Tag Archives: coronavirus

medical news, national news

Can’t stop thinking about heroes among us

It’s not that I want to stop thinking about them, but my thoughts keep returning to the heroes among us, the folks we too often take for granted.

Once we get past the pandemic that has effectively shut down the Texas and national economies, I would hope that we never take for granted the individuals and groups of individuals we continually salute in this time of extreme peril.

You know who they are: doctors, nurses, paramedics, firefighters and police officers; they are grocery store clerks, lawn care crews, mechanics of all stripes; truck drivers, ambulance drivers, taxi drivers, armored vehicle drivers; they are teachers, school administrators, custodial staff members, librarians, cafeteria cooks, office personnel.

I want to mention, too, the media representatives who report the news to us, who deliver the images, write the words, provide context and who offer snippets of critical thinking that make us analyze how well or poorly our government at all levels is responding to our needs.

They might be your next-door neighbor or the family across the street or the folks around the corner.

We’ll get past this crisis eventually. I hope it is sooner rather than later. I fear that it might stick around for a whole lot longer than we would prefer.

I long have lamented the overuse of the term “hero.” We attach that form of high praise to individuals who don’t deserve it. The individuals and groups we see each day performing above and beyond what we normally expect of them qualify as heroes.

The reporting of the myriad heroic acts we see daily will stay with me for a long time. I hope they stay with me forever. I do not want to lose sight of the good that is arising from the tragedy that has claimed so many lives, sickened so many more of us and delivered misery to so many loved ones around the world.

We all need to do better at thanking them for the work they do … for all of us!

Donald Trump

Hoping to be able to look with respect again at president

We are enmeshed in a global health crisis the likes of which very few of us ever have witnessed.

The last global pandemic to sweep the planet occurred while the nation was fighting World War I and, yes, there are a small number of centenarians who have a fleeting memory of the measles pandemic that killed millions of Americans.

Still, we also are facing a presidential election near the end of this year. I am trying the best I can to look ahead without taking my eye off the current crisis that has killed nearly 70,000 Americans.

I am longing for a return to a time when I can look with respect at the president of the United States. The current president never has won my trust, so it is difficult to say he “lost” my trust during this crisis, given that there was no trust for Donald Trump to lose in the first place.

I want to be crystal clear. When I refer to “respect for the president,” I refer only to the individual who holds the office. I continue to revere the presidency. The office commands all our respect. However, when I look at the individual sitting in the office — now that he has demonstrated beyond all manner of doubt his unfitness for that office — I am filled with horror and dread.

The juxtaposition of the coronavirus pandemic and the upcoming election only pulls the two events into sharp relief.

Trump had the opportunity to rise to the level of a leader. He could have executed his duties as comforter, consoler, unifier. He has failed miserably on all three and then some! He casts the health crisis almost solely in economic terms, hoping for all he’s worth that the economy will rebound in time for Trump to reap some political reward.

This con man/carnival barker/charlatan/fraud offers next to zero words of comfort to those who suffer. Listen to his comments about how “no one is more concerned about the death” than he is; listen to him follow that with the very next sentence that says “by the same token, we have to worry” about the economy.

This guy sickens me.

I want the next election to give us a leader who can behave with dignity and grace. It looks as though Joe Biden will be Trump’s foe this fall. Fine. I’m all in … now! I wasn’t in the beginning of this campaign, but given what we are witnessing from the Liar in Chief, I most certainly have become what you might call a Bidenista.

Those critics of this blog will laugh with scorn at what I will say next, but … whatever. I am truly weary of speaking so ill of the president. I want to be able to speak with high praise of the individual who serves as our head of state.

The current individual just can’t cut it. Nor will he ever cut it.

national news

Governors offer different approaches to reopening their states

As I watch different coastal-state governors issue their orders on the best way to reopen their states in this age of the coronavirus pandemic, I sit back and wonder: Which is the best way to go?

