Category Archives: medical news

medical news

‘New normal’ has arrived

I hereby make this declaration, which is that I believe we have entered the era of the “new normal.”

What’s more, in due time — which might arrive much sooner than we expect — the “new normal” will just become, um, “normal.”

As I ran my errands this morning to the Post Office, to the garden supply shop, to the grocery store, I witnessed hundreds of people wearing masks. I covered my own mug with a mask.

We keep two masks in our truck, one for me and one for her.

It is now becoming routine for us to reach for the masks in our truck, strap them to our noggin and go about doing whatever essential business we intend to do.

This is what has become the “new normal” in the age of the coronavirus pandemic. We are living through a plague, folks. It ain’t pretty. It ain’t the least bit fun … but am getting resigned to an unmistakable fact, which is that this is the way it’s going to be for, well, maybe for the duration.

The new normal also includes a new way of watching arena sports. Football, baseball, basketball, hockey, track and field, motor racing all likely will occur in a different sort of forum. I am trying to imagine when we’ll be able to sit in a stadium packed with fans cheering on our favorite team. The same concern arises with plays, movies and all manner of outdoor festivals.

Indeed, my hometown of Portland, Ore., had to postpone its annual Rose Festival from June to September. The roses are blooming in June and the City of Roses honors that glorious season with festivities over several days that include the Grand Floral Parade that draws close to a million spectators into downtown Portland.

How in the world do they keep that up with the threat of a deadly viral infection lurking — potentially! — in the individual standing right next to you along a packed parade route?

So, here we are. Welcome to the new normal. Let’s get used to it.

medical news, national news

Oh, the irony is so rich

A Facebook acquaintance of mine has drawn attention to what he believes is an amazing, rich irony in the dispute by pro-Donald Trump protesters who oppose the government-imposed restrictions in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic.

He wrote this: I’ve recently noticed Trumpers embrace the slogan “Freedom of choice”, or “My Body My Choice” as seen on a pro-Trump placard.

Set aside the flawed logic in thinking a highly transmissible disease with no vaccine or effective treatment only affects you, but do they not see the irony in eviscerating the reproductive rights of women?

Hmm. What do you know about that?

One might argue, I suppose, that there is no direct parallel between the coronavirus restrictions and reproductive rights. Still, when avid anti-choice advocates trot out mantras used by their foes, they had better be ready for the blowback they are receiving.

To be fair, I need to remind you that the irony travels in the opposite direction, with pro-choice advocates seemingly endorsing the restrictions that government imposes as we wage this fight against a killer virus.

Irony is a bitch … ain’t it?

medical news

Pence flouts Mayo mask policy

Oh, man. I had hoped Mike Pence would be above flouting a policy enacted by a major medical center. Silly me. The vice president is more like the president than I had thought.

The Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., has enacted a policy that declares everyone in the place wears a mask. Pence visited the clinic today and was the only individual photographed who wasn’t wearing a mask to protect him against the coronavirus.

Uh, Mr. Vice President … what in the name of disease prevention is wrong with you? Mayo officials even said they would provide Pence with a mask.

Pence knew of the policy. He chose to parade around the joint without a mask. There he was, following the lead of Donald Trump, who declared that mask-wearing was a suggestion, but that he would forgo wearing a mask while working in the White House.

That’s leadership? That’s how you demonstrate to the nation that you are willing to do what health officials are asking the rest of us to do? Of course not!

It is an act of stupidity.

Truthfully, I thought Vice President Pence was smarter than that.

medical news

Another lie about coronavirus testing has come forth

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It’s becoming a parlor game of sorts, trying to determine the biggest daily lie coming from Donald John Trump.

My candidate has to do with Trump’s statement today that we are “lapping the field” in terms of testing for the coronavirus.

Hmm. In terms of raw numbers of tests, yes. We are testing more than any other country on Earth.

However …

The per capita testing — the number of tests we give in relation to the rest of the population — is a far more dismal figure. We are not “lapping the field.” The United States remains woefully short. We have tested about 1.5 percent of our population. We have 330 million citizens. We’ve tested a tiny fraction of that total.

That is not how I would calculate the success of our nation’s testing regimen. Nor should Donald Trump foist a phony assertion on us and then boast about how we are “lapping the field.”

Donald Trump lied. Again. He’ll keep lying.

medical news

Trump bowing out of daily rants provides confusing reactions

Oh, the confusion I am feeling at this moment trying to digest the news that Donald Trump might not be delivering his daily rants inside the White House press briefing room.

I stopped calling them “briefings” because they long ago ceased providing any useful information related to the worldwide coronavirus pandemic.

So now we hear that after Trump’s disastrous off-the-cuff riff about ingesting “disinfectants” to get rid of the deadly viral infection, the White House has reportedly persuaded POTUS to cool it with the daily appearances. Trump put out a Twitter message that suggested it’s his idea, that the media are asking too many nasty questions.

The confusion treks along several lines of thought.

Trump’s poll numbers appear to be slipping. Donald Trump’s daily rants are hurting his re-election chances, according to pundits, pollsters and politicians. Accordingly, given my disdain for this fellow, I am torn between wanting him to keep blathering and babbling incoherently to create for the presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden a clearer path to defeating this clown.

