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Published on Leave a comment on Chocolate Bunnies

It's Easter time, when my thoughts turn to chocolate bunnies. Not only do they taste better than real bunnies (well, to think of it, I may have never tested a real bunny), but I have been unable to find any reports of tularemia transmitted from chocolate bunnies.

Although we are clearly beyond the peak of winter respiratory infection season, we still have plenty to think about from last week.

Covid Household Transmission From Asymptomatic Children

A prospective study showed a high secondary attack rate (SAR) for covid in households likely stemming from asymptomatically infected children. The study was well designed to try to answer this question, identifying asymptomatic children in Canada and the US who were tested for SARS-CoV-2 for either non-household contact with a known covid case or as part of routine hospital screening. The study covered a 15-month period, and results were analyzed according to viral variants predominating in the community at those times: 1/31/21 - 6/30/21 was predominantly alpha or mixed variants, 7/121 - 12/19/21 was delta, and 12/21/21 - 4/22/22 was omicron. The authors compared household SAR of SARS-CoV-2 positive children to rates of those who tested negative. There are many nuances to the study, but here's the bottom line:

SARs were higher with younger index cases (< 5yo versus 13 - <18 yo), if the index case eventually developed covid symptoms (versus continuing asymptomatic), and during delta and omicron time periods versus the interval when alpha/other variants predominated. If you have access to the full text of the article, skim the Methods section to get an idea of the tremendous amount of effort involved in collecting this kind of data.

Dengue in Puerto Rico

This past week Puerto Rico health authorities declared a public health emergency due to dengue, the first time this has happened in the territory since 2012. What I'm sure is alarming to those authorities, beyond the sheer number of cases (524) in 2024 so far, is that this isn't peak dengue season. As befitting the mosquito vector, cases tend to rise in the summer when it is wetter. See below, with my apologies for lack of English translation. You can click on the Week 10 report in the PR DOH Arboviral Diseases Weekly Report for the full document.

In other words, the worst may be yet to come. (The dashed red line is the epidemic threshold which is higher in summer/early fall weeks; August usually is the peak month for rain in Puerto Rico.) We can certainly expect cases in the mainland US, including in non-travelers living in Florida and other states that have experienced autochthonous dengue cases in the past.

Meningococcal Group Y Alert

CDC issued another HAN report about increasing cases of invasive meningococcal disease due to group Y, a phenomenon that has been noticed for a couple years now.

Note that the incidence rate is very low; this represents a relatively small number of cases but still quite significant given the severity of meningococcal disease. Now is a good time for frontline healthcare providers to read up about meningococcal disease in general including indications for vaccination and identification of high risk groups, especially for this outbreak: age 30-60 years, Black or African-American descent, and living with HIV; as well as the usual risk factors of close contact with a case, people at the age extremes, certain immunodeficiency diseases such as complement deficiencies, and some college settings. The HAN notice includes many useful links.

How's Your Ventilation?

CDC issued revised guidelines for indoor ventilation to help prevent respiratory virus transmission, including SARS-CoV-2. Take a look and maybe ask your friendly office landlord how your building stacks up.

Apparently I've missed it for a couple years, but CDC also has an interactive tool to see how changes in ventilation may improve viral particle clearance. I disappeared down that rabbit hole playing with it for about half an hour. Note the disclaimer at the top of the web page about some information needing updates, though I think it mostly concerns the old 6-feet social distancing and other recommendations rather than the tool itself. Here are results from a home with intermittent HVAC operation, uncertain filter rating, and running the HVAC system for 1 hour after a 4-hour period of gathering. Better results can be achieved with continuous HVAC operation (i.e. keep it on continuously during times of high occupancy), high MERV-rated (Minimal Efficiency Reporting Value) filter, use of HEPA (High Efficiency Particulate Air) cleaner, and other factors.

