1. World AIDS Day coincides with the submission deadline for this weblog, December 1st. This is a rich territory to mine for parallels in both addiction and infectious disease epidemiologic patterns.  I can only intimate the similarities in this short space, so recommend the following exercise:  Below are three separate links, describing incidence respectively for HIV disease; opioid prescribing; and COVID-19 cases (both those in this past week and for comparison those in June of this year).  ASAM Weekly is a digest, it is intended to abbreviate your immersion in available literature; so I suggest that you simply tap on those websites serially, very briefly, to get a sense of where these illnesses are striking most forcefully.
1. World AIDS Day, New HIV cases in US by region, 01 DEC 2020:
2. U.S. Opioid prescribing by region
3. COVID-19 cases by state/region, current and in June. U.S. 27 NOV 2020:

1. “Virtues of Virtualism”: The November 28th New York Times carries a discussion of Zoom, Webex, and similar virtual meeting platforms, as applicable and as applied, to treatment settings and to community-based recovery meetings.  It is a good piece for having touched on both advantages and disadvantages of web-enabled meetings and addiction telemedicine.  Discussants include well-recognized names, Drs. Lynn Hankes and Andy Saxon.  

Editor-in-Chief: Dr. William Haning, MD, DFAPA, DFASAM