the aforementioned side effects. If a child experiences an illness from a severely weakened vaccine virus, he or she might well have been one of those unusually vulnerable children who died or suffered severe brain damage from the wild virus in the pre-vaccine era.

            Although measles has for decades been referred to as one of the “usual childhood diseases” it has other untoward effects. Besides causing mild inflammation of the brain in about one half of those who experience measles, thus impairing their school performance for months, nearly all victims will be found to have weakening of the immune system that lasts for two or three years. That means that they are more than ordinarily susceptible to other infections such as pneumonia.

            Measles is rampant in the developing world, where it is a major cause of blindness and death. It’s no coincidence that almost every outbreak in the United States has originated with someone who came from or recently traveled in another country.

Lifestyle

            It’s becoming evident that the Standard American Diet (SAD) is causing more damage to the nation’s health than just obesity, cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes. A few recent headlines make for interesting reading:

            Low vitamin D a contributor to mental disorders in children?

            Three vitamin deficiencies* linked to headaches.

            Vitamin B1 deficiency*: these are the symptoms.

            Dementia risk could increase with low levels of essential vitamin.

            Vitamin deficiencies* common among people with type 2 diabetes.

            16 signs you may have iron deficiency*

            This is only a small sample of the increasing number of reports in recent years that reveal the prevalence of vitamin “inadequacies” that lead to poor function without severe “deficiency” such as profound weakness and bleeding disorder of vitamin C deficiency (scurvy) or the debilitating (and permanent) brain and nerve damage of vitamin B12 deficiency known as pernicious anemia, or the tragic and irreversible mental deterioration that results from vitamin B1 deficiency. Pediatricians of a century ago dealt with rickets, the marked deficiency of vitamin D that produced not only weakened bones but brain damage and death. (* These are inadequacies, not deficiencies.)

            Nearly a quarter-century ago (!) the American Medical Association reversed its position and acknowledged that EVERYONE should take a multimineral/multivitamin every day. (Journal of the American Medical Association June 19, 2002, Vol. 287, No. 23, P. 3127) The national diet has only gotten worse since then.

            Eighty-two percent of Americans are obese or overweight; twelve percent have type 2 diabetes and twice that number have prediabetes; cancer and stroke are increasing dramatically in young adults.

            What will it take for all of us to take seriously Make America Healthy Again?

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The lesson: vitamin deficiencies are not common but vitamin inadequacies are. Even the American Medical Association, in a pair of landmark publications in 2002, (Journal of the American Medical Association June 19, 2002, Vol. 287, No. 23, P. 3127) urged that everyone should take a multivitamin/multimineral every day, a position completely opposite that of earlier recommendations and sadly still espoused by some physicians today.

Carvings February 1, 2025

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Why vaccines fail

            One of the major factors in the steep rise in life expectancy that occurred between 1900 and 2000 was the development of childhood vaccines. Today’s young physicians may never see a child with measles, polio, some forms of bacterial meningitis or chickenpox. Even the oldest physicians among us have likely never seen a child dying agonizingly from whooping cough or tetanus or diphtheria, those diseases having been vanquished before World War Two. If these diseases occur in the United States – and they do sometimes – it is usually because the patient came from a country where medical care is poor and immunization rates are much lower than they are here, or because parents have been caught up in the anti-vaxx hysteria that has been increasingly common in the twenty-first century.

            But sometimes a vaccine does fail to provide infection from the disease that almost always prevents the disease against which it is targeted. One reason is that some vaccines must be kept at specified refrigerator temperatures. When the measles vaccine was released in 1963 pediatricians noted occasionally that vaccinated children developed measles. Investigation showed that some pediatricians’ staff had placed the vaccine on a door shelf of the refrigerator instead of deep inside, which had been recommended. The slight increase in the temperature of vials kept on the door shelf was high enough to weaken the live vaccine, rendering it ineffective. The oral polio vaccine, a live form developed by Albert Sabin, has the advantage of not requiring needles and syringes that are prohibitively costly in developing countries, but it requires a “cold chain” that is also expensive in order to prevent degradation of the vaccine.

            Children who are born with a severe immune deficiency or those whose immune system is weakened by chemotherapy will not respond to the stimulus of a vaccine agent. Obesity may be a factor in the adult population, not only because obesity or its accompaniment, type 2 diabetes, degrades the immune system but because ordinary-length needles fail to reach the muscle tissue deep within a layer of fat. The result is that the patient cannot develop adequate antibodies or immune cells.

            Vaccines vary tremendously in their duration of protection. Diphtheria and tetanus vaccines provide nearly lifelong immunity but the mumps virus fails to protect after just a few years. The disturbing occurrence of numerous mumps outbreaks among young adults has prompted a reevaluation of that vaccine. Yet more evidence that mother nature keeps throwing curveballs!

Carvings October 15, 2024

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In the news

Don’t trust the COVID vaccine? Okay, but don’t let that keep you from getting the vaccines you need.

            A University of Pennsylvania study describes three major misconceptions that Americans hold about the COVID vaccine:

            COVID vaccines have contributed to thousands of deaths.

            Getting COVID is less risky than getting the COVID vaccine.

            COVID vaccines will change your DNA.

            Although these beliefs are incorrect, they carry strong emotional weight with lots of people, so I won’t bother to address them further. However, beliefs such as this and the vile theory that the MMR vaccine causes autism have dissuaded many parents from giving their children basic childhood vaccines, and kept adults from getting the vaccines they need to prevent death or serious illness.

            Hundreds of cases of measles and thousands of cases of pertussis (whooping cough) have occurred in the past few years because of poor compliance with childhood vaccination guidelines. I have a deep fear that it’s only a matter of time before we begin to see two diseases that I saw many times in my early, pre-vaccine pediatric career – Hemophilus influenzae meningitis and epiglottitis. The latter is a swiftly moving, often deadly infection.

            Some adults are reluctant to get two vaccines that are intended for them, the pneumococcal and shingles vaccines. The former prevents what was once a common cause of pneumonia, especially among the elderly, and I have seen the consequences of shingles – blindness and near-constant, severe pain.

            I addressed the influenza vaccine in earlier posts. I remind you that the flu season is underway and the virus is circulating in San Diego. Be warned.

Lifestyle

            In the course of grocery shopping at Albertson’s and Walmart last week I again had to run the gauntlet of cookies and cakes, augmented by Halloween sweets, cleverly positioned to greet shoppers as they enter the store. A reminder that much of the American diet is obesogenic and diabetogenic. With the holiday season little more than a month away it’s time to strengthen our mindset to avoid, or at least limit, the foods that provide us with energy and nothing else. I’d like to share a couple of steps that I have taken to bolster that resolve.

            At a banquet a couple of days ago the table was set with a healthy-looking salad, alongside which was a scrumptious-looking chocolate dessert – a genuine work of art. Knowing that I won’t always be able to resist the temptation in the coming weeks, I gave my resolve a kick-start by leaving it alone.

            Today’s lunch at the old folks’ home in which I reside included a seafood club sandwich. I asked them to leave out the bacon. I do have to admit that I missed it!

            Caring friends will soon stop by with plates and boxes of Christmas cookies, etc. It’s OK to have a taste and to toss the rest in the trash a week later. (Wow! Did Phil really say that?) Better there than on your waistline.

            Go ahead and have as much as you want at Thanksgiving. After all, it is a Feast Day!

            I hope that this short list will have given you some ideas as we enter our overly tempting holiday season. But it’s okay to enjoy some of these treats that only come along once a year. (Note the word “some” in that last sentence.)