Tag Archives: coronavirus

medical news

Trump ups the ante to potentially dangerous level … or has he?

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You know already that I trust Donald John “Liar in Chief” Trump about as far as I can throw his overfed body.

But there he goes, offering what well might be yet another in the nearly 20,000 documented lies he has told since becoming president.

He said he is taking a drug that doctors are warning us about the potentially deadly side effects. Hydroxycloroquine is its name. Trump has been touting its supposed effect in fighting the coronavirus, even though doctors are quite reluctant to avoid prescribing it as a cure for the killer virus.

Trump blurted it out today. He said he has been taking hydroxycloroquine for about two weeks. He said the White House physician effectively told him “Sure, why not?” when Trump asked whether it was OK to take the drug.

I do not believe Donald Trump is taking the drug.

I do believe he lied to us once again.

Why would he lie about this? I haven’t a clue.

It merely is that physicians worth a damn wouldn’t prescribe this drug as an antidote against COVID-19. I do not believe, therefore, that the White House doc gave the green light for the president of the United States to take a drug that is far from a proven remedy for this viral infection.

“What do you have to lose?” Trump keeps asking about hydroxychloroquine. The answer from many doctors has been clear and concise: Your life.

And yet we now have the president making a potentially reckless declaration that well could encourage Americans to follow this nimrod’s lead down a dangerous path. Let us remember that this is moron who said we could ponder whether to ingest “disinfectants” to fight the virus. Now this.

Reprehensible.

medical news

‘We’re back’ … umm, no we aren’t

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Donald John Trump’s state of denial is breathtaking in its scope.

He said this past week that “vaccine or no vaccine … we’re back.” 

Actually, Mr. POTUS, we aren’t back. We are far from “back.” Thousands of Americans are still dying daily. Thousands more of us are getting sick. Take away the decline in death and infection in New York, and the rest of the country is still spiking.

Take a look at Texas — where my family and I live — and we see a surge in infection.

So while the president can bellow, bluster, bloviate all he wants about us being “back,” the reality tells us something quite different.

The death toll has surpassed 90,000 on its way to 100,000 Americans dying. Who knows when it will end? Trump doesn’t know. Neither do the medical experts he has brought aboard to coordinate the pandemic response.

So, Donald Trump needs to do us all a favor … and keep his trap shut!

national news

Trump vs. Obama … ‘er Biden?

Donald Trump has been asking for it. He’s been needling, ridiculing and criticizing his immediate presidential predecessor since the moment he won the 2016 election.

Now he’s getting a portion of what he has dished out. He doesn’t like it. He called former President Barack Obama a “grossly incompetent president.” Indeed, Trump’s response to Obama’s chiding tells me plenty about the fundamental differences between these two individuals.

One of them is urbane, erudite, sophisticated. He speaks with high-minded nobility, such as what we heard Saturday night during his “virtual” commencement remarks to the nation’s high school class of 2020.

The other one is, well, crude, petulant, petty. He resorts to name-calling. He deals in innuendo, defamation of character. We have heard that, too, and we’re going to hear a lot more of it from this fellow.

Barack Obama and Donald Trump just might go at each other’s throats before this election season winds down.

But wait! Only one of these guys is running for public office in 2020. It’s Trump! He’s got an opponent out there and it’s not Barack Obama! It’s the guy who served nobly for two terms as vice president of the United States during the Obama administration.

Joe Biden has been holed up in his Wilmington, Del., basement during the coronavirus pandemic. Meanwhile, the former president has endorsed Biden’s presidential candidacy and has made it abundantly clear he intends to work hard to ensure his election this November.

Biden and Obama, though, have a difficult dance to perform. Biden will emerge in due course — and I hope it’s soon — as the Democratic Party’s titular leader. He slogged and slugged his way through a grueling primary process against a record number of primary opponents. Biden stands alone as Donald Trump’s most pressing immediate political threat.

However, Barack Obama’s standing as the nation’s most engaging political figure threatens to eclipse the former vice president. None of this, of course, doesn’t matter one damn bit to Donald Trump, who’ll continue his insufferable tirades against the former president.

Through it all, we just might be able to take a full measure of the smallness of the individual who wants a second term as president of the United States. If Barack Obama can reveal more of that to us through his measured, dignified commentary on the quality of our current leadership, then so much the better … for Joe Biden.

State news

Time to re-impose restrictions in Texas?

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What the hell?

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has issued a reopening strategy for Texas business in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic. What, then, is one of the results? A spike in COVID-19 infection throughout the state!

Texas beaches have reopened. Texas business has restarted, with limited capacity mandated by the governor. People are getting haircuts and getting their manicures, pedicures and other cosmetic enhancements.

Texans also are getting more exposed to the viral infection at an alarmingly increasing rate.

A lot of us have expressed concern about this decision to reopen the state. I had some hope that Abbott would make good on his pledge to rely on “data and the doctors” to make decisions relating to this reopening matter. Maybe he has, but the data and the docs might have misjudged the result.