However, before you overhaul your home system or threaten your office landlord, note what this is really saying. The outcomes pertain to effectiveness of particle reduction in the air, which is different from measuring whether it lessens transmission of SARS-CoV-2, influenza, RSV, or other viruses. It makes sense that there would be some correlation, but until someone does a more definitive study comparing systems and actual viral infection rates, we don't really know to what degree ventilation efficiency changes infectious disease outcomes. Compare this with the study of secondary household transmission mentioned at the top today's post - a more difficult study design with results more directly related to clinical outcomes than just a study of airborne particles in a laboratory chamber. And, parenthetically, the household transmission study did not include individual home ventilation as a factor, so even those results are incomplete. This is complicated!

Measles Update

Measles marches on in the US and across the world. US cases continue to grow, now at 97 since January 1, fed in large part recently by outbreaks in Chicago: 21 new cases in the past week just in Chicago alone. Here are the latest US numbers and distribution from CDC:

In Search of Easter Candy

Once again my wife and I have used our granddaughter as an excuse to buy Easter candy. She's a picky eater, now the only chocolate bunny she will touch must be dark chocolate without any added flavorings or other adulterations. I applaud her good taste, but perhaps next year I'll do this shopping more than a few days prior to Easter Sunday. I had no trouble finding a multitude of milk chocolate bunnies, some with various additives including peanut butter, salted and unsalted caramel, marshmallow, and other ingredients that I might have considered inedible if presented separately from chocolate. Plain dark chocolate bunnies apparently are almost extinct, definitely at least a critically endangered species.

I should have kept track of my steps and car odometer for this year's chocolate bunny safari, though I doubt even the thousands of steps I tallied will offset my Easter candy ingestion.

Published on Leave a comment on Obstinacy or Ignorance or Fear

Those words written by a famous children's author in 1988 remain relevant today; details to follow after a few mentions of other pediatric infectious disease news from the past week.

Covid Serology Update

The Infectious Disease Society of American updated their guidelines for use of covid serology testing. It is the 4th update since the pandemic began, but there isn't much new here. Currently over 95% of the US population has evidence of immunity either from natural infection, vaccination, or both. Serologic testing of individuals mostly is discouraged because it won't provide any useful clinical information to manage an individual's situation. About the only use might be to check immunity in immunocompromised individuals to help decide if immunotherapy could be warranted for prophylaxis or for treatment of active infection.

Covid in Young Infants

Early in the pandemic, most very young infants diagnosed with SARS-CoV-2 infection were hospitalized. This was due to a combination of the usual practice for febrile infants less than 1 month of age as well as the uncertainty of infection outcomes in this age group. I recall from my clinical experiences that it appeared that most young infants actually did well, though there were exceptions. Finally we have a study that gives us some more detailed data about young infants early in the pandemic. It is a secondary analysis of a prospective global study that recruited children presenting to pediatric emergency departments with illness and tested for covid. The study design allows for much more detail (and presumably more validity) than the other designs such as review of administrative data. The study (actually 2 studies combined) enrolled between March 2020 and February 2022. They ended up with 432 children testing positive for covid to compare with 616 testing negative. Clinical outcomes were generally more severe in the SARS-CoV-2-negative infants:

So, at least early in the pandemic, young infants with SARS-CoV-2 infection fared pretty well.

A Colorful Variant Update

Nothing new about this, but I admit to a strange attraction to colorful covid variant charts. I thought it was interesting to look back to see how the JN.1 variant progressed in the US.

The JN.1 shade of purple has been called "indigo purple" (hex #660999).

Varicella Misdiagnosis

A new CDC report suggests clinicians aren't too skilled in diagnosing varicella infections, perhaps because it is now much less common due to effective vaccination. The Minnesota Department of Health looked at suspected varicella cases from 2016 to 2023, a time when they implemented a new system for processing PCR testing of lesions. Of 208 suspected varicella cases, only 45% had positive tests; in vaccinated patients, the number dropped to 22%. They attributed this to unreliability of clinical diagnosis of varicella, especially in vaccinated patients, but I suspect other factors (improper specimen collection technique, testing unlikely varicella patients "just to be sure") may be contributory as well. Anecdotally I've certainly noticed how difficult the diagnosis varicella-zoster virus infection can be for younger clinicians who don't have the experience of seeing multiple cases in the pre-vaccine era.

