Category Archives: medical news

medical news

COVID deaths overcounted? Really?

Can it be that Joni Ernst is really and truly that much of a nitwit?

The Iowa Republican U.S. senator has said that the nation’s death count from the coronavirus pandemic might be exaggerated because doctors and other medical workers get greater reimbursements related to COVID deaths.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention puts the death count at 184,000 … and rising.

Sen. Ernst is offering yet another GOP-hatched conspiracy theory that flies in the face in the counter evidence that suggests that the death count might be even greater than what the CDC is reporting.

Why is that? Because there might be a hidden number of deaths that weren’t diagnosed as being related to the virus. That number could be thousands more than what CDC is telling us.

Is this a function of a lack of tests to determine infection rates? Might it be that poor Americans who don’t have access to proper medical treatment are succumbing to the disease without ever knowing they were infected in the first place?

I happen to one American who is more inclined to believe in the undercounted notion than the one that Ernst is pushing.

medical news, national news

Success slips away in COVID fight

(AP Photo/Jeffrey Phelps)

The signs all around us tell a grim tale of failure, not success, in the ongoing battle against the COVID-19 virus that continues to sweep across the world’s wealthiest, most advanced nation.

The U.S. death toll has surpassed 170,000; the infection toll is more than 5 million. More telling is that that infection rate is accelerating, meaning that more people are getting sick every day than they were, say, a month ago.

And yet, Donald Trump keeps telling us we’re succeeding. Really, Mr. President? How in the name of medical science can this fellow possibly claim a success rate when we’re getting sicker by the day and when the fatalities keep mounting.

Remember, too, this little factoid: The United States comprises roughly 4 percent of the world’s population, but we account for roughly 25 percent of the world’s infection from the coronavirus.

Four percent vs. 25 percent. Hmm. That comparison simply blows my mind.

Against all of that, we’re going to hear from Donald Trump’s re-election team that we’re doing great. The nation’s economy is adding jobs at a stupendous rate. They will look straight past the monumental job loss that occurred when the pandemic tightened its grip on our business community, costing us roughly 30 million jobs over a three-month span.

That job loss, I should add, eliminated all the jobs created during the decade-long economic expansion that began on the watch of President Barack H. Obama, who took office in January 2009 amid the then-worst economic recession since the Great Depression. The current economic collapse makes the 2008-09 Great Recession look timid and tepid by comparison.

I mention all of this because I will await word on how Donald Trump intends to defend his response to the global pandemic. To my way of thinking — and perhaps the thinking of most Americans — his initial non-response has produced the infection and death rates that are now savaging our nation.

So, yes, Donald Trump must take responsibility for the misery he caused by failing to respond quickly and decisively enough when the pandemic first presented itself.

How does Donald Trump defend his pitiful record against what we know has transpired?

medical news

Reform the ACA

(AP Photo/Evan Vucci, Pool)

Joe Biden has made himself quite clear on a number of issues as he seeks to remove Donald J. Trump from the presidency.

One of those issues is health care. He doesn’t favor Medicare for All. Instead, he wants to improve, reform, tinker with the Affordable Care Act to make it work better for millions of Americans.

I happen to agree with the former vice president who, you might recall, whispered into Obama’s ear at the signing ceremony that it is a “big fu**ing deal.”

Indeed, The Hill newspaper reports: Biden’s campaign sent a press release to supporters advertising the gift of a sticker reading “Obamacare: It’s a BFD” after his fellow 2020 contenders attacked his health care policy that seeks to “protect and build on Obamacare.”

Biden helped craft the ACA. The rollout was pretty much a catastrophe, shutting down the government’s website created to assist Americans in signing up for the health care package. However, they fixed that aspect of the ACA.

The rest of it hasn’t gone swimmingly, although millions of Americans now have health insurance who didn’t have it before the ACA was enacted in 2010.

Donald Trump swore when he was elected that he would eliminate the ACA. He calls it a “disaster,” just as he calls anything associated with President Obama a “disaster.” Of course, Trump has no plan to take the ACA’s place. The Supreme Court has delivered a body blow to the dump-the-ACA movement by ruling against legal challenges to the law.

The ACA isn’t perfect. President Obama even recognizes that reality. He has said repeatedly he would welcome improvements to the law. Improvements aren’t part of the Donald Trump strategy. He wants to erase Barack Obama’s name from everything in sight. Why? Who the hell knows?

Joe Biden’s resistance to Medicare for All is partly due to his role in crafting the ACA and his public service career as a mainstream center/left Democrat. He is not a socialist, as Trump would have us believe. He wants to work within the current government and economic system to provide, among other things, affordable health care for Americans.

