‘COVID-ized’ Science; Ethics of Placebo; Gender-Affirming Healthcare

• “Thousands of researchers dropped whatever intellectual puzzles had previously consumed their curiosity and began working on the pandemic instead. In mere months, science became thoroughly COVID-ized,” writes Ed Yong, who explores how the scientific community came together around a single purpose ~ How Science Beat the Virus (The Atlantic)
• Is it unethical to give patients a placebo in COVID vaccine trials? Annette Rid, MD, Marc Lipsitch, DPhil, and Franklin G. Miller, PhD, highlight the importance of having a placebo group and discuss ways to address the ethical concerns ~ The Ethics of Continuing Placebo in SARS-CoV-2 Vaccine Trials (JAMA)
• Of the estimated 218,000 excess deaths in the U.S. between March and August 2020, 80% “had COVID-19 as the underlying cause,” according to a recent analysis from Meredith S. Shiels, PhD, MHS, and colleagues ~ Impact of Population Growth and Aging on Estimates of Excess U.S. Deaths During the COVID-19 Pandemic, March to August (Annals of Internal Medicine)
• Daphna Stroumsa, MD, MPH, and Anna R. Kirkland, JD, PhD, discuss the impact of a recent court ruling on gender-affirming healthcare and the evolving landscape of healthcare rights for transgender people ~ Health Coverage and Care for Transgender People — Threats and Opportunities (New England Journal of Medicine)=
• Raphael Rush, MD, reflects on the trust and the challenges underlying informed consent and writes “what should have been a minutes-long interlude in an admission dominated by more serious matters was turning into a mess lasting hours. His initial consent began to seem far from informed.” ~ The Gift (New England Journal of Medicine)
• John P. Donnelly, PhD, and colleagues examine how people fared after being hospitalized with COVID and then discharged ~ Readmission and Death After Initial Hospital Discharge Among Patients With COVID-19 in a Large Multihospital System (JAMA)

Fred N. Pelzman, MD, of Weill Cornell Internal Medicine Associates and weekly blogger for MedPage Today, follows what’s going on in the world of primary care medicine. Pelzman’s Picks is a compilation of links to blogs, articles, tweets, journal studies, opinion pieces, and news briefs related to primary care that caught his eye.