Speaking of Misdiagnosis ...

I'm in my broken record mode again here. In case you've been hibernating or torporing, we're in the midst of a global measles surge. I read with alarm of a measles vaccine shortage in Canada. There are no signs of a similar shortage in the US; you can always check on US vaccine shortages at this CDC site. With spring break upon us now, and summer travels coming up, all of us need to brush up on measles diagnosis. Thankfully we have a lot of help.

Last Sunday, the CDC issued a Health Alert Network post with a number of useful links. The American Academy of Pediatrics provides a one-pager with great advice as well as a 5-minute video. Another source I've found very useful for years is from a now out-of-print textbook, Krugman's Infectious Diseases of Children. When I discovered libraries no longer carried it, I tracked down a used copy of the 10th edition (1998) released by a university library and have made continued good use of their black and white diagrams. Here's the clinical progression of illness, the key highlight here is the prodrome of a few days before the rash appears. This is very helpful in suspecting a measles diagnosis because the prolonged prodrome is very unusual in pediatric infectious exanthems.

Also useful is the development and distribution of the rash:

I failed to find a current global measles map so return to the CDC website to at least give a current view of US measles cases. For this calendar year we are now up to 64 cases spread over 17 jurisdictions.

Many clinicians may not remember that, though the first measles vaccine was approved for use in the US in 1961, it wasn't until 30 years later that a second dose was recommended. That was spurred by cases in the late 1980s appearing in vaccinated school children, the first major sign that a single dose wasn't sufficient to prevent outbreaks. That second dose was first recommended for 11-12 year olds by the AAP, subsequently dropped to the 4-6 year age group in 1997 to come into agreement with the CDC. Importantly, the interval between the 2 doses can be as short as 28 days for MMR and 90 days for MMRV vaccines, and early vaccination down to 6 months of age is indicated in special circumstances, such as for children who will be traveling internationally. Frontline pediatric providers need to be proactive in alerting parents planning international travel to ensure that their children ages 6 months and older are protected. Scroll down to the Special Situations section on the CDC immunization schedule notes.

Roald Dahl

I learned just recently that this famed children's book author lost a daughter to measles in 1962. He wrote 25 years later, "Olivia, my eldest daughter, caught measles when she was seven years old. As the illness took its usual course I can remember reading to her often in bed and not feeling particularly alarmed about it. Then one morning, when she was well on the road to recovery, I was sitting on her bed showing her how to fashion little animals out of coloured pipe-cleaners, and when it came to her turn to make one herself, I noticed that her fingers and her mind were not working together and she couldn’t do anything. 'Are you feeling all right?' I asked her. 'I feel all sleepy,' she said. In an hour, she was unconscious. In twelve hours she was dead.”

She had developed measles encephalitis. He wrote this in the late 1980s to encourage parents in the United Kingdom to accept a new MMR vaccine for their children (monovalent measles vaccine had been introduced in 1968 in the UK). He also wrote, “In my opinion parents who now refuse to have their children immunised are putting the lives of those children at risk. In America, where measles immunisation is compulsory, measles, like smallpox, has been virtually wiped out. Here in Britain, because so many parents refuse, either out of obstinacy or ignorance or fear, to allow their children to be immunised, we still have a hundred thousand cases of measles every year.”

Much has been written about Dahl's dark side (e.g. "an equal-opportunity bigot"), but I give him credit for trying to help children and their parents avoid the misfortune he and his family experienced.

Published on Leave a comment on Spring is … Springing

I actually had to pull out the lawnmower this week, to cut some weedy grass running amok in the yard. Nonetheless, I'm buoyed by the approach of the vernal equinox next Tuesday, the official start of spring. Winter will be done, and with it the winter respiratory viruses. They will reliably be replaced with spring respiratory viruses.

Here's a look at the pediatric infectious disease news the past week.