To that end, my hope — should Biden win the election for president — is for him to craft a comprehensive improvement package that makes the Affordable Care Act truly affordable for all Americans.

medical news

COVID compounds our sorrow

I just received a tragic bit of news from a friend who lives in Amarillo.

His wife died this past spring. She suffered from Alzheimer’s disease. She also had tested positive for COVID-19. My friend told me this: The worst part of it was that I didn’t get to see her the last 4 months. Her nursing home was in total lock down.

That statement, right there, should tell us all plenty about the terrible nature of the pandemic that has killed more than 152,000 Americans. More deaths will follow. We are not experiencing, as a senior Trump administration official said, a time of “triumph” in the fight against the pandemic.

This story has created an unheard-of phenomenon in many respects. One of them involves the isolation that COVID patients must endure. They cannot have family near them as they struggle for life. No friends. No loved ones. They die separated from those who cherish them the most.

Which arcs back to another aspect of this disease. It is the special relationships that nurses, doctors and care facility staff develop with these patients. Think of this for a moment. These medical responders become “surrogate loved ones” for the people in their care.

How many stories have you heard since early this year about nurses and physicians sobbing at the death of patients who cannot feel the embrace of their spouse, their children, their parents? I have lost count. Yet every story I hear told fills me with heartache that tugs just a little harder than the previous time.

Then there are the stories of patients who are released from medical care and reunited with the people who love them. The happiness we see and hear from the medical personnel is as joyous as the sadness felt at the end of the tragic stories.

My friend’s story is not unique to the larger world. To him, though, it is unbearable, unspeakable and unimaginable. It hurts to hear this news because of the unique misery it brings to those who must endure it.

medical news, national news

Take it seriously, folks!

The death of one-time Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain ought to be a wake-up call to those who think the COVID-19 pandemic is some sort of “hoax” cooked up by Democrats to harm Donald Trump’s re-election effort.

Same for the infection of Rep. Louie Gohmert. Or perhaps the positive test registered by Trump’s national security adviser Robert O’Brien.

Let’s shut the hell up with the conspiracy nonsense, shall we?

Cain’s death is particularly poignant in this regard: He attended that Tulsa, Okla., rally where the sparse crowd piled into the arena, most of whom were not wearing masks or maintaining social distance. Cain was one of them.

Then he got sick. Now he is dead.

The Godfather’s Pizza mogul ran for president in 2012, touting his economic wizardry and assorted cures for what he said ailed the U.S. economy. He now will be known, arguably forever, as one of Donald Trump’s staunch minions who didn’t heed the warnings of medical professionals to take measures to protect himself and others from the killer virus.

Yet, there remains that cabal of goofballs who insist the pandemic is a made-up matter. It ain’t real, they say. They contend it’s part of some Deep State plot to deny Donald Trump a second term as president.

Those who foment that lie are full of sh**. They know it and so should the rest of us.

Herman Cain’s death is a sad but profound reminder that the best medical and scientific minds in the world are trying like the dickens to find a cure for this menace.

As a friend of mine in Amarillo — who, along with her husband has recovered from a positive COVID-19 test — has told me, she is in “take no prisoners mode” with regard to the conspiracy theorists. She vows to shut down anyone who refuses to take this killer seriously.

So will I.

medical news

Quack now advising POTUS?

Where in the name of Hippocrates did Donald J. Trump find the quack who’s saying masks won’t help stop COVID infection and talks about “alien DNA”?

Her name is Stella Immanuel, and even though she has a medical degree, I won’t put the “Dr.” in front of her name.

According to the Daily Beast: She alleges alien DNA is currently used in medical treatments, and that scientists are cooking up a vaccine to prevent people from being religious. And, despite appearing in Washington, D.C. to lobby Congress on Monday, she has said that the government is run in part not by humans but by “reptilians” and other aliens.

Joe Biden calls her a “disgrace.” He is correct.

Immanuel, who resides in Houston, has become a star on right-wing media. She also has Donald Trump’s ear.

God help us.

medical news, national news

Oh, Louie … how did the mask avoidance work out?

I am no fan of Louie Gohmert.

In fact, I am embarrassed that he is a member of the Texas congressional delegation. Gohmert, a Republican from Tyler, happens to have been an obnoxious opponent of mask-wearing in light of the coronavirus pandemic. That is just one of the things that angers me about this guy’s presence in Congress.

Well, this just came in: Gohmert, who represents the Loony Bin Wing of the GOP, has tested positive for COVID-19.

Karma is a bitch, man … you know?

