Health

SD County officials want you to be healthy in 2023

San Diego County Health and Human Services Agency officials are encouraging San Diegans to resolve to be healthy in 2023 and get vaccinated against COVID-19 and the flu.  Both viruses are circulating at high levels this winter. Vaccinations offer the best protection against getting ill and both the COVID-19 vaccines and bivalent boosters, as well as the flu shot are widely available at medical providers…


Reflecting on grief during the holidays

The year-end holidays are a time of social gatherings, traditions and celebrations. They can also be a time of revisiting and reflection. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2.8 million people die each year in the U.S. If we conservatively estimate four or five grievers per death, there are 11 to 14 million people who are experiencing their first holiday season without…


Don’t pack a pest for the holidays

The holiday season means it’s time to ship gifts to faraway friends and family, or maybe even travel to deliver them in person and bring gifts back home in return. Whatever you do, be sure you don’t ship or bring back a present nobody wants—a harmful pest! It can happen if you’re not careful. The gifts you send or receive could be carrying hitchhiking pests…


San Diego County health officials address recent local COVID misinformation, COVID shots for kids 5-to-11

An independent panel of local doctors today addressed COVID-19 misinformation brought up at the Nov. 2 County Board of Supervisors meeting. The Nov. 3, 2021 virtual event, which was interpreted live into Spanish, was moderated by Dr. Eric McDonald, County chief medical officer, and included Dr. Siu Ming Geary from Scripps Clinic La Jolla, Dr. Jeannette Aldous from San Ysidro Health, Dr. Zulma Curet with…


Palomar Health under fire for secret meeting

A citizens group is accusing Escondido, Calif.-based Palomar Health of violating an open meetings law when approving a controversial physician contract change, according to The San Diego Union-Tribune.  An attorney hired by the group, which calls itself “Citizens to Save Palomar Health,” sent a letter to the public healthcare district’s seven elected directors. The group alleges that Palomar and its leaders lacked transparency when changing…


Climate change uncertainty hurts everyone

Tarik Benmarhnia didn’t plan on ending up here, in an office overlooking the pier at UC San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography. As a young student in France, he started out studying environmental engineering, with an interest in soil decontamination. During his schooling, he developed an interest in environmental justice. That eventually drove him to pursue a Ph.D. in epidemiology. Most stories about climate change…


COVID-19 vaccine distribution in California

As of Jan. 7, more than 528,000 Californians had received a COVID-19 vaccine developed by Pfizer/BioNTech or Moderna. Both vaccines received emergency use authorization by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in late December. Following guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), California’s initial batch of vaccines is available to health care workers and residents of nursing homes and other long-term care facilities….


Palomar Medical Center COVID wing opened

In the latest sign that COVID-19 has reached a critical stage in California, Gov. Gavin Newsom Wednesday activated the federal medical station at Palomar Medical Center. National Guard personnel descended on the regional hospital to take charge of activation of the 202-bed medical station installed on the 10th and 11th floors of the facility back in April. The federal medical station includes general use beds,…


COVID-19 ain’t so good for poor people

 Over the course of the pandemic, COVID-19 infections have battered high-poverty neighborhoods in California on a staggeringly different scale than more affluent areas, a trend that underscores the heightened risks for low-wage workers as the state endures a deadly late-autumn surge. A California Healthline review of local data from the state’s 12 most populous counties found that communities with relatively high poverty rates are…


Doug Porter may be down, but he’s not out

As of December 10th, I’ll be taking a break from my daily musings. To make a long story short, I’m going to have surgery at UCSD La Jolla on December 11th. All the preoperative appointments are crowding my schedule making it difficult to write a daily column, so I’ve missed a day or two recently. This has been on the horizon for a while. A…