Details on the Failed GSK RSV Vaccine Trial

We've known for about a year that GlaxoSmithKline's RSV vaccine trial in pregnant people was stopped due to safety concerns: a higher rate of preterm births in the vaccine group compared to placebo. Now we have more details, similar to what was reported to FDA and shared in various meetings. Preterm birth rate was 6.8% (237 of 3494 infants) in the vaccine group and 4.9% (86/1739) in the placebo group; it was statistically significant. Neonatal mortality was higher in the vaccine group, 0.4% versus 0.2%, but did not reach statistical significance.

On the other hand, vaccine effectiveness was pretty good:

The currently approved maternal RSV vaccine from Pfizer also had a hint of a safety signal for preterm birth, less so than the GSK product, and these signals combined resulted in the Pfizer vaccine being approved for a later time in gestation, at 32 weeks at the earliest. Postmarketing surveillance is ongoing. Perhaps the most difficult part of assessing this safety signal is whether it is real or not. We are lacking a key factor in making this assessment: biologic plausibility, i.e. the mechanism by which these vaccines might cause preterm birth. Without that, it is still possible this represents just a chance observation. From my perspective, I would still encourage RSV vaccination for pregnant people as well as nirsevimab therapy for at risk infants born to unvaccinated mothers. We have time for more discussions of any new data prior to our next RSV season this fall.

Waterborne Disease Outbreaks Associated With Drinking Water

I'm a big fan of CDC's Surveillance summaries, and this one published last week is of interest. The report concerns 214 outbreaks from 2015-2020. I wasn't thrilled to see my home state represented prominently.

Outbreaks occurred year-round, and biofilm exposures predominated.

In case you aren't familiar with biofilm-associated outbreaks, here's the quick explanation from the text:

"...microbial communities that attach to moist surfaces (e.g., water pipes) and provide protection and nutrients for many different types of pathogens, including Legionella and NTM [non-tuberculous mycobacteria]... Biofilm can grow when water becomes stagnant or disinfectant residuals are depleted, resulting in pathogen growth... Furthermore, biofilm pathogens are difficult to control because of their resistance to water treatment processes (e.g., disinfection)... Exposure to biofilm pathogens can occur through contact with, ingestion of, or aerosol inhalation of contaminated water from different fixtures (e.g., showerheads) and devices (e.g., humidifiers)..."

Not to minimize the severity of these events, but I couldn't help thinking about a whole new version of Hitchcock's Psycho shower scene based on this.

Legionella was by far the most common pathogen. The report has detail on every outbreak by year and location, as well as a listing of contributing factors. It's a great roadmap for future prevention.

Measles (Again)

It seems like I could devote every week's post entirely to measles and not run out of things to say. Here's the current US situation.

As I've stated previously, it's the sheer number of unconnected sites that concerns me now. Let's put this into some perspective.

As of March 14, we have 58 cases reported from 17 jurisdictions. In all of 2023, we had the same number, 58, reported from 20 jurisdictions in the US. So, we're way ahead of the game for recent years, but we're also not breaking any records compared to pre-pandemic times.

Looking more closely at the 2 biggest years recently, the 2014 (and somewhat 2015) numbers had a large contribution from a single site, Disneyland. More impressively, the 1274 measles cases in 2019, the highest number in the US since 1992, largely involved orthodox Jewish communities in New York - relatively epidemiologically isolated communities with very low immunization rates. A CDC update in fall 2019 (I couldn't find a final tally) stated that 75% of cases for the entire country that year originated from these communities.

Fingers crossed that we don't eclipse the 2019 figures this year, but with reduced vaccination rates and already widespread measles transmission occurring, it doesn't look good. We're just now coming to the spring break and summer travel season - importation of measles from travelers has been a large contributor to US measles outbreaks in the past.

Pediatric Covid ICU Admissions

A recent report of registry data from 55 hospitals during the first almost 2 years of the pandemic showed that about 8% children <21 years of age admitted to intensive care with covid had immunocompromising conditions (ICC). Secondary bacterial infection was more common (9.5% versus 7.3%) and mortality (11.4% versus 4.6%) was higher in the ICC group.

