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After his second hospitalization for acute Covid-19, Tony Marks expected to get better. Then pain invaded the 54-year-old software executive’s arms and legs. At first, he felt like he was covered by deep bruises, although nothing was visible on his skin. These days, he told me, he feels like he’s being beaten repeatedly with a baseball bat. Pain is increasingly being recognized as a key feature of what is commonly called long Covid, in which symptoms persist after the acute phase of the viral infection ends. (Kate M. Nicholson, 12/2)

If vaccines are the bazookas in the fight against SARS-CoV-2, antiviral drugs could be the artillery that helps save lives, especially among those who have a higher risk of developing serious illness. Now that they’ve arrived, health authorities have to decide how best to deploy them. (Therese Raphael and Sam Fazeli, 12/1)

In late October, the United States passed a grim milestone: more people in the United States had died of COVID-19 in less than two years than the approximately 700,000 who have died in the U.S. in the four decades of the AIDS pandemic. By World AIDS Day, this gap has grown. Nearly 800,000 people are known to have died of COVID-19. If current trends continue—and they don’t have to—hundreds of thousands of people could die of COVID in the U.S. in 2022, while perhaps 15,000 people living with HIV may die next year of any cause. (Stephen W. Thrasher, Ph.D., 12/1)

What was feared in the absence of widespread COVID-19 vaccination is precisely what's happened. The emergence of a new variant known as omicron is not only a cause of great concern, but also a clarion call to dramatically step up efforts to vaccinate the world.It's a responsibility that cries out for American leadership. (12/2)

The new coronavirus variant, Omicron, has renewed uncertainty over the future of the pandemic. The variant seems to be spreading quickly, but the degree to which it can evade or blunt the protection of vaccines remains unknown. While getting vaccines to everyone who needs them remains a top priority, the world has never effectively fought an infectious disease with just one set of tools. The treatment options for Covid-19 will be greatly expanded by new oral antiviral pills. These drugs have the potential to lessen the impact of Covid-19 worldwide if the people who need them can get them. (Rachel Cohen, 12/1)

In mid-November, a federal judicial panel assigned the Cincinnati-based United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit the immense task of overseeing legal challenges to the workplace vaccination mandate instituted by the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration, now pending in 12 of the 13 circuits. Before the Sixth Circuit was randomly chosen for this task, the New Orleans-based Fifth Circuit preemptively put a hold on the mandate, issuing an opinion that bitingly characterized OSHA’s emergency temporary standard as “staggeringly overbroad.” But the Fifth Circuit’s opinion got the underlying science completely wrong. (Jeffrey E. Harris, 12/2)