Tag Archives: pandemic

medical news, national news

Here’s your COVID outbreak

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Having wished Donald and Melania Trump a speedy recovery from the coronavirus, I now wish to slap the sh** out of The Donald for what he has produced.

He has delivered us an actual “outbreak” of infections caused by his refusal to wear a mask with others around him or to demand that everyone in his presence exercise social distancing in the wake of the pandemic that continues to kill too many Americans every single day.

Several people who were hobnobbing with Trump prior to his diagnosis now have tested positive for the virus. Let’s see:

Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, U.S. Sens. Mike Lee of Utah, Thom Tillis of North Carolina and Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, former White House senior policy adviser Kellyanne Conway, White House aide Hope Hicks, at least three White House beat reporters, and perhaps a host of others all have the disease. Have I missed anyone?

Yep, I would call that an “outbreak.”

Donald Trump insisted on staging those rallies. Crowds showed up sans masks. They were crowded together. They were cheering, laughing, carrying on as if they didn’t have a care in the world … all the while transmitting COVID germs among themselves.

There was the POTUS, taking it all in.

He didn’t give a rip about the safety of those who adore his presence as president of the United States.

Now he is paying the price. So are those who were careless and thoughtless enough to forgo the safety procedures preached to them by the doctors and assorted scientific experts.

Whatever happened to leading by example? Donald Trump is leading by setting the wrong example at every possible turn.

I still wish everyone a speedy recovery. I also still wish them all to be tossed out of public office as soon as is humanly possible.

medical news

‘Hoax’ snags POTUS

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

If there is a silver lining behind the news that Donald and Melania Trump have tested positive for the COVID-19 virus, it is that we no longer will hear (I hope) Donald Trump refer to the coronavirus as a “hoax.”

He had better take it seriously from this moment forward. He should set the example he should have set from Day One. Trump needs to understand as well that the administration has nothing “under control” and that the pandemic is still raging at full force.

The diagnosis is concerning in the extreme. The nation’s executive branch needs to function fully and it cannot when the individual at the top of the chain of command is recovering from a virus that could potentially do serious harm to him.

The “hoax” nonsense has now been relegated to being a thing of the past. It’s real and Donald Trump no longer can dismiss it publicly as something akin to the flu.

national news

Are you surprised to hear this news?

NICHOLAS KAMM/AFP/Getty Images

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

I just have to ask: How many of us were really surprised to awaken today to the news that Donald and Melania Trump had tested positive for the coronavirus?

Not me. I mean, c’mon! The president speaks of the pandemic as if it’s “under control,” he dismisses the wearing of masks, he hold rallies with crowds of adoring fans packed shoulder to shoulder in front of him and one of his closest aides, Hope Hicks, tests positive for the virus.

Now, having said that, I do not want the first couple to suffer grievously from the disease. Accordingly, I was pleased to learn this morning that their young son, Barron, tested negative; so let’s hope the youngster keeps his good health.

However, the very notion that Donald Trump would be so terribly dismissive of the pandemic and would mock Joe Biden — the Democratic nominee who is running against him — for wearing a mask only tempts me to say, “I told you so.”

I won’t speak specifically to what this bombshell news will do to the presidential campaign. It’s too early to tell whether it will sound the death knell for Trump’s effort to get re-elected.

The news, though, should bring the administration’s non-response to the pandemic back to the top of voters’ awareness. Trump’s mishandling of the initial response now has been essentially validated by Trump’s own words, as he spoke them to Washington Post reporter/editor Bob Woodward. He knew initially that the pandemic would kill many Americans, but lied to the public about the looming threat.

Trump has sought to change the subject. He cannot possibly change it now.

My wish is for Trump and the first lady to get well … and then for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris to defeat him handily on Election Day.

The time has come for some truth-telling at the White House.

national news

Mr. POTUS, you have failed this test

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

The juxtaposition of two events is startling to behold.

Donald Trump told Fox News that he gives himself an A+ grade in his handling of the coronavirus pandemic.

He said that on the day the U.S. death count from the virus surpassed 200,000 people. Their lives have ended and the lives of their loved ones have been changed forever.

Outside the White House, a reporter asked Trump how he responds to the death count. His answer? He turned to another reporter and asked, “Next question?”