Do we follow the Florida model set by Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis and go virtually all the way right now, including allowing folks back onto the beach? Or do we follow the West Coast model set by Govs. Gavin Newsom of California, Kate Brown of Oregon and Jay Inslee of Washington, all Democrats, and keep the states shut down for, oh, another month … or maybe longer?

My vision mirrors the Left Coasters. Thus, I am weary of another coastal-state governor, Greg Abbott, right here in Texas, and whether he is moving too quickly despite his assertion that he is taking a go-slow approach to re-start the state economy.

My wife and I have concluded that we are going to continue living as we have for the past six weeks: While we’re at home, we won’t go anywhere unless it’s to purchase groceries or fuel for our truck; when we see our granddaughter, it will be while observing social distancing. We want to be careful, hoping that the longer we hold out the better the chances that they’ll come up with (a) a drug that treats the disease quickly or (b) a vaccine that makes us all immune to the killer virus. Just so you know, we are hauling our fifth wheel out and will take it to a state park in Oklahoma; while we’re there, we will live like the hermits we’ve been while sitting in our house.

I do not want to rush into anything. Period!

I never imagined that the discussion over the battle against this viral infection would devolve into yet another partisan battle. But it has.

Democrats and progressives favor a stricter approach to relaxing the restrictions. Republicans and conservatives seem to favor a quicker return to what they think is “normal,” hoping the economy bounces back and, oh yeah, helps Donald Trump win re-election.

Is there a closeted desire among Democrats to see Trump suffer politically because of the way he has mishandled the response and the economic disaster that mishandling has exacerbated? Oh, yes. For sure. However, I am not going to adopt the cynical view that progressive want to see more people suffer economically just because it reflects badly on the Liar in Chief.

Even if the economy recovers, there remains plenty of ammo to toss at Trump and his bungling, stumbling and incoherent response to the crisis as it developed.

He saw it coming and did nothing … until it was too late.

And so, here we are. Some states are moving rapidly to return to normal. Others are taking it slow. I will follow the go-slow approach, even if my state speeds up its reopening plan.

medical news, national news

‘Counterproductive’ to hear from expert on COVID-19? How so?

I believe I know how the White House defines as “counterproductive” any testimony before a congressional committee by a leading infectious disease expert on the fight to curb infection brought by the coronavirus.

Dr. Anthony Fauci won’t talk to the House Appropriations Committee next week. The White House has blocked him, calling his testimony “counterproductive.” The meaning there is that Fauci might testify with language that doesn’t heap flattery all over Donald J. Trump, therefore, it is counterproductive … in the White House view of things.

Oh, but Fauci will talk the next week to the Senate, which is controlled by Trump’s fellow Republicans. Yes, the House is in the hands of Democrats.

Counterproductive? Yep. That’s it. Right there.

The White House insists it isn’t muzzling Fauci. They aren’t seeking to silence the physician/scientist/researcher who’s been known since the outbreak of the viral infection to contradict statements delivered by the Stable Genius in Chief.

You can’t have that. You can’t have an actual expert telling us the truth to countermand the fiction and the lies being put forth by the liar masquerading as the president of the United States.

national news

Trump channels Charlottesville terrorists?

Some folks in Michigan got so angry this week that they stormed into the State Capitol building in Lansing, packing AR-15s, M-4s and AK-47s — assault weapons — and demanded that Gov. Gretchen Whitmer reopen the state’s business community.

Yep, they assaulted one of our bastions of representative democracy!

And what was the response from the president of the United States? Donald Trump wants Gov. Whitmer to negotiate with them.

According to The Guardian: “These are very good people, but they are angry. They want their lives back again, safely! See them, talk t them, make a deal.”

That statement came from Trump. I couldn’t help but think of what he said about the neo-Nazis, KKK members and white supremacists who confronted officials in Charlottesville, Va., in 2017; they instigated a riot over the taking down of Confederate statues, and a young woman was killed. Trump told us then that there were “very fine people, on both sides.”

