Opinion | ‘It’s Now Health Workers Who Are Suffering’: What We Heard This Week

“It’s now health workers who are suffering.” — Deborah Houry, MD, MPH, the CDC’s chief medical officer, on the rising rates of burnout among healthcare workers.

“By 3 days, the majority of children are going to be non-infectious.” — Eran Bendavid, MD, MS, of Stanford University, pinpointing the median duration of infectivity among adolescents with COVID.

“It’s a diagnosis that doesn’t exist.” — Reuben Strayer, MD, of Maimonides Medical Center in New York City, commenting on the American College of Emergency Physicians’ vote to reject use of the term “excited delirium.”

“Maximize flourishing within the laws.” — Katie Watson, JD, of Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago, speaking to pediatricians about the new legal landscape for abortion.

“We’re challenging a treatment paradigm that has stood for more than 2 decades.” — Bradley Monk, MD, of the University of Arizona College of Medicine, on study results that will change the standard of care in locally advanced cervical cancer.

“Now we realize we should also be considering this in people who haven’t traveled outside the United States.” — Mary Kamb, MD, MPH, and Vitaliano Cama, DVM, of the CDC, on preliminary findings that suggest leishmaniasis, a parasitic skin disease, may be endemic to the U.S.

“It likes to molt in a dark environment, so I guess that’s how it probably hides in human ears at night, then molts.” — Tengchin Wang, MD, of Tainan Municipal Hospital in Taiwan, after removing a spider and its exoskeleton from a patient’s ear.

“I’m on a road that I don’t know where it leads.” — Gregory Poland, MD, of the Mayo Clinic’s Vaccine Research Group in Minnesota, discussing his journey with COVID vaccine-related tinnitus.

“No one talks about this, but it is pretty common among endoscopists.” — Azizullah Beran, MBBS, of Indiana University School of Medicine in Indianapolis, reporting that over half of gastrointestinal endoscopists have work-related musculoskeletal injuries.