Category Archives: medical news

medical news

Thanks, doc; I’ll wait

By John Kanelis / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Dr. Anthony Fauci says that increased vaccination rates mean that we can move around indoors with relaxed mask and social-distancing requirements.

Well, I gotta say it: No thanks, doc. I’m going to keep wearing my mask and keeping my distance from strangers until we get the “all clear!” from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Food and Drug Administration and, well, from you.

I get that we want to return to normal life as we knew the meaning of the term. However, I am going to keep my mask handy, ready to slip on when I go to indoor locations populated by complete strangers.

Dr. Fauci is President Biden’s senior medical adviser. He is a brilliant epidemiologist, the leading national and arguably the top worldwide expert on infectious disease. If he says it’s OK for businesses and local governments to relax their precautions, I’ll accept that.

However, I am not going to take the bait just yet.

We have a ways to go before we can declare the COVID virus a goner. Until we do that, I’ll keep wearing my mask.

But … thanks for the words of encouragement.

medical news

Dr. Fauci’s voice has a certain … lilt

By John Kanelis / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Surely others have seen and heard what I have seen and heard from Dr. Anthony Fauci, the infectious disease guru who has become a household name since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic.

What would that be? It would be the lilt in his voice — and were he to stand and stroll down the street a certain spring in his step.

Dr. Fauci now serves as President Biden’s chief medical adviser. He had the same title (in name only) while working in the Donald Trump administration. The difference between then and now is simple and is as clear as it gets: Fauci is able to speak clearly and bluntly to Americans without being challenged by the president of the United States.

Fauci sought to do all of that while working in the Trump administration. He would tell us that mask-wearing saves lives only to be slammed to the mat by Trump, who at one point called Fauci “an idiot.”

These days? He says the same thing and gets an endorsement for his expertise and receives rhetorical backing from President Biden.

When I watch Dr. Fauci being interviewed by news talking heads I see a man who has been liberated from the heavy hand of a president who refused to let his experts speak for an administration led by a functionally ignorant chief executive.

Anthony Fauci has been set free. He is enjoying being able to speak with candor and with the authority he has built brick by brick over many decades studying diseases just like COVID-19.

medical news

Fauci vs. Rogan? Huh?

By John Kanelis / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

If you’re going to listen to a discussion between a famed medical doctor and a mixed martial arts promoter regarding infectious disease … who’s going to garner your attention?

I’ll stick with the doc.

And yet, we had Dr. Anthony Fauci, President Biden’s senior medical adviser, jousting with Joe Rogan, the podcaster and martial arts guru over whether young people should wear masks to protect them against COVID-19.

Rogan said healthy young people don’t need vaccinations. Fauci disagreed.

White House communications director Kate Bedingfield weighed in. “Did Joe Rogan become a medical doctor while we weren’t looking? I’m not sure that taking scientific and medical advice from Joe Rogan is perhaps the most productive way for people to get their information,” she told CNN.

Indeed, I am going to stand behind the wisdom of Dr. Fauci.

Fauci vs. Rogan: White House works to stomp out misinformation | TheHill

There surely is plenty of misinformation being tossed around. The COVID virus remains a threat, although not as serious a threat as it was a year ago, or even four months ago. It is a threat nonetheless.

So, when goofballs like Joe Rogan pop off, parlaying their celebrity status to peddle misinformation, we need to take great care … and listen to the experts.

local news, medical news

Vaccine reaction? It’s a non-starter

By John Kanelis / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

I have zero patience when I hear that my fellow Americans don’t want to get a COVID-19 vaccine shot because of some “reaction” they might suffer as a result.

Reaction? What reaction? Will you feel dreary and droopy? Achy? Might you spike a fever?

It’s only temporary, folks!

I realize I am just one individual, that my experience with vaccines doesn’t apply necessarily to anyone else, let alone to millions of other Americans.

The worst reaction I ever had to any sort of vaccine occurred in the fall of 1989. I was preparing to travel to Southeast Asia with other editorial writers and editors. I needed a flu shot before departing for the Far East.

Our family doctor who administered the vaccine at his Beaumont, Texas, clinic told me there would be side effects. They were? Oh, he said I would feel like I had the flu.

No sweat, doc. Gimme the shot! He did.