As ABC News reports, the Texas infection spike hasn’t resulted in a total that rivals what has happened in New York, but clearly the infection rate has not yet “flattened out.”

This makes me ask: Should the governor re-impose the restrictions he put out when the pandemic took root in Texas and around the world?

Whatever he decides, know this: Yours truly isn’t changing a thing. We are going to keep sheltering in place.

You also may take this to the bank … if you dare venture out: This trend makes a mockery of Donald Trump’s assertion that we’ve turned the corner on the pandemic.

The disease is still winning this war against humanity.

medical news, science news

‘I don’t know who he is; I’ve never met him’

Donald J. Trump’s response to the scathing testimony from a fellow he demoted in the midst of an infectious disease pandemic speaks volumes to me.

Dr. Richard Bright is now a whistleblower who is reporting to Congress about what he believes are serious shortcomings in Trump’s response to the coronavirus pandemic. Bright once led the administration’s effort to search for a vaccine to fight the virus, but then questioned whether Trump was correct to push a drug with little known affect on the COVID-19 virus.

Trump got angry and pushed Bright aside, sent him to a midlevel post in the National Institutes of Health.

OK, so Trump responded Thursday to a question about Bright’s testimony. He said he doesn’t “know him; I’ve never met him.” He said he doesn’t “want to meet him” and that Bright sounds like a “disgruntled employee.”

Let’s ponder that response for just a moment.

If Donald Trump is telling the truth — and that is a highly dubious presumption — then he has just revealed to the world precisely why his pandemic response has been such a hideous failure to date. The man chosen to lead the vaccine research effort is unknown to the commander in chief who wants to be known as a “wartime president”?

Suppose, too, that Trump is lying, that he really has met Dr. Bright; that tells me plenty as well about Trump’s reliability, his leadership and his command of the situation.

Bright said the fight against the pandemic lacks a coordinated national effort. Gosh, who do you suppose should be providing that national coordination? Hey, I’ll take a stab at it: The responsibility belongs to the president of the United States.

He has failed!

As Bright told the congressional committee: “We’re in deep s**t.”

Sports news

Will there be a fan-less baseball season? Well … probably

At the risk of being called a Dickey Downer, or a Negative Ned, I need to suggest what is looking patently obvious to this baseball fan.

If the Major Leagues suit up for the 2020 season while we are fighting a deadly worldwide viral pandemic, the athletes will play in front of themselves and each other. No fans in the stands. No cheering from behind the dugout. No curtain calls after dramatic home runs.

MLB is considering an 82-game schedule to begin around the Fourth of July. I understand that the team owners have signed off on it, but need approval by the players union to close the deal.

Yes, we have all these beautiful baseball venues around the country that will be devoid of fans. Why? The answer is obvious: Social distancing requirements — which are essential to stemming the infection rate — will not allow fans to be crammed into the stadiums next to each other.

Am I OK with that, with playing these games before tens of thousands of empty seats? Absolutely. I want to see baseball return.

Now … I want to speak briefly to my friends in Amarillo, who have been awaiting the start of the Texas League AA season featuring their beloved Amarillo Sod Poodles. The last time I commented on the team’s immediate future, a sorehead among the Sod Poodles fan club accused me of being Mr. Negativity.

I hate to say this, but Hodgetown — the shiny new ballpark built along Buchanan Street in downtown Amarillo — should remain empty, too, even if the Sod Poodles take the field for some hardball.

Yes, this pains me terribly. The ballpark came into being with considerable fanfare and much-deserved hype. It’s a first-class venue. The Sod Poodles’ fans packed the place for virtually every home game in 2019.

For the sake of community health — which at this moment appears to be teetering with a rash of outbreaks — the Sod Poodles should play their games before no one.

Baseball fans all across this great country are going to suffer the same withdrawal. If that’s what must happen, well, there’s always next season … or we can hope.

national news

Trump launches scorched-Earth retreat

I never thought Donald Trump could out-do himself while he was being impeached by the House of Representatives.

He made big news daily with his idiotic pronouncements and allegations against House Democrats, special counsel Robert Mueller and the media.

However, by golly, the Dipsh** in Chief has done it. He has buried us under an avalanche of even weirder statements.

He has accused President Barack Obama of committing an illegal act. He wants the former president to testify before Congress about allegations that Trump hasn’t specified.

The president’s former pandemic guru has testified that Trump sought to promote an unproven drug as a “miracle” cure. Trump said he has never met Dr. Richard Bright and doesn’t “want to meet him.”

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s leading infectious disease expert, told Congress that it would be unwise to rush to reopen schools; Trump said Fauci gave an “unacceptable answer” to that matter.

Trump continues to slander his opponents daily. For example, he has accused MSNBC commentator Joe Scarborough — a former Republican congressman who’s turned into a Trump critic — of committing murder.

