With Steve, I have a lot of memories that go back 30 years. In the early 1990s, when I joined Professor John Eisman’s group working in the Dubbo Osteoporosis Epidemiology Study, John showed me a list of work that I should read, and Steve’s papers were on the top of the list. I was mesmerized with his ideas, his methodological approach, and his writing. Subsequently, Steve’s work has inspired many of my work on osteoporosis.

My work in the residual lifetime risk of fracture [1] actually followed his initial paper on lifetime risks of hip, Colles’ and vertebral fracture in…

Covid vaccination is a controversial topic that I don’t want to venture into. Here, I would like to argue that when you decide to have a jab, it means that you do a community service.

Many Australians (perhaps up to 30%) are reluctant to take a jab for Covid-19 [1]. They argue that there is a lack of safety data concerning the existing vaccines (which can take years), and that they will benefit little from the vaccination. …

Sydney has entered another phase of lockdown, and we are repeatedly told by our political leaders and health authorities that their decisions were guided by science. They even assure us that lockdowns work. Well, I beg to differ.

I must admit that I have been increasingly uncomfortable with the ongoing lockdown in Sydney. I cannot watch the daily briefings of the NSW Premier and her lieutenants anymore, because they seem to recycle the same idea over and over again. I cannot watch the TV evening news anymore, because they are now propagating scaremongering of the worst type. The so-called ‘mainstream…

A friend of mine is hesitant to take an AstraZeneca (AZ) jab, because he believes that the vaccine is less effective and has higher risk of blood clot than Pfizer’s mRNA vaccine. He is not alone, many Australians, including the educated ones, hold the same view. I beg to differ. In this note, I point out that the two vaccines have similar incidence of blood clot and almost identical effectiveness.

In Australia, the AZ vaccine has a rather bad publicity. After a few days of rolling out the vaccine in April 2021, a 48 yr old woman had died from…

You bet. Health authorities and experts keep reminding us that delta variant represents the ‘greatest threat’ to the nation’s effort of eliminating Covid-19. Some experts even warned us that the Delta variant is deadlier than the original Alpha variant. I have done a little research and found that some of the experts’ assertions seem unfounded.

We all know that the Delta variant was first identify in Maharashtra (India) in October 2020. Since then, the variant has been found in more than 77 countries or territories in the world [1]. In the United States alone, Dr. Anthony Fauci stated that the…

I am an executive member of the Asia Pacific Consortium on Osteoporosis (APCO), a non-profit organization that aims at developing solutions to osteoporosis care in the Asia Pacific region. In this blog entry, I explore the relationship between osteoporotic fracture and mortality that is not widely appreciated in the medical community. This article was originally published on APCO website:

Fragility fracture is associated with increased mortality risk, but this relationship is not widely appreciated.

My neighbour, a 70-year old, physically active man, broke his hip after falling from a staircase. He was admitted to hospital for treatment, which cost more…

The unfortunate post-vaccinated death of a 48 yr old woman last week has raised concerns about the safety of the AstraZeneca vaccine (Vaxzevria). Here, I offer my interpretation of the risk in terms of micromort, and then my analysis of risk and benefit of the vaccination program.

Quantifying risk in micromort

The micromort concept was advanced by Ronald A. Howard in the 1980s for decision making. Basically, micromort (micro-mortality) is a way of representing probability of mortality for small and acute risks. Howard defined that a micromort is one-in-a-million chance of dying. So, if an activity that is associated with…

It is well established that patients with a hip fracture have increased mortality risk. A recent analysis of Norway registry data by my friend, Haakon Meyer, and his colleagues show that hip fracture patients living alone would suffer a greater risk of death than those living with a partner [1]. However, having read the paper, I have come up with another interpretation: yes, living alone was associated with increased mortality risk, but the impact of hip fracture on mortality was greater than living alone.

To me, the data shown in Figure 1 of the paper are the most revealing ones…