That Pesky Flu

The map is getting a little greener, apropos of springtime. Note in the link you can animate the map to show progression from the fall to the current week.

Better seen here, we did experience a little pause in our decrease of ILI, now headed down but at 3.7% still above the official "epidemic is over" mark of 2.9% for this year.

Any Chipmunk Sightings?

My 2024 Farmer's Almanac says that the real harbinger of spring in the eastern US is the appearance of the eastern chipmunk (Tamias striatus) above ground. As opposed to their squirrel brethren, chipmunks at my house don't bother my bird feeder, so I'm OK with them. I learned that although they stay below ground for the winter, they aren't true hibernators but rather experience torpor. They may sleep for several days in their bedrooms, followed by a trip to the underground pantry for snacks. Sounds like a good plan for retirement.

Published on Leave a comment on Another Strange Case of Dr. Jeckyll and Mr. Hyde

Maybe chalk it up to old age. Last week I mentioned I'd be reporting on the ACIP meetings, not remembering that they are scheduled for the coming week, not last week.

Still, plenty going on to fill in with, including a strange case I've been investigating for a few weeks now.

New Adult C. difficile Fecal Transplant Guidelines

The American Gastroenterologic Association published new guidelines for use of fecal transplant in adults with C. difficile disease. Although the guidelines do not address pediatric issues they are still useful to consider. Looking at just the summary, fecal microbiota transplant therapy is being recommended for instances of recurrent disease in immunocompetent or mild/moderately immunocompromised individuals, as well as for severe or fulminant infections in individuals not responding to conventional therapy, Fecal transplant use is not recommended for those with certain underlying GI conditions such as ulcerative colitis, Crohn's disease, pouchitis, or irritable bowel syndrome, except as part of clinical trials. I noted that all of the recommendations were conditional with low or very low level of evidence.

Conflicting Nirsevimab Data

The headlines screamed that about 40% of eligible infants received nirsevimab prophylaxis for RSV infection, as of last month, which is much higher than I had thought based on reports and the shortage of the product. On closer examination, it may not be all that good. There are actually 2 sets of information that the CDC published. First is reporting of ongoing telephone surveys of households with infants under 8 months of age, asking if those infants have received nirsevimab or are planning to do so. That's where the 40% figure comes from. The second data source is an ongoing count of nirsevimab doses actually administered. The listing includes jurisdictional data up through December 2023. Here the highest rate is 20% (Alaska) with many states near zero. Presumably this latter count is more accurate than is self-reported survey data. Let's hope things improve next season, where it does appear that supply chain issues that caused so much disruption this season might be somewhat ameliorated.

Also on the nirsevimab front, I saw the first semi-detailed explanation of what went wrong with the supply chain last fall. You recall, and probably experienced, difficulty in receiving an adequate supply of nirsevimab to satisfy your patients' needs. The company simply didn't have enough stock on hand. This Wall Street Journal report offered more information. It seems that, as usual, it was a bad combination of multiple factors. First, the manufacturer underestimated demand. Second, pediatric healthcare providers initially delayed ordering the drug, not sure if third-party payers would cover the circa $500/dose price. When the feds decided in August to add the product to the Vaccines for Children program, it was already too late to reverse the trend for lower production targets. Production was ramped up eventually, and now some states have excess product available due to all the delays plus perhaps some practitioners not being aware of the availability. RSV is still around but clearly nearing the end of the season. Let's hope things go better for next RSV season.

Risk Stratification for Pediatric Covid

The Pediatric Infectious Diseases Society published new guidance related to covid management in children and adolescents, worth reading. In particular, I think the group did a great job explaining risk factors for poor outcomes from SARS-CoV-2 infection. This has been confusing, in part because we lacked data but also due to spillover from adult high risk conditions - I've noticed many practitioners citing adult risk factors for use in the pediatric population, and it's not quite applicable in all situations. Here's the quick breakdown:

Not All Telemedicine is Created Equal

I've been involved with telemedicine since well before the pandemic. It has its uses, and of course it also has limitations. However, some individuals providing so-called telemedicine services are doing more harm than good. I was saddened but not surprised at this article about providing antibiotic prescriptions via telemedicine. The authors searched for online platforms offering antibiotic prescriptions without real time physician examination or verification of patient details and then chose 2 platforms to query.