Trump is prone to say something dangerous if he continues. Thus, if he keeps delivering nonsense, he might say something that puts more American lives in dire peril. You see what I mean here? I don’t give a damn about Trump’s poll numbers, other than to see them continue to slide. I do give a damn, though, about whether this idiot will say something even more stupid than he did when he was “thinking out loud” about whether applying “disinfectants” would kill the virus “in a minute.”

Leave it to the medical experts to tell us what we need to know. I’m all in there. Donald Trump has some first-rate medical and scientific minds at his disposal. Dr. Anthony Fauci is a first-class infectious disease expert. Dr. Deborah Birx has done great work on HIV/AIDS research. Dr. Robert Redfield runs the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Surgeon General Jerome Adams is a clear-headed thinker. Trump doesn’t listen to them. He prefers to hog the spotlight and say things that, well, make millions of us cringe; one of them, Dr. Birx, was caught on camera struggling mightily to control her facial muscles while Trump ran off at the mouth about disinfectants. 

I guess where I land is for Donald Trump just to keep his trap shut. Don’t discuss issues about which he knows nothing. He has inflicted enough damage already. I hope the damage is enough to doom his re-election. Meanwhile, the medical team working inside the White House can keep us informed on ways to protect ourselves and those we love.

medical news

‘Disinfectant’ means ‘medicine’? Sure it does

Here come the rationalizations, the excuses, the covering of Donald Trump’s rear end over the president’s use of the term “disinfectant” to describe how one might treat the coronavirus that has killed tens of thousands of Americans.

I ran across an item from a guy who calls himself a “respiratory therapist” who says he is “not registered to vote and I don’t vote. I am neutral.”

Are we clear? I’ll proceed.

Trump mused nonsensically this week about how we could apply “disinfectant” to individuals suffering from the deadly viral infection. He didn’t say “Lysol” or didn’t declare one should guzzle “bleach.” He did, though, suggest one could “ingest” a “disinfectant.” Where I come from, when I hear disinfectant, my mind goes immediately to a household product used to, um, scrub surfaces clean. 

This individual suggests Trump, being a “layman,” used the term “disinfectant” incorrectly. He meant to say “medicine” or “medicinal products.” That’s what this guy suggests. Do you buy it? Me, neither.

Here is part of what he posted on social media:

(Trump) is basically brain storming for an idea to help the lungs. He stated that the disinfectant kills the virus in one minute, so he proposed the question can we inject disinfectant (not Lysol), he used the word “disinfectant” … in the lungs, but that is for the doctors to figure out.

Now a lay person like Trump will say disinfectant and a medical person would say “medicine”. Medicine dumped into the lungs happens all the time! I personally have dumped respiratory medicine down an Endotracheal tube directly into the lungs. When babies are born prematurely, guess what? Yes we “inject” the lungs with a medicine called surfactant that helps keep the alveoli open to oxygenate the lungs. Antibiotics are sometimes injected into infected parts of lungs through a chest tube.

… His statement was so twisted around and misinterpreted, and this is coming from a Respiratory Therapist that has injected medicine in people’s lungs.

There isn’t much more I can add to this other than to remind our respiratory therapist that I haven’t yet encountered a single individual who would sub the word “medicine” with “disinfectant.” Furthermore, Donald Trump calls himself — with words to this effect — the smartest man in human history.

Would someone with Trump’s alleged intellectual wattage use such clumsy language when talking about something so grim and serious as a deadly infection?

I’ll just have to sigh and echo the folks at Lysol: Don’t drink this stuff … it’ll kill you!

medical news

If he was being ‘sarcastic,’ what does that say about POTUS?

Let’s assume for the sake of discussion that Donald John “Knee Slapper in Chief” Trump was being “sarcastic” when he mused aloud about the possible benefits of injecting or ingesting cleaning fluid as a way to fight the COVID-19 virus.

He said such a hideous thing this week at one of those White press room rants. Trump has been ridiculed — with justification — for saying such a thing.

He then tried to take it back by suggesting he was, well, joking. He didn’t mean it. He mentioned that he sought to employ a little sarcasm while responding  to a question from a “reporter like you.” He said he wanted to see what kind of reaction he would receive. What a crock!

If that’s true — and I do not believe it to be so — then that begs another question about Donald Trump’s ghastly lack of presidential temperament. What kind of individual — faced with a viral infection that has killed more than 50,000 Americans in the span of two months — would make a “sarcastic” statement dealing with a matter of life and agonizing death.

I will stand by my assertion that Trump made that ridiculous suggestion without a hint of sarcasm. What kind of individual, then, would use that dodge to bob-and-weave his way out of the criticism that has been leveled at him?

Donald Trump is a kook.

medical news

Trump keeps inflicting grievous damage

Donald Trump’s daily White House press room rant was an abbreviated affair today. He and Vice President Mike Pence spoke for about 20 minutes and then — poof! — they were gone.

