Unbiased Analysis of Today's Healthcare Issues
VaxImpactMap is an interesting online tool that quantifies the health and economic costs of declining childhood vaccination. The tool was developed by Mahmud Sheku, Connor Van Meter, Robert Bednarczyk, and Ben Lopman at Emory University Rollins School of Public Health. The tool focuses on changes these outcomes for three vaccine preventable diseases: Rotavirus, Pertussis (Whooping…
Simple: get people vaccinated. Dr. Oz agrees. The New York Times reports: Dr. Oz, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services director, told CNN on Sunday that there was a simple solution to the raging measles outbreak in South Carolina, which has infected more than 900 people and become the largest U.S. outbreak in recent…
Clinical trials focus in-sample (direct) effect of vaccines on health outcomes (e.g., decrease in illness, hospitalization, emergency department use, and death). Typically, however, clinical trials do not test whether the vaccines reduce transmission. FDA do not require this as it would be logistically challenging and costly to estimate indirect effects of vaccination within a clinical…
Here are statistics from the CDC about the 1,197 individuals (as of 13 June 2025) that have been infected with measles during the 2025 outbreak: 793 were children (347 (29%) aged <5; 446 (37%) aged 5-19) 5% were previously vaccinated (2% with 1 MMR dose; 3% with 2 MMR doses) 144 (12%) were hospitalized 3…
Texas is moving to allow for more freedom of choice with respect to receipt of vaccines. The Economist reports: Texas legislators meeting in Austin, the state capital, are debating new laws to relax vaccine rules, urged on by Texans for Vaccine Choice (TFVC). On February 18th activists in “Come and Make Me” shirts took to…
The Washington Post reports on a meeting between President-elect Trump, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and a number of CEOs of pharmaceutical firms. When the topic turned to vaccines, the discussion was not about banning the products, the three people said. Kennedy spoke about the need for better study of the vaccine dosing schedule for newborns…
Could COVID-19 be more efficacious than effective? This could be the case if individuals receiving COVID-19 engaged in ‘risk compensation’. In short, without a COVID-19 vaccine, individuals may have refrained from travel and engaged in social distancing. After a COVID-19 vaccine, these same individuals could have been more likely to travel and less likely to…
In part due to the COVID-19 pandemic, vaccination have become a hot button issue. This is true even for non-COVID vaccines that have proven significant health benefits, such as those for human papillomavirus vaccines (HPV). Although betweeen 2016 and 2021 the share of teenagers receiving their HPV vaccination series increased from 60% to 77%, Bloomberg…
COVID-19 vaccines have had a huge beneficial impact on patient health. One study found that between December 2020 and June 2021, COVID-19 vaccines saved 240,000 lives (Vilches et al. 2022). The figure below shows that as the Delta and Omicron variants spread in the fall of 2021, COVID-19 vaccines prevented significant number of deaths according…
Today teams in the National Football League (NFL) made their final roster cuts. In most years, your ability to make the final roster of an NFL team is dependent on one factor: how well can you play football. This year, however, some teams used additional criteria to determine whether a player made the team. ESPN…