For the first platform, one "patient" was able to get a prescription for amoxicillin for "URI," answering a few yes/no questions asynchronously and being rewarded with the prescription in less than a half hour. Another "patient" insisted on being prescribed levofloxacin for cough and again was rewarded the prescription with little verification or pushback.

On the second platform, a "patient" with URI was given a link to choices of azithromycin, cefuroxime, amoxicillin, Augmentin, doxycycline, or levofloxacin. After choosing doxycycline the prescription was provided immediately.

These patients were actually some of the study authors, and they had real URI symptoms. They didn't fill the prescriptions and did recover uneventfully from their URIs. I had 2 immediate reactions after reading the article. First, I wanted to cry. Second, I wondered where these telemedicine "doctors" obtained their medical training.

I Told You So

Some people preface that comment with "I hate to say it, but..." Not me, I'll grab credit even if, as in this circumstance, I'm not unique in sounding the measles alarm. The most recent update shows 35 cases in the 15 US jurisdictions this year, as of February 24. This many cases scattered over so many jurisdictions bodes poorly, and the scariest is in a Florida elementary school.

Dr. Ladapo and Mr. .....?

Dr. Josepah A. Ladapo sports both medical and public health degrees from Harvard, an internal medicine residency in Boston, followed by a faculty appointment at NYU. He than transitioned to a mostly research position at the University of Southern California before catching the eye of the Florida governor and becoming both Surgeon General for the state as well as a professor at the University of Florida. He's been on my radar for some bizarre pronouncements that made me want to look deeper.

Looking at his publication list in PubMed and scanning some of the articles, he clearly has good public health knowledge. Most of his publications center around aspects of cardiovascular disease in adults. He does have 3 relatively recent publications related to covid, but I'm deliberately not linking to them, or to his public statements in the past year, because they are either secondary to the conversation or so lacking in scientific merit as to be not worth your time.

His first covid-related publication was in 2021 and analyzed results of a Gallup poll carried out from July to December 2020 regarding adults' misconceptions about covid risk. Curiously, he published another analysis of this same poll in 2022, presenting some of the exact same data. Neither article referenced the other one and made me wonder whether this could be a case of duplicate publication. More importantly, though, why would covid perception data collected in late 2020 have any utility in 2022, unless the authors were analyzing changes over time (which they did not)?

His other covid-related publication from November 2021 was a multi-author effort (he was the 8th out of 12 authors) talking about future priorities in public health management of covid. I was very interested to see that vaccination was seen as the most important intervention given that Dr. Ladapo now disparages most use of covid vaccines, based on nonsensical arguments.

In the past year, Dr. Ladapo has been working actively to discourage covid vaccine use in most instances. You can see some rebuttal from FDA and CDC in early 2023 and separately from FDA more recently.

All of this made me wonder what gives with Dr. Ladapo. He seems to have had good training, and his prior publications show that he does have basic understanding of public health principles. How then to explain his response to a measles outbreak in a Florida elementary school? He left the decision to remain in school up to parents, and he did not encourage measles vaccination. At a minimum, unvaccinated children should be sent home to receive online education until their incubation periods expire. This could effectively stop the school outbreak and prevent further community spread. Every effort should be made to bring all children up to date with measles immunizations. This is pretty basic stuff.

According to news reports, the Manatee Bay Elementary School in Broward County, Florida, has documented several cases of measles. Details about immunization and travel status are lacking, but apparently there is no clear link to foreign travel identified. Remember that measles is the most easily spread infectious disease known. It is thought that at least 95% immunity needs to be present in a community to prevent sustained spread. The vaccination rate in Manatee Bay Elementary is 89.3%. Also, the incubation period is up to 3 weeks following exposure. So, if the outbreak isn't managed immediately, it can stretch on for weeks until every non-immune child is infected. By that time, spread outside the school is certainly likely. Apparently Dr. Lapado isn't concerned about that.

