Dr. Linas is a national leader in hepatitis-C virus (HCV) infection and HCV/HIV co-infection comparative- and cost-effectiveness research using computational biology, clinical epidemiology and clinical economics methods. Dr. Linas has an excellent track record of productivity, ample funding from the NIH and CDC, and a growing core of successful trainees. Dr. Linas directs the HIV/HCV core of the Center for Health Economics of Treatment Interventions for Substance Use Disorders, HCV, and HIV, funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) in collaboration with Cornell, U Penn and Miami.
“Apparently the Remdesivir has been distributed. [Boston Medical Center] got none. We have the second highest absolute case count and highest per bed in Boston. We also had no access to early trials. Today, the family of a dying patient asked me why we do not have [remdesivir]. What am I supposed to say?”
“What we can see is at this time it’s the non-pharmacologic interventions, masks – distancing – all the things that we’ve been doing that really have been holding up the house and are going to continue to do so, that where we can't rely on vaccine yet to be our protection and I think it’s striking when you look at curves like this”
“Generally, most vaccine courses have months or even years-long windows around that booster dose, so I think we can debate – I think there is more logic to the concept of releasing first doses now and letting the second doses back though, but I think it would be a mistake to abandon the two-dose vaccine schedule because we just don’t know, we’ll be flying blind and really building the airplane as we go in the most basic sense of the phrase.”