“This was worse than our national election”: What we heard this week

“This was worse than our national election.” – Eric Peterson, MD, MPH, cardiologist and FDA Advisory Committee member, discusses his vote to support elamipretide as a treatment for the extremely rare Barth syndrome, despite a lack of definitive evidence.

“It’s a crap shoot every time.” —Lisa Sanders, MD, of the Yale New Haven Long COVID Consultation Clinic, on the risk of developing long COVID and ways to prevent it.

“It is a failure of our society to protect these people.” – Ziyad Al-Aly, MD, of the VA St. Louis Health Care System, describes the disproportionate number of deaths during the COVID pandemic among younger racial and ethnic minorities.

“You can be lonely, but socially integrated in terms of how you interact with people.” – Elizabeth Necka, PhD, of the National Institute on Aging, on connections between loneliness and dementia.

“This really should be denigrated rather than normalized.” — Adriane Fugh-Berman, MD, of the PharmedOut Project at Georgetown University in Washington, DC, on financial conflicts among medical journal peer reviewers.

“People feel comfortable with providers who look and talk like them.” – Carl Schmid, executive director of the HIV+Hepatitis Policy Institute in Washington, DC, on the growing HIV crisis among Latinos.

“The unusually large mass was noticeable.” — Christian Baastrup Søndergaard, MD, of Copenhagen University Hospital in Denmark, details a case of “headspin hole” associated with breakdancing.

“Our hospitals withstood the impact of Milton without major damage.” – Mary Mayhew, president and CEO of the Florida Hospital Association, on the success of hospital emergency plans.

“The bottom line is that the two treatments were very similar.” – Elizabeth Hoge, MD, of Georgetown University Medical Center, compares mindfulness meditation to an anti-anxiety medication.