'Not Game-Over for COVID': What We Heard This Week

— Quotable quotes heard by 's reporters

MedicalToday
A female reporter holding two microphones takes notes on a pad

"It's not game-over for COVID." -- Farida Ahmad, MPH, of the CDC's Division of Vital Statistics at the National Center for Health Statistics in Maryland, discussing COVID's drop on the list of leading causes of death.

"We all know that we shouldn't go swimming in polluted water." -- William Schaffner, MD, of Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, on reports of some Olympic athletes falling ill after swimming in the Seine.

"If you refused, then you would fail the course." -- John Pippin, MD, of the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, on the use of live animals in surgical residency programs.

"Most users are learning about and making the decision to take these botanicals on their own, without input from their physicians." -- Maya Balakrishnan, MD, MPH, of Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, discussing potentially hepatotoxic botanical supplements.

"Any kind of transparency is better than what the Big Three have, because it's truly a whack-a-mole." -- Madelaine Feldman, MD, of the Coalition of State Rheumatology Organizations, on alternative types of pharmacy benefit managers.

"Getting in the pool helps to alleviate some of that stress on the body." -- Amanda Kaufman, PT, of Northwell Health STARS Rehabilitation in New York, on how swimming may help Olympic athlete Katie Ledecky's postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome (POTS).

"No one ever said anything about when you're sued, this is what you do." -- Gita Pensa, MD, an emergency medicine physician at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, discussing medical malpractice.

"They're not just benign entities that we just apply liberally." -- Elizabeth Phillips, MD, of Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, on commonly prescribed oral antibiotics.