No answers to questions from reporters. No scolding the media for doing their job. No attempts to happy talk his way past the misery and tragedy caused by the coronavirus pandemic.

No sweat. I didn’t need to hear any more from the Moron in Chief. I have heard enough.

What I do need to say without any equivocation is that Donald Trump continues to inflict grievous damage on the country he was elected govern.

The abbreviated rant today does not dismiss the idiocy that poured out of Trump’s pie hole Thursday, when he mused aloud about whether ingesting bleach or other disinfectants might kill the coronavirus inside the body of the individual who ingests it. Is there anything you’ve heard come from the president of the United States that is more certifiably insane than that? I didn’t think so. This one tops the charts, man!

So now we hear that Trump might start reducing his TV exposure at these daily rants. He might not appear each day. Trump might have gotten the message — finally! — that he is doing himself more harm than good by blathering dangerous rhetoric.

I quit long ago taking a single thing that comes from Donald Trump with any semblance of seriousness. He is a serial liar who now has entered a dangerous new zone of danger: His absolute and astonishing ignorance is now threatening the lives of Trump adherents who might actually take this man seriously.

In spite of my obvious dismay and disgust over Trump’s latest disastrous rhetorical rant, I am even more dismayed by the medical experts’ surrounding him. They should be resigning en masse and they should condemn the moronic suggestion that swallowing, injecting or snorting poison might serve as a cure for a deadly viral infection.

Drs. Deborah Birx, Robert Redfield and Anthony Fauci are brilliant infectious disease experts. They are a key part of the White House pandemic response team. Why in the world can they stand by while Donald Trump throws out such idiocy?

I am shaking my head. I am slapping my forehead. I am beyond flabbergasted at the moronic blathering that keeps pouring out of Donald Trump’s yapper. What in the world is it going to take before we as a nation decide we have had enough of this imminently dangerous imbecile?

medical news

Sarcasm, Mr. POTUS? Stop, you’re killin’ us!

Can there be a more graphic and profound display of just why we must disregard incoherent ramblings of Donald John “Imbecile in Chief” Trump than what he rolled out this week?

Trump said on Thursday in a rambling soliloquy in the White House press room how ingesting disinfectants, such as, oh, Lysol, can kill the coronavirus inside the human body. Yep. There you have it. The president suggesting we could snort, swallow or inject cleaning fluid … the stuff labeled with warnings about the danger of such behavior.

Then we hear just today from Trump that he said he was offering a “sarcastic” response to a reporter’s question.

There you have it. Trump is talking on one day about how to kill a virus that has claimed more than 50,000 American lives in a global pandemic. The next day he says, in effect, that he was just kidding.

What the name of imminent danger is the matter with this guy? What’s more, what in the name of electoral stupidity is wrong with those who continue to stand behind this fellow’s moronic rambling?

Here is part of what he said Thursday: “And then I see the disinfectant, where it knocks it out in a minute. One minute. And is there a way we can do something like that, by injection inside or almost a cleaning. Because you see it gets in the lungs and it does a tremendous number on the lungs. So it would be interesting to check that. So, that, you’re going to have to use medical doctors with. But it sounds, it sounds interesting to me.”

That’s sarcasm, says Trump.

Dang, that must explain why I was laughing so damn hard when I heard of what he said.

This guy is scaring me sh**less!

medical news

Trump says he ‘never heard’ of reassigned COVID aide? C’mon!

Rick Bright is spilling the beans on the inner workings of Donald Trump’s coronavirus pandemic response team.

He says he was reassigned because he wouldn’t buy into Trump’s pitching of a drug he says works “miracles” in getting rid of the COVID-19 virus. Bright happened to be the president’s go-to man on the virus vaccine research effort. Trump has been singing the praises of hydroxychloroquine, contending that it does miraculous work on snuffing out the deadly infectious virus.

Bright wasn’t buying it. He said hydroxychloroquine isn’t sufficiently tested and that its results were spotty at best.

Trump reportedly got rid of him.

The president’s reaction to Bright’s sudden dismissal, though, is utterly priceless. He told reporters this week that he had “never heard” of Rick Bright. Is that for real? How does the president of the United States form a task force, put someone in charge of researching a possible vaccine for a killer disease and not know who he is?

OK, I will venture out on that limb and say that Trump is lying — once again! — about a key virus response aide. Imagine that, if you can.

I have mentioned already on this blog that Donald Trump is the most untrustworthy man ever elected president of the United States. For that matter, he might be the most bald-faced liar ever elected to any office, maybe at any level of government.

Dr. Bright, a well-educated immunologist, isn’t taking his reassignment quietly. He issued a scathing statement that blasts the Health and Human Services Department, saying he was ordered to direct funds toward hydroxychloroquine by those who were close to Trump.

The president isn’t being quite so vocal about hydroxychloroquine these days. Maybe he got the message that his pitching of the drug was putting to many Americans at risk. “What do you have to lose?” he asked during his one of riffs in the White House press room. Well, some reports suggest that patients who take hydroxychloroquine are losing their life.

So now, Dr. Rick Bright is emerging as the latest in a growing list of fall guys who get the axe for, um, telling the truth.