I wanted to understand how the Florida Surgeon General arrived at his decisions. His prior covid vaccine arguments contained a fatal flaw that I always look for to judge how well someone understands public health/vaccine data. This involves an understanding of the Vaccine Adverse Effects Reporting System (VAERS), one of many tools to monitor vaccine side effects in the US. It's a type of early warning system for rare events. It is structured so that anyone can report a potential adverse event as being related to a vaccine; for example, if my neighbor broke a leg skiing and had received a covid vaccine 2 months ago, he or she could report that event to VAERs. Clearly that doesn't prove that the vaccine caused a fractured femur. VAERS is just a way to monitor all potential vaccine problems. Dr. Lapado incorrectly used VAERS data to conclude that covid vaccines killed more people than it helped. No one who understands the structure of VAERS could possibly end up with that idea.

At a loss for understanding Dr. Lapado's logic, I can only suspect he must be having some Mr. Hyde moments. Either he has a dual personality due to some neuropsychological condition, or he is purposely misusing data to achieve political or personal goals. He clearly should know better. I'd love to spend 30 minutes with him to see where he falls on this spectrum. Or, maybe he knows of some unpublished data that refutes the current understanding of measles transmissibility and the role of antibody in providing protection; I'd hope he would have shared that.

WRIS

The Winter Respiratory Infection Season soldiers on. Given the length of this post and relative lack of any new data I'm not going to dive deeply into CDC or other numbers. Suffice to say RSV is still decreasing. flu is a mixed bag across the country, and covid is out there but not surging at the moment.

"Commingled Out of Good and Evil"

Robert Louis Stevenson's "Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" was one of my favorite books as a child, and it's loaded with great quotes like the one above. I don't like bashing another individual, and I'm also a natural skeptic always willing to entertain new theories based on new data. I just don't think Dr. Ladapo's management of this measles outbreak, or his covid vaccine views, make any sense. For the sake of all Floridians and others they may infect, I hope I'm wrong.

Nest week I'll report any exciting details from the ACIP meeting.

Published on Leave a comment on Did Tiger Woods Receive Flu Vaccine?

Famous golfer Tiger Woods couldn't complete the second round of a golf tournament this weekend due to influenza. Two questions came to my mind immediately, still not answered. But, we have a lot more than golf to discuss this week.

WRIS

I suspect we are a matter of weeks away before I can retire Winter Respiratory Infection Season as a weekly feature. RSV is much less of a factor now, and I won't be discussing much about RSV unless things change.

Influenza-like illness continues to fluctuate regionally, we're really seeing wide variations. I'll mention again that this tracking method will pick up not just influenza, but also other respiratory illnesses. However, pre-pandemic it was a pretty reliable gauge of influenza activity. I do note that Mr. Woods lives in Florida and the golf tournament is in California. He became ill Thursday night, so using the common incubation period for flu of 2-3 days he could have acquired this in California (if he was practicing there a few days before); however, the outer range for flu incubation period is 7 days, so all bets are off about where he met his virus. (Also, I'm not stalking him, I have no idea about his travel history.)

At this stage of flu season, it's worth a look at pediatric mortality numbers. It's a little less than, but similar to, last year. Also note there is a significant lag time in reporting and verifying influenza deaths, so some of these bars in previous weeks will rise.

Pediatric deaths continue to occur slightly more commonly in children without underlying medical conditions, and the 5-11 year age group is the most common. Unfortunately, no data for vaccine status is provided.

What about the covid scene? As usual, I'm still looking at wastewater data because the methodology for collecting and reporting this information hasn't changed as much as have the methods for reporting infections and deaths among the states.

Again, this is at most a qualitative descriptor, but nothing to suggest a new surge approaching. Wastewater activity is highest in the South.

