Category Archives: medical news

medical news

‘Quickly forgotten,’ Mr. President? Yeah, good luck with that

Donald John Trump is just rarin’ to get the U.S. reopened for business.

He said this via Twitter to drive home the point:

“Once we OPEN UP OUR GREAT COUNTRY, and it will be sooner rather than later, the horror of the Invisible Enemy, except for those that sadly lost a family member or friend, must be quickly forgotten. Our Economy will BOOM, perhaps like never before!!!”

Quickly forgotten, he said. To be fair, at least the president did acknowledge with a single phrase contained in a single sentence that many Americans will be hurting.

Do you get the feeling the expression aimed at “those that sadly lost a family member or a friend” is a throwaway line, something that he felt he needed to say just to assuage critics of the absence of empathy in the president? That is my takeaway.

The president’s continuing message to a nation reeling with anxiety and tragedy from this pandemic continues to concentrate on the economic impact and the “fantastic job” he believes he and his team are doing to stem the infection.

I keep waiting — and I know it’s futile — for the president to speak exclusively about Americans’ pain. I keep waiting for him to offer words of comfort, an expression that he truly gets it, that he hurts right along with them.

I know it’s not coming. I know that this president is incapable of leading us in this time of deep pain and peril.

medical news

VA takes ‘social distancing’ to a new level

In about three weeks I am going to have a first-ever experience, thanks to the coronavirus pandemic.

I had been scheduled to see my doctor at the Department of Veterans Affairs clinic in Bonham, Texas. Then I got a phone call from my doc’s nurse, who told me that the doctor doesn’t need to see me in person.

My physician is going to call me around 11 a.m. on the day of my appointment and will visit with me over the phone.

We don’t want to push our luck with this “social distancing” matter in place, the nurse said. I get it, I said. No worries.

I am unclear as to how this “examination” will enable the doctor to determine the state of my health. I suppose she could make me take an oath to tell her “the truth, whole truth and nothing but the truth” when she asks me my weight, whether I am continuing to exercise, whether I take my meds regularly.

What about the labs I was supposed to take when I visited the clinic, you know, the bloodwork and peeing into the cup? The nurse said I could go to the clinic “if you want to,” but said I could hold off until the next in-person visit with my doctor.

I’ll wait on that one.

And so … the pandemic has upset one facet of my life. I’ll report back to you how the “examination” goes. I will be anxious to see how my perfectly competent doctor determines whether I continue to enjoy good health.

medical news

Adviser’s pandemic memo never got to Trump? Sure … that’s believable

Peter Navarro, a trade adviser, is among the cadre of wackos who work for Donald J. Trump.

However, it turns out the guy who flies off the handle on occasion with wild statements about our international trade rivals, was likely on to something when he wrote a memo warning of a coming health crisis cataclysm.

The problem, though, is that Navarro’s memo reportedly never got to the desk of the one person who needed to see it … allegedly. That would the president of the United States.

Navarro reportedly warned of the coronavirus in January. He blamed China for withholding information about its seriousness. The memo reportedly was intended for Trump, that he wanted the president to see it and to act on it.

Then we hear from Trump this week, who said he never saw the memo and only heard about it recently.

Huh? What the … ?

Are we to believe that the White House Director of Trade and Manufacturing Policy would write a lengthy memorandum detailing an important pending health crisis and it not ever arrive on the Resolute Desk of the most powerful man on Earth?

Bear in mind something about the president’s statement that he never saw it: The denial comes from the Liar in Chief. I am one American who believes not a single statement that flies out of the president’s pie hole.

Donald Trump has boasted that the White House on his watch runs like a “fine-tuned machine.” Well, where I come from, a fine-tuned machine would have ensured that a document prepared by someone of Dr. Navarro’s status within the administration surely would have ended up on the commander in chief’s desk … and that he would have read it.

Astonishing.

local news, medical news

Get over yourselves, Judge Jenkins and Gov. Abbott!

I want to make a request on this blog of two leading politicians who appear to be locking horns over the use of a “pop up hospital” erected to handle an expected surge in coronavirus cases in Dallas County.

It is this: Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins and Texas Gov. Greg Abbott need to set their past disputes aside and work together on behalf of stricken and anxious North Texans.

Jenkins is a Democrat, while Abbott is a Republican. That difference right there seems to suggest a starting point in the two men’s apparent tension. The major parties don’t work well at times in Texas.

They have erected a temporary hospital at the Kay Bailey Hutchison Convention Center. Jenkins, according to the Dallas Morning News, has been a bit reluctant to open the center for patients. Abbott wants Jenkins to move more quickly. Their staffs aren’t working too well together at the moment.