I cannot keep up with this madness. Donald Trump continues to dig himself more deeply into a hole he began digging the moment he announced his presidential campaign in the summer of 2015.

Sigh …

My pandemic fatigue is reaching, dare I say it, epidemic proportion

medical news

Are we moving too quickly to reopen?

Social distancing is the weapon of necessity in this fight we are waging against the coronavirus pandemic.

Get a load of this bit of news out of Amarillo: Hundreds of meatpacking plant employees aren’t showing any symptoms of the COVID-19 virus — but are testing positive anyway for the viral infection.

Which makes social distancing and the wearing of masks so very imperative, according to Amarillo Mayor Ginger Nelson.

“We are encountering people who are asymptomatic,” said Mayor Nelson in remarks to KAMR/KCIT-TV in Amarillo. “They don’t know they’re sick, but they have the virus and they’re at the grocery store, you’re encountering them, and that’s why it’s so important to wear a mask. You could be that person.”

And yet we keep hearing from fools such as, oh, the president of the United States who tell us how vital it is to reopen the country, to get the economy jump started. Donald Trump cares less about the health of Americans than he does about the state of the economy and whether its current crisis bodes ill for his re-election chances.

Moreover, he is enlisting many of his gubernatorial allies — such as Texas Gov. Greg Abbott — in pushing forward possibly too quickly.

The Tyson Foods plant in Amarillo is a huge employer. More than 3,500 employees got tested for the virus, many of whom tested positive. I am forced to ask: Is it worth exposing those employees to serious illness or even death? I would say with emphasis: Hell no!

national news

What happens if the unthinkable happens?

Donald John Trump is tempting fate … bigly!

The president of the United States continues to forgo donning a mask while key aides are coming down with COVID-19. The coronavirus has invaded the West Wing of the White House, where they make key decisions affecting all manner of U.S. foreign and domestic policy.

So, it’s fair to ask: What happens if Donald Trump tests positive for the virus? Hey, what happens also if Vice President Pence tests positive for it? I mean, his press secretary has come down with it.

Trump, Pence and other key aides are rubbing shoulders in the West Wing. Led by the president who says he would look “ridiculous” wearing a mask, many of them are ignoring guidelines established by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; they include wearing a mask and keeping an appropriate “social distance” among themselves.

Let me be clear: I do not want the president to get sick. Nor the vice president. I have stated my indifference to Trump’s well-being, but that doesn’t mean I wish him ill.

It’s just that the Egomaniac in Chief has staked out a dangerous position with regard to self-protection during this time of extreme peril. No president, not even this one, should expose himself to the dangers of a potentially fatal disease. In this case, that disease has crept into the White House’s inner sanctum.

If the doctors order Trump to isolate himself, they will be acting to protect the integrity of our democratic republic. Let’s be mindful that Donald Trump is not a young man. I understand that some physicians have declared him, in effect, to be the strongest human being ever elected president. OK, I exaggerate, but you get my drift.

This clown needs to lose the “look ridiculous” argument and start demonstrating that he’s taking this matter as seriously as most of the rest of us.

I am a critic of the president. I won’t ever apologize for that. I also do not want to see my government, the one that gets my money, weakened at the center of its executive power because the chief exec doesn’t take this danger seriously.

Stand by, Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

medical news

Stop declaring ‘victory’ over COVID-19

President George W. Bush had his infamous “Mission Accomplished” moment aboard the aircraft carrier during the Iraq War.

The president landed on the deck of the carrier, climbed out of the jet, changed into his civvies, stood under that big sign hanging off the conning tower and then said he had accomplished our mission after we captured Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. Well, it turned out we didn’t accomplish our mission. Many more Americans have died in Iraq.

Fast-forward to this week. Donald Trump stood in front of a banner that says “America Leads the World in Testing.” No. We do not.

At issue is the testing regimen being implemented to fight to coronavirus. It has killed more than 80,000 Americans.

Trump, though, keeps telling lies about our testing program. Yes, we have tested more people than any other country that is fighting the pandemic. However, the total number of tests is irrelevant.

The operative number must be the percentage of population that has been tested for the COVID-19 virus.

Donald Trump’s press briefing Monday was an exercise in deception, deflection and misdirection. He keeps boasting about the testing procedures that the administration has been ramping up. Yes, it is good that we’re getting more Americans tested for the coronavirus. However, we are way behind the curve.

This country comprises 330 million (give or take) individuals. Roughly 2 percent of them have been tested for the viral infection. How does that 2 percent figure stack up against other nations that have suffered from the virus? Not good, man.

Still, Donald Trump continues to foment yet another lie. It’s part of his modus operandi. He cannot tell the truth. It’s either a genetic disposition or a willful act. I’ll go with the latter, because I believe that Trump knows he is lying but he thinks he can get away with it.

So it goes with this idiocy about coronavirus testing.

The raw numbers tell only part of the story. This large, prosperous, powerful nation is — to borrow a phrase — leading from behind on a crisis remedy where we should be lapping the field.