Like many of you, I remain concerned about how the extraordinarily contagious Omicron variant may affect our healthcare system. Arizona’s hospitals are already strained by COVID-19 patients, the vast majority of whom are unvaccinated. Here are some things on my mind as we continue learning about this fast-spreading variant: Omicron is likely to cause more [...]
Today, we’ve launched the first version of a report showing statewide COVID-19 case and death rates by vaccination status. The report demonstrates the significant increases in risk of COVID-19 infection and death among those who are not vaccinated. In October, unvaccinated persons in Arizona had a 3.9 times greater risk of testing positive for COVID-19 [...]
Fifteen years ago The Lancet published a case study that erroneously suggested that there could be a link between the MMR vaccine and autism. That letter has long since been discredited, and back in 2010 The Lancet retracted the article. Anti-vaccine advocates have been pointing to that long-since discredited 1998 case study to argue that there [...]
Whooping cough (pertussis) is a growing problem in the US and Arizona. There were 41,880 cases and 14 infant deaths from pertussis in the US last year… which is the largest number of cases since the vaccine became available in the 50s. In Arizona there were 988 cases in 2012 and there’s a pretty substantial outbreak going on right [...]