The commander in chief cannot speak to the death count, he won’t answer for it, he won’t hold himself accountable at any level for the misery that has occurred on his watch.

Yet he grades himself with an A+?

Is this guy serious? Of course he thinks of himself in the most glowing, glorious and gleeful terms.

The rest of us know better.

local news

Hair cutter/law breaker seeks Senate post

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Shelly Luther might be a wonderful hair stylist.

Is she qualified to serve in the Texas Senate? Not even close!

The Dallas hair salon owner is running for a seat being vacated by state Sen. Pat Fallon, who is likely to be elected to the U.S. House from Northeast Texas, succeeding Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe, the Fourth Congressional District’s former congressman.

I cannot ascertain how Luther will do when they count the ballots on Sept. 29 for the Texas Senate District 30 seat. I hope she loses the special election. She is trying to parlay her 15-minutes-of-fame status into a political office.

You will recall that Luther defied an order from Gov. Greg Abbott to close her business during the pandemic that is still sickening and killing Texans. Luther decided to forgo the mask. She was cited by authorities, she spent a little time in jail. She came out and hasn’t stopped talking since.

U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz came to Dallas from Houston to get a haircut at Luther’s salon. That, too, was a bit of political showmanship.

Whatever, Luther is another in a long line of grandstanders who seek to use their celebrity status as a pathway to public office. However, she does have some big financial backing. As the Texas Tribune reported: The conservative megadonor Tim Dunn is backing Shelley Luther in her Texas Senate bid with a $1 million loan, a large amount for such a race.

Look, she isn’t qualified. I would be willing to wager that she likely doesn’t know the first, second or third thing about legislation or how to legislate. But by golly, she wants to be elected as one of the state’s 31 senators.

Sheesh! Spare me the malarkey about a businesswoman seeking to “reform” the system of government.

I see her signs all over the place. In Farmersville. In Princeton, where I live. Even along the Central Expressway in McKinney and Allen. I haven’t seen any TV ads touting Luther’s desire to represent Senate District 30.

I am wondering what such an ad would trumpet: Elect the businesswoman who decided to break the law and expose herself and her customers to a deadly pandemic.

Give me a break!

***

Blogger’s note: This item was posted initially on KETR-FM’s website.

medical news

Mr. POTUS … shut up!

(AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

I am running out of ways to say with any degree of decorum what needs to be said out loud and with all due vigor.

Mr. President: Shut the fu** up!

He has contradicted medical experts all along during this fight against the coronavirus pandemic. Drs. Anthony Fauci and Deborah Birx have sought to offer expert analysis of how to protect us against the killer, only to have Donald Trump slap them down. How in the name of medical expertise they can continue to work for this guy is beyond me.

Now comes the head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, another pretty renowned physician named Robert Redfield.

Dr. Redfield told a congressional hearing this week that a vaccine being developed to prevent the coronavirus won’t be available until second or third quarter of 2021. Trump, though, keeps yapping about it being available by late this year.

What does Trump know that the head of the CDC not know? Not a damn thing! Indeed, Dr. Redfield seems quite certain in his prediction of when a vaccine would be available for general distribution, yet Trump said that Redfield is “confused” and that he “didn’t understand the question.”

Good grief. I heard the question. I watched Redfield’s response. He was bright-eyed and alert and answered it firmly.

So we’re supposed to ignore the analysis of a highly trained medical professional and heed the word of a liar/political hack?

No thanks. I’ll pass on that one.

I just want the president to shut his mouth. I want him to stop talking to me. He has nothing to say that I want to hear.

This individual is putting millions of Americans in dire jeopardy if they choose to heed his word over the word of an individual trained specifically to tell us the truth … even when it doesn’t fit a particular political narrative.

national news

Trump tries rhetorical magic tricks

1 Comment
(Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Wow! I couldn’t believe my ears.

A young woman asked Donald Trump at an ABC News town hall meeting why he lied about the seriousness of the pandemic that was bearing down on the nation.

Trump’s answer was astonishing. He said he didn’t “downplay” it, but “up-played” the seriousness of it by acting immediately to shut down travel from China, where the virus supposedly originated. His quick action at the front end of the pandemic saved “millions of lives,” he told her.

Well … what do you know about that?