Whitmer along with governors in many other states had shut down businesses and government offices in reaction to the coronavirus pandemic, which has killed 65,000 Americans and sickened more than 1 million of us. Whitmer is frightened of what the illness could do to the people she was elected to serve, so she acted.

Now we have demonstrators threatening the halls of power, brandishing weaponry into the State Capitol.

The president’s response was, quite naturally, disgraceful. He didn’t condemn the demonstrators for their show of intimidation. He didn’t counsel them to resist that kind of obnoxiousness. Trump didn’t pitch a more restrained response. Oh, no. He endorsed the mob scene; he gave them strength to continue their protests to lift the stay at home orders, the shelter in place restrictions, the social distancing that has proven to be effective in stemming the spread of the viral infection.

This isn’t leadership. Donald Trump is fomenting anger among a minority of Americans who are able to lift their voices above the majority of us who are concerned that governors in many states — such as Texas — might be moving too rapidly to “return to normal.”

medical news

VP dons a mask … how ’bout that?

REUTERS/Nicholas Pfosi

A healthy dose of public scorn is good for the conscience, isn’t that right, Vice President Mike Pence?

The VP showed up earlier this week at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., to talk to patients and staff members at the renowned research and teaching hospital. He flouted a Mayo policy requiring everyone in the building to wear a mask to protect against the coronavirus.

The public recrimination was stern and highly justified. Pence’s lame response was ridiculed.

OK. Then he goes to a General Motors plant and, bingo! He dons a mask right along with everyone else.

The veep didn’t look silly. He didn’t look unmanly. He looked as though he was following the rules.

Lesson learned? I hope so … but somehow, my doubts remain.

economic news, medical news

Trump ought to call those who have lost loved ones to the pandemic

Donald Trump isn’t wired to show compassion.

He doesn’t grieve openly. He won’t be seen wiping tears from his eyes. The president is too preoccupied with “making America great again,” and “telling it like it is.”

Donald Trump finds himself concocting rosy scenarios where none exists. He is separating himself from the suffering that is occurring in rural America and in our inner cities. He doesn’t seem interested in dealing on a personal basis with those who are suffering untold heartbreak.

As The New York Times reports: As he presides over the coronavirus pandemic and resulting economic collapse, Mr. Trump has hosted o called many people affected by the devastation, including health company executives, sports commissioners, governors, cruise ship company heads, religious leaders, telecommunications executives and foreign heads of state. One category that has to make his list: Americans who have lost someone to the pandemic.

I will not hold breath waiting to hear from anyone of those victims out here who has received a phone call from Donald Trump.

Trump’s failures as a leader are becoming even more evident than they were already. Many of us knew he lacked the compassion gene, or the gene that enables him to hurt along with the country. It’s just that watching all this play out in real time remains a sight to see.

While the country’s death toll soars past 60,000 individuals, Trump launches Twitter tirades and chastises: CNN, Democratic politicians, the media in general, China, MSNBC, Fox News. He can’t even take time on Twitter to say how profoundly sorry he is to hear about the misery that millions of Americans are feeling.

They are hurting because they have lost their jobs. Their loved ones have died from the viral infection. Their businesses are withering.

Donald Trump’s reaction? It is to blame others for his own failures and to lie about what a “fantastic” job he and his team are doing.

Sickening.

national news

COVID death toll = Vietnam War death toll

Elements of this image furnished by NASA

I have been trying to connect two sets of numbers and I must admit to finding difficulty in determining the relevance of one to the other.

It was 45 years ago today when the Vietnam War ended. The helicopters lifted off the U.S. Embassy in Saigon, carrying refugees and remaining U.S. Marines and embassy staff. The war was over. North Vietnamese tanks rolled into Saigon and the communists renamed the city after the late Ho Chi Minh.

More than 58,000 American servicemen and women and died in that war over the span of about 12 years. We now have lost more than 62,000 Americans to the COVID-19 virus and many observers have sought to link the two casualty counts.