The Morning News article I’ve attached to this blog post suggests a lengthy history of tension between the men. Jenkins is a supporter of the Affordable Care Act; Abbott is not and they have clashed over whether the state should expand benefits for those enrolled in the ACA. Jenkins doesn’t like the state’s usurping of local control over certain matters; Abbott has gone along with the Legislature’s moves to consolidate power in Austin.

Meanwhile, thousands of Dallas County residents have been stricken by the COVID-19 strain of coronavirus. My wife and I, along with one of our sons and his family, live in next-door Collin County. I happen, therefore, to detest politicians who let personal history get in the way of their need to work together to deal with a crisis.

Earth to Jenkins and Abbott: We’ve got a beaut of a crisis right now!

Get over yourselves, gentlemen! For the sake of those of us who might depend on that temporary hospital, not to mention the services provided by our state and local counties!

medical news

George W. Bush: pandemic visionary

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(Photo by Paul McErlane/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

If we’re candid about our own beliefs, we would acknowledge that we don’t usually think of President George W. Bush as a visionary politician.

Lo and behold, though, comes reporting that in the summer of 2005, while vacationing at his Central Texas ranch, President Bush was reading a book about the 1918 influenza pandemic, aka the Spanish Flu. He returned to Washington and told his top homeland security adviser, Fran Townsend, about what he had read.

The book alarmed and alerted the president, who then told the nation that we needed to get and stay prepared to deal with the next pandemic, which he concluded occurs about every 100 years.

Hmm. Well, he was right. He wanted to re-double our efforts to fight a global pandemic.

President Bush left office in January 2009, handing the office over to Barack H. Obama, who would form a pandemic response team within the National Security Council.

Oh, but wait! President Obama turned the officer in January 2017 to Donald J. Trump. What did the new president do? He disbanded the NSC pandemic team.

So now we learn that Trump not only dismissed the efforts of his immediate predecessor but also of the man who preceded President Obama. Yes, it was George W. Bush who sounded the alarm that Donald Trump chose to ignore … until it was too late.

We’re caught now in the latest pandemic. The coronavirus crisis is killing thousands of human beings every day. The worst is still to come. Most of our states are reacting relatively quickly to the emergency. The feds? They are still trying to catch up. Heck, they’re still trying to get their message straight, which is a damn near impossible task, given Donald Trump’s inability to speak coherently, seriously and knowledgeably about the pandemic.

Do you feel safe now with Donald Trump in charge? You’re not alone. Neither do I.

medical news

Baffled by POTUS’s refusal to follow CDC guideline

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Donald John Trump can do damn near whatever he wants to do … or decline to do the same.

However, the president’s declaration that he won’t follow face-mask guidelines set forth by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention baffles me.

CDC recommends that we all wear face masks when interacting with other human beings while we wage “war” with the invisible enemy, the coronavirus pandemic. It’s a voluntary measure.

Trump, the head of the executive branch of our government, undercut the CDC on Friday by stating he won’t wear the mask. The reason why is laughable, except that it ain’t funny.

He said he cannot meet with foreign dignitaries while sitting behind the “Resolute Desk” in the Oval Office as he wears a mask. The mask, he implied, would be, um, less than dignified. The president of the United States cannot wear a mask, or worse, be seen by the public wearing a mask.

Huh? As if that matters? As if anyone should care whether the POTUS is wearing a mask?

I would applaud Donald Trump for adhering to the CDC guideline. He would send a message to all Americans that the guidelines are to be taken seriously enough that even the president of the United States is following them!

What we’re getting instead from Donald Trump is just another example of a failure of presidential leadership in a time of crisis.

medical news

When will POTUS shut … up?

I reached my saturation point a long time ago but the coronavirus pandemic and Donald Trump’s constant presence in front of the nation in recent times is sending me damn near to the breaking point.

I don’t usually watch the president’s “briefings” about the pandemic response team’s work. I prefer to listen to the experts he has recruited to work on the nuts and bolts of the response.

News reports and the snippets I do see tell me that he is continuing to spew out confusion, chaos and mixed messages at a time when we need clarity, coherence and calm.

Donald Trump is not advancing anything constructive with his rants against Democratic governors, against the media for asking him “nasty” questions. He calls himself a “wartime president,” but cannot, will not deliver the kind of message that wartime presidents by definition are supposed to deliver.

This guy can’t unify anyone. He prefers to talk only to his base when he should be speaking directly to all Americans, even his critics. Were he to speak like a normal president operating during these abnormal times, well, I would listen to him.

Instead, he takes aim at imaginary adversaries, blaming them for playing politics while at the same time doing the very thing he accuses others of doing.

Worst of all, he continues to lie. He denies saying things that the whole world heard him say. The initial downplaying of the coronavirus threat has been recorded for the rest of history … but Donald Trump says he took the threat seriously from the very beginning. No! He did not!