I wish CDC would publish numbers of covid pediatric deaths like they do for influenza. They only report death rates per 100,000 by age, and of course they are very low for the pediatric population. The absolute numbers are somewhere in there, but on the CDC website it would require me to write my own search language in their database, and I'm too lazy to spend the time to figure that out.

I also took a look at CDC's covid vaccine rates by age, especially since they now have updated information regarding the fall XBB vaccine dose. It's pretty grim.

Note that the highest rate is only 13.4%, and when I dug down into more details, all the states except one were in single digits for pediatric populations receiving the updated vaccine. The best and only double-digit rate was Vermont at a dismal 13.4%.

On the other hand, one could argue that because rates of serious pediatric disease with covid are so low it isn't cost-effective to vaccinate children who do not have risk factors. In fact, that's what most countries have decided; the US is an outlier in offering covid vaccine to healthy children. Nonetheless, on an individual basis every child is better off being vaccinated than not, even given the low risk of death, long covid, MIS-C, etc.

Back in the somewhat good news arena, a recent article gave an overview of planning (and funding!) for research on better covid vaccines, monoclonal antibodies, and antiviral drugs that will not be subject to loss of effectiveness with new variants. It's called Project NexGen.

Lastly on the covid front, many of you probably heard about CDC plans to change isolation guidelines for the public to be more in line with what we do for flu and other respiratory viruses. So far it is just a draft, but it's targeted for release in April. It's not really based on any new findings about transmission rates or duration of infectivity, but rather I think an attempt at simplicity with the recognition that current guidelines aren't being followed by the majority of the public anyway. What I think is most important, and I hope the final guidelines will stress, is that guidelines should differ depending on the situation. For example, it's a very different calculus for children attending school than it is for those same children going to visit their 85-year-old grandma. The public needs to understand that different risks occur in different circumstances.

Measles

Hot off the presses, 4 children in a single elementary school in Florida developed measles. So far not much official from the Broward County health department, but I'm betting that none of them were fully immunized. Watch out for a large number of secondary cases in the coming weeks.

Changes in Prophylaxis for Meningococcal Disease

This was news from the previous week that I'm just mentioning now. Ciprofloxacin has been used for prophylaxis of meningococcal disease for several years, but recently some sectors are now seeing resistance to quinolones. So, if you are considering prophylaxis of a close contact of someone with meningococcal disease, you will need to contact your local health department immediately to see if the resistance rate meets criteria for choosing an alternative agent such as rifampin, ceftriaxone, or azithromycin.

Tiger's Third Degree

I look at everything through an infectious diseases eye, whether I'm walking down the street, reading the paper, or chasing squirrels from the bird feeder; I just can't stop myself. So, I have 2 questions for Tiger.

  1. Did you get a flu vaccine this year? I'm not a betting man, and I've already made one bet in this blog, but I'd guess not. He had fever and other symptoms the night before his Friday golf round, and then Friday morning still had fever and other symptoms but tried to play the round, making it through a few holes before feeling faint and ending up with IV rehydration therapy according to his official statement.
  2. And to follow up on the above thought, what were you thinking trying to play the round on Friday? Not only did you not meet any school or workplace criteria for participating, you exposed everyone close to you to influenza presumably without notifying them. Of course, this is the sort of "tough it out" mentality that I've been guilty of myself in the past, at least to the point of working when I had a mild cold because I thought myself too essential for my workplace or didn't want to shoulder my colleagues with covering me. I don't think Tiger needed the money for playing in the tournament, but he also was the host of this particular event and I'm sure many fans turned out primarily because he was playing, so that's a bit more pressure than in my workplace. Still, isn't it time we made a change in our behavior when we're sick? Take a moment to think about the impact your actions have on others.

Which brings me to a third question for Mr. Woods: Would you at least make a statement recognizing that you should not have tried to play on Friday, and also give a plug for flu vaccine even if you didn't receive one this year?

I'd bet big bucks that Tiger Woods doesn't read this blog, so, yes, I'm just blowing off steam.

Next week is the regular meeting of the ACIP, I"m hoping to view most of the 2-day meeting and have this be the focus of next week's blog.

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