The next day or two I got hit hard. My temperature spiked. I got achy all over. I became sick to my stomach. Then after three days or so, it ended. I was shipshape, ready to travel.

I understand there are safety concerns about the vaccines out there. I also hear the doctors tell us that they’re safe. They are dependable. Their efficacy is excellent.

The president of the United States is imploring us to get vaccinated. Listen to the man!

medical news

Biden masks up … good!

By John Kanelis / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

President Biden appears to have made a decision that has some folks wondering … what’s the point?

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has loosened its recommendations for mask wearing while the COVID pandemic continues to infect, sicken and kill Americans.

What has been Biden’s response? He and first lady Jill Biden continue to mask up. As The Hill newspaper reported, the first couple was spotted walking toward Marine One with no one else nearby; both of them wore masks.

I believe President Biden is intent on sending a message, which is to employ extreme caution even as infection, hospitalization and death rates continue to decline.

According to The Hill: “I actually think it would do so much good for the president to be modeling at this point the really critical times when people should be wearing a mask, and letting people know here is the benefit of the vaccine: You don’t need to be wearing a mask during these other times,” said Leana Wen, an emergency physician and former health commissioner for the city of Baltimore.

Biden keeps masking despite updated guidance | TheHill

Yes, it is important for the president of the United States to serve as a role model on these matters which, I hasten to point out, can determine whether we live or die.

Compare the current president’s commitment to this role-playing to his immediate predecessor’s flouting of the CDC guidelines — while the pandemic was accelerating at an alarming rate.

Donald Trump refused for months even to acknowledge publicly the severity of the pandemic. He wouldn’t be seen with a mask, offering some ridiculous assertion that it didn’t dignify the office he occupied. The Trumpkin Corps followed their guy’s lead on that specious notion.

We have a new man in the nation’s most exalted office. President Biden has chosen to set a different kind of example. Frankly, it is an example I do not mind watching our president and the first lady setting an example worth emulating.

The stakes remain too high and the consequences are too grim to fall back on phony and false denials.

medical news

Fox blowhard loses his mind

By John Kanelis / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Tucker Carlson is no expert … on anything.

He hosts a show on the Fox News Channel, which I guess buys him some gravitas among millions of Americans. Therefore, it is incumbent on other commentators — such as me — to weigh in on one of the more bizarre rants many of us ever have heard.

Carlson went on a weird tangent Monday night in which he declared that parents who require their children to wear masks in this pandemic era need to be arrested for, uhh, child abuse.

What a fruitcake, man.

The criticism of Carlson’s baloney transcends the cosmic divide between liberals and conservatives. One right-wing commentator, Bill Kristol, wrote this via Twitter: The masks stuff is performative idiocy and demagoguery. But the key sentence in Carlson’s rant was this: “It’s our job to restore the society we were born in.” The destructive power of reactionary nostalgia jet-fueled by grievances real or imagined shouldn’t be underestimated.

The blowback from across the nation was immediate. Forbes wrote: It began after Fox News’ Tucker Carlson on Monday suggested it was “unacceptable,” “dangerous” and even potentially “illegal” for children to be forced to wear face coverings outside. Carlson further said that viewers should report such sightings to the police or child protective services, even as it is still recommended that masks be worn at all times by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

New Debate Over Masks Trending On Social Media Following Rant By Tucker Carlson (forbes.com)

It all gives me pause to wonder how in the name of parental discretion can this guy be taken seriously? Here’s the tough answer, which is that millions of Americans do listen to the bluster, bloviating and bellowing from loudmouths such as Tucker Carlson.

I need to stipulate once again this point, which is that Carlson has no particular standing as a childhood behavior specialist. He is just a guy with a large audience of devoted followers who are going to high-five each other when they hear the crap flowing from this individual’s pie hole.

Tucker Carlson has, in the well-aimed words of one progressive critic, “lost his mind.”

medical news

COVID: still worrisome

By John Kanelis / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

President Biden’s latest amendment to the COVID mandates he has sought has produced a cause for worry.

Biden now echoes a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommendation that says it’s OK to go without masks when we’re outdoors. The CDC also cautions against mingling with large crowds of people.

The worry? It comes because I fear too many of us will ignore the caveat laid out there by CDC and the president.

