{"id":7982,"date":"2016-01-04T20:59:07","date_gmt":"2016-01-05T01:59:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/?p=7982"},"modified":"2016-01-05T08:26:47","modified_gmt":"2016-01-05T13:26:47","slug":"a-riddle-the-2015-clinical-trial-of-the-year-and-a-guaranteed-laugh-for-all-id-doctors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/index.php\/a-riddle-the-2015-clinical-trial-of-the-year-and-a-guaranteed-laugh-for-all-id-doctors\/2016\/01\/04\/","title":{"rendered":"A Riddle, the 2015 Clinical Trial of the Year, and a Guaranteed Laugh for All ID Doctors"},"content":{"rendered":"

Things quiet on this end recently from me due to various circumstances. but here are three ID-related (sort of) things worth sharing — enjoy if you haven’t seen them already.<\/p>\n

Let’s start with a riddle:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. What animal is\u00a0responsible for the most human deaths a year?<\/em><\/strong><\/strong>\"human
    \nReaders of Bill Gates’ blog<\/a><\/strong> will think this is old news, but not everyone has seen that\u00a0incredibly cool graphic. (Me, for example.)<\/p>\n

    There’s zero chance\u00a0I would have gotten this riddle\u00a0right, even with several hours to think about it, and even with all the Zika<\/a><\/strong> news buzzing around (word choice intentional). Makes one think that the CRISPR projects targeting these nasty pests<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0— so long, malaria? —\u00a0are\u00a0on to something, though inevitably there will be downstream consequences.<\/p>\n

    If asked, I’d have put humans first by a long shot, then maybe something like bears, which\u00a0don’t even make the list, then perhaps\u00a0crocodiles (still pretty scary, though not much of a threat\u00a0in New England, and only one-tenth as deadly as snails). Not octupuses (which I’ve learned is the correct plural, emphatically not<\/em> octupi<\/a><\/strong>). Or rabbits.<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

    And who knew Gates was such a book fiend?<\/a>\u00a0<\/strong>Impressive.<\/li>\n

  2. The most controversial\u00a0clinical trial of 2015.
    \n<\/a><\/strong>
    \nIt came late in the year, so you might have missed it. From The Journal of Evaluation in Clinical Practice,<\/em> here’s the full title:    \"boo<\/a>
    \nNow you have no excuse.     RTFA<\/a><\/strong>, as they say.You can imagine that this\u00a0study has generated quite a bit of discussion at our family’s Journal Club, which\u00a0consists of a pediatrician (my wife), an ID doctor (me), and my dog Louie, who by the graphic displayed in #1 above is the 4th most dangerous animal in the world.\u00a0Easy to believe by\u00a0looking at this ferocious picture.<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

    Louie was his usual taciturn self when we discussed this paper, while my wife strongly objected to the conclusion that maternal kisses don’t help cure minor boo-boos. Meanwhile, I’m wondering what kind of wound\u00a0irrigation they used<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0— low, medium, or high\u00a0pressure —\u00a0and whether they used\u00a0prophylactic cefazolin, or vancomycin, or perhaps something that covers oral flora.<\/li>\n

  3. The funniest ID-related cartoon of 2015.<\/a>\u00a0<\/strong>Nothing else even comes close.
    \n    \"daily-cartoon-150202-measles-1200\"<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    (H\/T to David Paltiel<\/a>\u00a0for the boo-boo study.)<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Things quiet on this end recently from me due to various circumstances. but here are three ID-related (sort of) things worth sharing — enjoy if you haven’t seen them already. Let’s start with a riddle: What animal is\u00a0responsible for the most human deaths a year? Readers of Bill Gates’ blog will think this is old […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,5,8],"tags":[592,1111,963],"class_list":["post-7982","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-health-care","category-infectious-diseases","category-patient-care","tag-measles","tag-mosquitos","tag-vaccination"],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7982","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=7982"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7982\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7982"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7982"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7982"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}