Media Coverage

Dr. Sadiya Khan, an epidemiologist and assistant professor of preventive medicine at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine, said requiring health care workers to get a Covid-19 vaccine is a no-brainer. “I believe health care organizations have a responsibility to protect immunocompromised and vulnerable patients,” Khan said.

“If we want to respect the dear price that 600,000 people have paid, don’t return to normal. Return to something that is better than what was,” said Dr. Clyde Yancy, vice dean for diversity and inclusion at Northwestern University’s medical school in Chicago. He added: “It will be an epic fail if we simply go back to whatever we call normal.”

CNN spoke with pediatric cardiologists Dr. Kevin Hall at the Yale School of Medicine and Dr. Stuart Berger at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, who is also chair of the American Academy of Pediatrics section on cardiology and cardiac surgery, about the cases of myocarditis that have been spotted among young people after vaccination with the Moderna or Pfizer Covid-19 vaccines.

Clinical psychologist Sheehan Fisher said feelings of anxiety amid reopening make sense. “It’s been over a year where we’ve been conditioned to have a certain level of fear about being around people without a mask or being in proximity with others,” said Fisher, an assistant professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. “That’s a significant amount of time that can condition us to avoid those types of interactions.”

So may be the case post-coronavirus—lots of people have discovered they like remote work and at-home workouts, among other facets of pandemic life, and don’t intend to go back to their old systems. “We’re likely to stick to aspects of our pandemic lifestyles if they can optimize our quality of life,” says Jacqueline Gollan, a psychology professor at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine who researches decision making.

A chronic cough caused Dr. Shaiba Ansari-Ali, a rheumatologist at Northwestern Medicine Delnor Hospital in Geneva, Illinois, to suffer a rare and particularly deadly type of stroke when she was 42. She also experienced locked-in syndrome, a period of time where she was aware of what was happening but appeared unconscious to others.

Water temperature and timing are also important factors to consider if you’re a night showerer who hopes it will help you sleep, said Phyllis Zee, chief of sleep medicine at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine. For best results, Zee recommends taking a warm shower between one to two hours before going to bed.

The other team, led by Dr. Richard Bernstein of Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago, had even better results. The chip detected atrial fibrillation in 12% of patients, versus about 2% detected by external cardiac monitoring, among nearly 500 recent stroke victims. The implantable chips are approved for use in the United States and Canada, but still face obstacles, experts said.

“People with diabetes, but not sleep disturbances, were 67% more likely to die compared to people with neither diabetes or sleep issues, and 87% more likely to die if they had both diabetes and frequent sleep disturbances,” said study author Kristen Knutson, associate professor of neurology and preventive medicine at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine.

While infertility is stressful emotionally and physically (i.e., the pain associated with in vitro fertilization), Dr. Tarun Jain, reproductive endocrinologist and infertility specialist at Northwestern Medicine, wants to reassure those going through it that there is no established link between emotional stress and infertility.