We happen to have his own voice recorded. It’s on the record forever and ever telling legendary reporter Bob Woodward that he did “downplay” the pandemic. “I still prefer” to downplay it, he told Woodward. Why? He said he didn’t want to “cause a panic” among Americans.

Holy crap, Mr. President!

What in the name of rhetorical flim-flammery is this guy trying to pull on us?

He lied to us. He stood there and told Woodward that the virus was a “killer” that would be worse than the most “strenuous flus,” and then told the public two weeks after revealing that information that the disease was “under control” and that it would be just like the flu.

That’s what I call “downplaying” the severity of a killer virus.

And so … Donald Trump lied once more to a young voter in front of millions of Americans.

Mr. President, we aren’t the rubes you seem to think we are.

national news

Trump endangers his fervent base

3 Comments

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Don’t you just know that Donald Trump doesn’t give a rip about the health and well-being of those who continue to fawn over his idiotic rants?

He is conducting indoor campaign rallies. The fans he attracts are sitting shoulder-to-shoulder, most of them without masks. They’re cheering his pronouncements, booing his references to the “fake news” media.

He is denigrating Democratic nominee Joe Biden’s care and caution against exposing his own fans to the coronavirus pandemic.

Trump is not to be derailed. He will continue to stage those rallies. They will be indoors. They’ll be full of the Trumpkin Corps faithful.

They also well might cause a serious spike in infection and, God forbid, death among those who ignore social distancing and masks.

Does any of this matter to Donald Trump? Hell no!

Is any of this a reason to perhaps rethink whether you want to support this guy’s bid for re-election to a second term as president? He says he cares about you.

The truth is he doesn’t.

medical news

By all means, HHS flack … hit the road

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Michael Caputo, an embattled communications chief for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, has issued an apology and says he is considering taking medical leave.

Good idea, dude. Make it a permanent leave.

Caputo apologized for bringing negative publicity onto HHS for remarks he made accusing the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention of conspiring to concoct bad news to undermine Donald J. Trump.

Of course, Caputo had no evidence to back it up. He just blurted it out. I also should point out that Caputo has zero public health experience and was put in his job as HHS flack as a political payoff from the Trump campaign.

The CDC is working overtime trying to find a way out of the pandemic crisis. To my way of thinking, the pros at the CDC have little time to conspire. They have their hands quite full trying to prevent more deaths and illness from the COVID-19 virus.

What we are witnessing is continued chaos among those in the Trump administration who supposedly are charged with delivering cogent messages on the nation’s ongoing fight against the coronavirus.

Instead we get nutty conspiracy theories by a top-level administration who doesn’t belong in the job he occupies.

Take your leave, Michael Caputo. Do not come back.

national news

2020: Year of the First Responder

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

I am pretty sure we all agree on this point: 2020 sucks out loud.

This calendar year has been one of the most eventful, consequential — and miserable — years many of us can remember. Our grandparents no doubt recall the Great Depression and then World War II. Then we had 1968, which brought the Vietnam War to a head and those terrible political assassinations.

But this year stands alone. The pandemic has killed hundreds of thousands of human beings. Now we have the fires that are sweeping through the three Pacific Coast states.

All of this is my way of saying that 2020 surely must be deemed The Year of the First Responder.

Heroes walk among us. They are the nurses and doctors who are tending to coronavirus patients. These nurses and doctors also are doubling as surrogate loved ones for patients who die alone; they cannot have their actual loved ones near them because of the highly infectious nature of the coronavirus, leaving the handholding to the medical pros who put their own lives on the line just tending to their patients.

Now comes the fires. The firefighters and police officers are plunging into the Hell on Earth in California, Oregon and Washington. They are running toward the flames. They are flying aircraft into the choking smoke. They are hugging victims of the fire, trying as best they can to lend comfort in a time of unspeakable tragedy.

Oh, we also have that presidential election coming up. Who’ll win it? Well, whether it’s Joe Biden or Donald Trump, the editors at Time magazine need not worry about naming one of them the magazine’s Person of the Year. They are playing second fiddle to the heroes in our hospitals, in our school classrooms, in our forests and our neighborhoods.

We all want the circumstances that are making this the most memorable year to end. I happen to stand in awe of those who are answering the call to help their fellow men and women in distress.

Stand tall, heroes.