Inside Medicine Week In Review (January 21, 2023).

Quick catch up, solid reading recs, and my appreciation to you!

It’s the Inside Medicine “Week In Review” feature. This is meant to be a convenient way to find what we've covered this week (in case you missed anything or never got around to reading something you’d flagged) and a chance for me to share some good stuff from other writers and outlets (“What I’m Reading”).

This week, Inside Medicine was notable for Monday and Friday being given over to literally fact-checking the Washington Post. A ton of work, but since they didn’t bother, I had to.

• Sunday: My weird arc with gas stoves.

• Monday: Data Snapshot: Are we overcounting Covid-19 deaths? No.

• Tuesday: Fluvoxamine fails among the vaccinated.

• Wednesday: Two-month check-in.

• Thursday: Future Covid-19 booster vaccinations should be 100% Omicron.

• Friday: A point-by-point rebuttal of the Washington Post's double down on Covid deaths being "overcounted."

What I’m Reading. These are items written elsewhere that I found important and interesting (note: some may be paywalled or require free registration):

• “COVID-19 vaccines and sudden deaths: Separating fact from fiction.” (Katelyn Jetelina, Kristen Panthagani, Your Local Epidemiologist, Substack).

  Commentary: After NFL player Damar Hamlin went into cardiac arrest live on television during a game, disinformation trying to blame vaccines predictably ran wild. Jetelina and Panthagani vivisect the lies and carefully take us through the data (including citing work from Inside Medicine, that they used with permission).

• “Harvard Pulls Out of Med School Rankings." (Jennifer Henderson, MedPage Today).

  Commentary: Yes, we’re #1, over here at Harvard Medical School. At least, according to the annual U.S. News & World Report rankings. But we won’t be soon because we won’t be participating in the process. Our Dean said the decision was “more philosophical than methodological.” Naturally, he would say the methodology is good, because we top the list every year. Funny, that! I’m legitimately curious what this will mean for the U.S. News rankings. I doubt it will hurt this medical school. I do think the rankings sometimes help “so-called” lower tier schools attract good applicants. A school that a college student never heard of might get a closer look because of a high ranking. On the other hand, it’s probably the case that students pick, say, a #8 school that let them in, over a #20 school, even though real differences between the two institutions may be non-existent.

• “The Importance of Shifting Sepsis Quality Measures From Processes to Outcomes.”(Michael Klompas, Chanu Rhee, Mervyn Singer, JAMA).

  Commentary: This is a paper, largely for healthcare professionals. It’s an opinion piece about sepsis and the federal government metric that has crushed the souls of care providers nationwide, without offering any improvement in patient care. You’ll notice that in the coming months, I’ll write about sepsis more. It’s a huge topic and prior to the pandemic, it was a major focus of my policy work.

• “A prominent medical expert is denying Covid death numbers.” (The Mehdi Hasan Show, MSNBC).

  Commentary: Actually, I’m cheating. This is the 18-minute video segment on MSNBC that covered Inside Medicine’s takedown of the Washington Post columns mentioned above, which includes an interview with me. It’s rare to get this kind of coverage in media, let alone such a deep dive on cable news, where a 5 minute segment is considered a marathon. So, I’m deeply grateful to Mehdi and his producers.

Tweet of the week (Yes, I’m still on Twitter, so you don’t have to be):

Tyler Black, MD @tylerblack32

Large population cohort in Denmark **during lockdown** periods finds "no support" for the notion of increased self injury, suicidality, and eating disorder symptoms in young people. Data that needs amplification as it speaks against the moral panic.

nature.comSelf-injury, suicidality and eating disorder symptoms in young adults following COVID-19 lockdowns in Denmark - Nature Human BehaviourUsing longitudinal and repeated cross-sectional data, Danielsen et al. find no indication that the proportion of Danish young adults with self-injury, suicidality or eating disorder symptoms increased during lockdown.

Dr. Tyler Black is a Canadian physician who has tracked the story of the pandemic and suicides (i.e., they have not increased overall, despite fears that they would) carefully. If you’re on Twitter, he’s a great follow. He’s caring and data-driven.

Thanks for liking and sharing the newsletter every day! That helps the content here gain further reach. And, as always, a special thanks to the upgraded subscribers who make such great comments. Increasingly, that’s the pulse of this newsletter, and I hope to see the community continue to grow so that the conversations can be even more robust.

Also, let me know if you have topics you’d like me to cover.

Have a great Saturday!