{"id":3271,"date":"2012-10-08T11:39:12","date_gmt":"2012-10-08T15:39:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/?p=3271"},"modified":"2015-06-04T15:13:55","modified_gmt":"2015-06-04T19:13:55","slug":"with-one-month-to-go-candidates-eke-out-votes-wherever-they-can","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/index.php\/with-one-month-to-go-candidates-eke-out-votes-wherever-they-can\/2012\/10\/08\/","title":{"rendered":"With One Month To Go, Candidates Eke Out Votes Wherever They Can"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>From the Department of Opportunistic Expediency, we have <a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/blogs\/election-2012\/wp\/2012\/09\/28\/romney-vows-to-take-on-virginias-lyme-disease-epidemic\/\" target=\"_blank\">this brazen pitch<\/a> from one of our two presidential hopefuls:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Romney and Ryan will do more to fight the spread of Lyme Disease &#8230; As president, Mitt Romney will ensure that real action is taken to get control of this epidemic that is wreaking havoc on Northern Virginia.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Suffice to say this bit of &#8220;microtargeting&#8221; &#8212; note I did not write &#8220;microbe targeting&#8221; &#8212; has various political motives, nicely outlined <a href=\"http:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/online\/blogs\/newsdesk\/2012\/10\/mitt-romney-versus-lyme-disease-and-science.html\">here<\/a> and\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.slate.com\/articles\/health_and_science\/science\/2012\/09\/chronic_lyme_disease_delusion_romney_campaign_pushes_medical_nonsense_.html\" target=\"_blank\">here<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.thedailybeast.com\/articles\/2012\/10\/02\/mitt-s-bizarre-lyme-disease-offensive.html\" target=\"_blank\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>But politics aside, the fact remains that we don&#8217;t have much data on the optimal approach to persistent symptoms after treatment for Lyme disease. It remains a <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/index.php\/chronic-lyme-tough-to-diagnose-tough-to-treat\/2010\/12\/09\/\" target=\"_blank\">very tough problem<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>So if this silliness (or similar) can generate funding for some new legitimate research on the problem &#8212; <em>free<\/em> of politics and rancor and paranoia, and focused instead on trying to find strategies that actually help people &#8212; I&#8217;m all for it.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center\"><a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2012\/10\/lymedisease-romney1.gif\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-3278 aligncenter\" title=\"lymedisease romney\" src=\"http:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2012\/10\/lymedisease-romney-300x3001.gif\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"300\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>From the Department of Opportunistic Expediency, we have this brazen pitch from one of our two presidential hopefuls: Romney and Ryan will do more to fight the spread of Lyme Disease &#8230; As president, Mitt Romney will ensure that real action is taken to get control of this epidemic that is wreaking havoc on Northern [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,5,8],"tags":[577],"class_list":["post-3271","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-health-care","category-infectious-diseases","category-patient-care","tag-lyme-disease"],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3271","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3271"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3271\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3271"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3271"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3271"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}