Opinion | ‘Too Many Mistakes by Sitting on Our Butts’: What We Heard This Week

“We’ve made too many mistakes by sitting on our butts.” — Eric Feigl-Ding, ScD, of the Federation of American Scientists, on the hesitancy to shift toward using both nasal and throat swabs for Omicron testing.

“They’re like, ‘I’m out. I’m done. Yes, you can pay me $75 an hour. I still don’t want it.'” — Melanie Patterson, BSN, MSN, on feelings of burnout pushing her career change from nursing to running a trucking transport company.

“The data confirm what we have been seeing in the clinic — that 45 is now the new 50.” — Steven Itzkowitz, MD, of the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, on real-world data supporting guidelines for earlier colorectal screening.

“Hopefully our luck doesn’t run out.” — Anne Liu, MD, of Stanford University in California, on whether COVID vaccines will continue to hold up in the face of ever-changing variants.

“These findings … make a compelling case for an MS prevention study using an EBV [Epstein-Barr virus] vaccine.” — Gavin Giovannoni, MBBCh, PhD, of Queen Mary University of London, on new data showing a 32-fold increased risk for multiple sclerosis after EBV infection.

“The single best decision that a pregnant person and their family can make, during this moment in time that we are in, is to get vaccinated.” — Kjersti Aagaard, MD, PhD, of Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, on the higher perinatal mortality risk seen when unvaccinated women contract COVID-19 in pregnancy.

“One thing that the scientific literature is quite clear about is that what we’ve been trying so far hasn’t been working, so it needs to be something different.” — Christopher Tessum, PhD, of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, on worsening racial and ethnic disparities with air pollution exposure.