Now, I do not wish him ill. I do not want him to suffer the kind of agony that has befallen hundreds of thousands of our fellow Americans, about 150,000 of whom have died from the virus. However, just maybe this startling news about this outspoken critic of a known effective measure that helps stem the tide of infection will awaken this clown to the obvious need to do what the doctors keep telling us.

It is that we should wear masks; we should practice “social distancing”; we should wash our hands frequently.

Gohmert took part in a U.S. House Judiciary Committee hearing this week in which he yelled and bellowed his support for Attorney General William Barr. He obviously ignored warnings about how infection spores spread more rapidly when we raise our voices. And, of course, he did all this without wearing a mask.

Get well, Louie. When you do and when you are to return to work, then shut your skeptical-sounding pie hole and follow the doctors’ orders. While you’re at it, you should advise your fellow GOP lunatics to do the same.

medical news

Shut … up, Mr. POTUS!

I cannot stand the sound of Donald J. Trump’s voice, or the sight of his face on my TV, which I know is no big flash to readers of this blog.

I especially cannot stand the sound and sight of him when he discusses things about which he knows nothing. Hmm. By my figuring, that’s just about anything under the sun.

So, when Donald Trump strides to the podium in the White House briefing room and declares that the coronavirus pandemic isn’t quite as serious as docs keep saying, or when he declares that wearing face masks is an overrated measure to fight the infection rate, I tend to want to pull my hair out by the roots.

Trump was in his usual bloviating form today when he dismissed mask-wearing and talked — yet again — about the benefits of that anti-malaria drug he keeps touting as a potential cure for the killer virus. You know, the drug that doctors and researchers say could kill you if ingest it.

My version of a perfect pandemic world would be for Donald Trump to stand down, to leave the communication solely to the doctors he enlisted ostensibly to conduct the federal government’s response to the pandemic. Then he steps all over their message, seeking to downplay the grim news they deliver, which is that we’re still not even halfway through the first round of infections.

What does it take to shut this guy up, to keep him off our TV screens, or to push him to the sidelines, leaving the real analysis of this crisis up to the experts who have all those MDs behind their name?

Oh, wait! I know! We have an election coming up in November! That’ll do it! Right?

medical news

Waiting on the vaccine

I have concluded something about this pandemic and to be honest it doesn’t make me feel all too comfy.

It is that I now believe that the only “end” to this crisis will arrive when a vaccine becomes available to every human being on Earth. Prior to that, we had all better get used to wearing masks, to keeping our “social distance” from friends and even loved ones, to a decided lack of recreational activities such as arena sports with fans jammed shoulder to shoulder, and with our children studying “virtually” at home.

Why the wait? Two reasons: a lack of discipline among billions of us who don’t follow the rules and a lack of leadership from the highest levels of government in the United States of America.

I am dismayed at the sight of all those morons who cannot or will not keep their distance from others. Or those who refuse to wear a mask because, they contend stupidly, that they infringe on their civil liberties. Those dipsh**s are taking their cue from — dare I say it — the White House or from right-wing media that continue to insist that the coronavirus pandemic is a hoax, a conspiracy cooked up by people with some sort of nefarious political agenda.

Sinclair Corp., a right-wing media company that owns a chain of TV stations around the country, is fomenting that hoax with a fake “documentary” that accuses Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert, of being at the center of that conspiracy. What’s shocking is that so many Americans believe that BS.

So I am going to wait on big pharma researchers’ work on their fast-track search for a vaccine. It’s going to take time to ascertain its effectiveness; then it will take more time to get it certified by drug regulators and then kick into massive production.

I am willing to wait.

medical news, State news

Mother Nature deals cruel blow

Mother Nature can be the cruelest of elements.

Our friends and fellow Texans in Nueces County have been struggling against the COVID-19 virus. Reports of a spike in infections among infants has been particularly alarming. They’re running out of morgue space and are receiving refrigerated trucks to store the remains of those who have died from the virus. Good grief.

Then comes Hurricane Hanna, which blasted ashore south of Corpus Christi on Saturday. It was a Cat 1 storm, which isn’t catastrophic by definition … but it might as well have been a Cat 5 or worse, given the heartache that has struck that part of the state.

I am left while sitting up yonder in North Texas to offer my sympathy, condolences and, yes, “thoughts and prayers” to those who suffer from the pandemic and now to those who are battling storm surge, flash flooding and 100-mph wind.

What’s more, we should lift up first responders and the medical professionals who have been risking their health, their lives and those of their loved ones even before Hanna blew down the front door along the Gulf Coast.

Will any of this ever end? Can we get some help from our government and, by all means, from Mother Nature herself?