Opinion | ‘We Need Vaccines to Do a Little Bit More’: What We Heard This Week

“We need vaccines to do a little bit more.” — David Aronoff, MD, of the Indiana University School of Medicine, on how we need COVID-19 vaccines to thwart even mild symptomatic disease.

“I’m not going to tell a 12-year-old, transgender male who is being raised by people from Afghanistan the same thing that I tell a 55-year-old white woman who is an heir to billions.” — Fatima Cody Stanford, MD, MPH, of Massachusetts General Hospital, discussing the need to personalize dietary advice.

“These small shifts warrant careful attention because at the population level, they can have a significant public health impact.” — Dani Dumitriu, MD, PhD, of Columbia University Irving Medical Center, about research linking COVID-19-era births to lower neurodevelopment scores at 6 months.

“Even if your family gets infected, it doesn’t mean you failed as a parent.” — Katelyn Jetelina, PhD, MPH, of the UT Health Science Center, on the difficulties for parents during the highly transmissible Omicron surge.

“We have burdened an entire generation of children … with the impact of COVID.” — Grace Lee, MD, chair of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, during a meeting where the CDC advisors voted 13-1 in favor of boosters for adolescents ages 12 to 17.

“My personal opinion is that the best kind of policy changes are the holistic kind, which do not focus on just one environmental stressor (air pollution) and one health outcome (childhood asthma).” — Haneen Khreis, PhD, MS, of the University of Cambridge, speaking on environmental policies in light of a recent study linking traffic-related air pollution to nearly 2 million new pediatric asthma cases in a single year.

“What we’re seeing unique to COVID is that there can be a direct impact on taste that’s separate from the loss of smell.” — Joshua Levy, MD, of Emory University School of Medicine, commenting on a study documenting taste dysfunction after COVID-19 infection.