Here’s another heat joke.
Q: How hot is it?
A: It’s so hot, you don’t have to be a liar to set your pants on fire.
All you have to do is step outside. It’s no joke, frankly. Heat index values could be in the 110-115 degree range. The Excessive Heating Warning has been extended to August 23, 2023.
OK, I got sort of a Dad joke about the heat. It’s about 106 degrees now with the heat index in Iowa City.
Q: What do you call a flying saucer on a really hot day?
A: An Unidentified Frying Object
Believe it or not, I couldn’t find this joke anywhere on the internet. So I guess that makes it original.
Sena wants to try frying an egg, and melt ice cubes and/or an ice cream bar on our driveway tomorrow.
Leave comments trying to talk her out of it and/or leave a heat joke of your own.
Thank you for your time.
The National Weather Service has issued an Excessive Heat Watch for many counties in Iowa starting August 20 through August 21. All next week will be marked by very hot temperatures, raising the risk for heat-related illness.
Here’s a big shout out and congratulations to my former University Hospitals colleague Dr. Joseph Zabner who received the 2023 Distinguished Mentor Award.
There is a new dominant Covid-19 variant called EG.5. It’s also called Eris. It’s descended from the XBB strains. It’s in the Omicron family and there is no indication it causes more severe disease and would be susceptible to current vaccines.
This is just a shout-out to The University of Iowa Hospitals & Clinics for once again being recognized as one of the top hospitals in the nation by U.S. News & World Report.
The Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences Department ranked 6th in the nation.
I just found the FDA Rumor Control website. It contains a lot of helpful information about the misinformation we often find about health care products and diseases like Covid-19, vaccines and more. It’s an eye-opener.
I saw this reply tweet posted to the web. It was the reply of Sean Kirkpatrick, PhD, the director of the All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) in reply to the testimony of the witnesses at the House Committee’s UAP hearing on July 27, 2023. I’m not sure we’ll hear much more about it.
There are probably some questions about the new Respiratory Syncitial Virus (RSV) vaccine. Because I’ve seen TV commercials about the new website RSVandMe, I checked on a few things the other day.
The RSVandMe website and the companion website are both produced by the RSV vaccine maker GlaxoSmithKline (GSK). As such, I consider them marketing commercials.
I checked the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) website and saw that the CDC Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) recommended approval of the RSV vaccine at their June Meeting (covered earlier on this blog):
Adults 60 years of age and older may receive a single dose of Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV) vaccine, using shared clinical decision-making.
The term “shared clinical decision-making” is clarified on the CDC webpage at this link.
The upshot of shared clinical decision-making is that it’s up to the provider (the list of providers include pharmacists). So far the list of recommended vaccines does not yet include RSV, so it probably needs updating. It looks like the ACIP MMWR recommendation page also needs updating.
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