I can’t stand it!

This guy needs to be booted out of the White House!

environmental news, medical news

Does this pandemic have a positive impact on anything? Well, yes

One can run a terrible risk of shortchanging the tragedy that comes from crises while looking for any positive outcomes.

With that said, I want to offer this item, understanding that some might think I am seeking to minimize the sadness being played out all over the world.

The coronavirus pandemic could possibly result in the most dramatic reduction in carbon emissions since World War II.

Reuters News Service reports: “I wouldn’t be shocked to see a 5 percent or more drop in carbon dioxide emissions this year, something not seen since the end of World War II,”  (Rob) Jackson, a professor of Earth system science at Stanford University in California, told Reuters in an email.

The cause of such a decline isn’t hard to figure out. Motor vehicle traffic is way down. Everywhere on Earth. China, where the pandemic originated and where air pollution has become almost legendary, reports remarkably clean air over major urban centers. The same is being said in India and in major European cities.

I live in the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex and I am quite certain that carbon emissions here are registering historic lows as millions of us around here are obeying stay at home directives issued by Gov. Greg Abbott.

As Reuters points out: But the improvements are for all the wrong reasons, tied to a world-shaking global health emergency that has infected more than 950,000 people — while shuttering factories, grounding airlines and forcing hundreds of millions of people to stay at home to slow the contagion. 

Just a side note: The number of infected human beings has zoomed well past a million people since this article was published.

I am left now to wonder whether this result might persuade some notorious climate-change deniers to rethink their environmental idiocy. If we are seeing this singular positive result from this pandemic, it well might be a reduction in carbon emissions that — according to scientific research — contributes to the other existential threat to humanity: worldwide climate change.

local news, medical news

Does this guy have a political future? Yeah, I think so

Crises occasionally give birth to political superstars and I am starting to see some signs of superstardom emerging among the ranks of local political figures in Texas and around the country.

The crisis of the moment is a big one: the coronavirus pandemic.

A Texas Tribune feature singles out a fellow who just might be among the superstars emerging from the wreckage that the pandemic is likely to create.

Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins, according to the Tribune article, has been far from “timid” in his response to the pandemic. He jumped right away on calls for shelter in place, then for r. esidents of the nation’s eighth most populous county to stay at home. He has spearheaded the installation of temporary hospital rooms and issued calls to action among city officials and those who govern neighboring counties.

Jenkins even has chided other county judges — such as Chris Hill in Collin County — to step up their efforts to battle the onset of the coronavirus. The Tribune also notes that after ordering bars and restaurants closed, he egged Gov. Greg Abbott on to follow suit statewide.

So, is a star being born? Hmm. Maybe.

Jenkins is a Democrat, elected to the county judgeship in 2010. I don’t know much about Jenkins, other than what I’ve seen from my perch in Collin County, where we have lived for the past year or so.

Whether he’s able to capitalize appropriately on the leadership he is exhibiting depends on whether the judge sees a higher political office in his future. It well might be that he has advanced as far as he wants to go. Indeed, politicians often can overplay their hands if they want to take their public service venture to the next level.

Clay Jenkins has to play it carefully if he has any personal future ambition to fulfill. In the meantime, he can just keep doing what he’s doing and hope his leadership helps save lives … which by itself could write the script for this fellow’s political future.

medical news

Leadership is MIA in the White House

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has done it. It says Americans should wear cloth masks when they venture outside and are forced to mingle with others.

It’s not a directive. It’s a guideline, but CDC sounded as if it is recommending strongly that we follow its advice.

What, then, did Donald Trump do today during his daily clown show/briefing? He undercut CDC’s  recommendation. Way to go, Mr. President … you ignoramus.

I took a break from boycotting these presidential riffs. I watched a good bit of what Trump said. He was, typically, hideous.

He said the CDC guidelines are “voluntary.” Then he said, “I’m choosing not to do it. It’s voluntary.”

Why in the name of absent leadership does Donald Trump open his yapper on matters such as this? The CDC isn’t dictating that we must wear the masks; it is offering only what it considers to be a strong recommendation.

Then the president — in effect — says the CDC’s recommendation isn’t to be taken seriously.

Sigh …

Donald Trump’s daily monologues have become counterproductive in the extreme. This individual simply is ill-equipped to lead a nation that is distressed beyond measure. The coronavirus pandemic has frightened us. It is causing many of us to worry ourselves sick about the direction our economy is taking. We are worried about catching the virus, or our loved ones becoming ill from it.

The CDC is offering a recommendation that medical experts suggest could prevent the spread of this deadly virus. Dr. Anthony Fauci said today that anyone who can wear a cloth mask per the CDC recommendation should do so.

Then the president tells us he won’t bother?

This nitwit in chief is not leading us.