What I reckon is most troubling is that Donald Trump — who aggressively sought to avoid taking part in the Vietnam War — now calls himself a “wartime president” leading a nation in the fight against what he describes as an “invisible enemy.”

Is that the relevant link? Hmm. Maybe.

I just have to conclude that Trump has failed to act like a wartime president. He has failed to provide anything that remotely falls into the category of national leader. He continues to provide happy talk about the “fantastic” work he says he and his team are doing; he trots out his know-nothing son-in-law, Jared Kushner, to proclaim laughably that the federal response is a “great success story.”

Perhaps that also provides some relevance between the Vietnam War and the current “war” against the coronavirus. Generals and politicians in the 1960s sought to persuade Americans that we were “winning” the Vietnam War. Presidents Johnson and Nixon lied to Americans; they instructed their military commanders to lie as well. If we move to the present day, we hear another president lie to us daily about the “success” we are experiencing.

Meanwhile, Donald Trump does not take more than 10 seconds per public pronouncement to speak at all about the human suffering that is unfolding in real time. He is failing to demonstrate any form of compassion or empathy, an unwritten but clearly understood part of the presidential job description.

The relevance between these two historical events — Vietnam and the current pandemic — can be found, I suppose, in the deceptions we were fed then and are being fed now.

economic news

Wondering about re-opening too soon

I believe I have developed an acute case of coronavirus pandemic heebie-jeebies.

It’s got me spooked, man. The nervous jerks kicked in when I heard about Texas’ major university systems announcing they intend to return to in-person classes this fall. All Texas public schools — from grade school to college — suspended that activity while the state launched its fight against the pandemic.

Now they’re going to open the classroom doors once more. In the fall. Just a short period after Gov. Greg Abbott launched his gradual, phased-in reopening of Texas business, which has ground to a halt during this pandemic matter.

There’s more to it, of course. The universities are going to play football. In the fall. How are they going to do that? How do they fill Memorial Stadium in Austin, or Kyle Field in College Station or Jones Stadium in Lubbock?

Do they put only a fraction of the fans into those big-time venues?

Hey, I am anxious for college football to start its season, too. I don’t have a Texas favorite, but I do have a favorite college team in my home state. The University of Oregon Ducks are facing the same quandary. In-person classes shut down there as well as in Texas. Furthermore, the Ducks have a big game scheduled Sept. 12 in Eugene against the Ohio State Buckeyes; I want the Ducks to beat them Buckeyes. But should they seek to do so this early?

I don’t know. I am leery. I am anxious. None of us wants a second or third hideous spike in infection or, worse, in death.

I simply fear the worst could happen if we move too quickly to return to what we used to think is “normal.” I believe we have crossed the threshold into the “new normal” that we need to prepare to accept as the way it will be.

medical news

VP Pence: As grotesque a liar as POTUS

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REUTERS/Nicholas Pfosi

That did it.

Vice President Mike Pence has demonstrated what I have long suspected, that he is as much a liar as Donald John Trump.

The VP showed up at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., walked into the renowned research hospital, saw that everyone around were wearing surgical masks to protect them from COVID-19 … but then greeted patients and staff without covering his own puss with a mask.

Now we hear from Karen Pence, the suck-up’s wife, that he didn’t know about Mayo’s mask-wearing policy until after he departed.

Good grief! Who do these people think they’re kidding?

Mike Pence’s own excuse for eschewing the mask was as lame as it gets. He said he is tested regularly for COVID-19, that he’s still infection free, so he felt safe going without a mask. Two points I want to make: Millions of Americans have gone without any form of testing at all, yet the VPOTUS says he is tested routinely; I guess power has its privileges. Also, he walked into a medical facility that declared it notified Pence directly about its policy requiring masks, which tells me he instructed his wife to lie, dragging her into the middle of this credibility chasm that afflicts the Donald Trump administration.

Mike Pence is as morally lacking in leadership credibility as the individual with whom he pretends to serve the nation that elected them. Disgraceful.