Biden and his medical team are trumpeting the vaccines — all three of them — that are being injected into human bodies. About 30 percent of the U.S. population has received at least one dose. West Virginia is now offering cold cash money to residents who are resisting the inoculation. I get that we are turning the proverbial corner against the killer pandemic.

Dang it, though! We need to continue to exercise what’s been called “an abundance of caution.”

My wife and I are fully vaccinated. So are our son and daughter-in-law. Their two older sons are as well. Our granddaughter is not yet … but she’s a young’n. We feel comfortable going without masks when we’re in their presence, as we do with our older son who lives elsewhere but who is about to receive his second vaccine.

I just don’t want there to be some mad rush toward “normal living” by those who have grown tired of the masks, of the social distancing, of the incessant hand-washing.

We all can see that so-called light at the end of it all, but we still have some distance to go.

medical news

U.S. still stands in dubious infamy

By John Kanelis / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

The worldwide death count from the COVID-19 virus has surpassed 3 million human beings.

Of that total, more than 560,000 deaths have been among Americans.

OK, so what? Here’s what.

The United States comprises less than 5 percent of the world population of 7 billion people. However, our COVID-19 death count totals more than 20 percent of the worldwide total.

Five percent vs. 20 percent.

Hmm. What do we make of that? I’ll offer this brief bit of spewage/wisdom. The United States failed to respond in a timely manner during the pandemic’s early stages. Our president at the time, Donald Trump, did not sound the alarm. He lied to us about the severity of the pandemic and he withheld what he knew about what would happen, that the virus would spread and would become a worldwide threat to human health and well-being.

Trump got beat in the 2020 election. President Joe Biden is calling for a ramped-up effort to fight the disease. Vaccines have been approved and humans are being vaccinated at an accelerating pace.

However, dammit to hell anyway! We never should have been subjected to this level of misery and pain. If only we had been quicker on the trigger in this fight against a killer.

medical news, national news

Waters is right: Shut your mouth, Jim Jordan

2 Comments

By John Kanelis / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

So help me Almighty God in Heaven … I want to slap Jim Jordan bald-headed.

The Republican congressman/blowhard from Ohio’s Fourth Congressional District took it upon himself this week to scold, badger, hector and seek to intimidate the nation’s pre-eminent infectious disease doctor.

Jordan decided that he knows more about the nature of the COVID pandemic than Dr. Anthony Fauci. All he did, though, was demonstrate that he is a cheap, craven, loudmouthed political hack who — on matters of public health — can’t find his a** with both hands.

He bellowed and blustered over Dr. Fauci’s efforts to answer when the nation might be able to return to some semblance of normal living. Along the way, he felt the need to remind Fauci that he is elected by his congressional district constituents to represent their interests, while Fauci isn’t elected to anything.

Brilliant, Rep. Jordan.

You ought to take a few minutes to watch it here. It’s a hoot! Only you won’t want to laugh.

Rep. Jim Jordan yells at Dr. Fauci during heated exchange – Bing video

U.S. Rep. Maxine Waters was right to tell Jordan to “shut his mouth.” Then again, the more he blathers the more revealing he becomes to those of us who detest his conduct.

medical news

Fauci hits back at blowhard

By John Kanelis / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

It’s one thing to be hectored by a peer, a fellow expert who has a different opinion on matters with which you both are experts.

It’s quite another to be badgered by a bloviating blowhard whose only apparent mission in life is to make an ass of himself.

So it was when U.S. Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio decided to wield the hammer on Dr. Anthony Fauci. What does Jordan know about infection disease, or the treatments of them, or how to protect ourselves against its potentially lethal effects? Nothing!

There he was at a House committee yapping and yammering at Fauci, refusing to give the nation’s most respected infectious disease expert a chance to answer. They argued over whether mask-wearing violates Americans’ First Amendment rights.

Fauci finally had heard enough and accused Jordan of making it all “personal,” to which Jordan said he wasn’t, to which Fauci said he most certainly was personalizing the matter.

Dr. Fauci Hits Back At Jim Jordan: ‘We’re Talking About a Pandemic that Has Killed 560,000 Americans’ (msn.com)

I am one American patriot who is going to stand with Dr. Fauci over the partisan nonsense that flies out of certain politicians’ pie holes. Jim Jordan has “distinguished” himself only in demonstrating his boorishness in ways that sicken me.