Tag Archives: pandemic

medical news, national news

It’s worse than ’embers,’ Mr. POTUS

Donald Trump keeps using the term “embers” to describe what is happening in the country with regard to the coronavirus pandemic.

He tells us that the “embers” stay hot while infections continue to spiral upward. I want to suggest that the problem is far worse than “embers.” It is, as Fox News reporter noted in an interview with Trump, like a “forest fire.”

Donald Trump has just concluded his “briefing” on the response to the outbreak, a term I use guardedly. I don’t even like the word, as these White House appearances turn immediately into a campaign-style riff from the president.

I will Trump credit for this, however: He did say the pandemic is going to worsen before it gets better. Good. At least he is acknowledging what scientists have been saying for, oh, months!

It’s also clear to me why Trump didn’t invite Dr. Anthony Fauci to attend this event. Reporters gathered in the room would have asked Fauci to comment on the performance of the White House response task force and I am quite certain he would say something quite different than what Trump keeps saying. We can’t have that now, can we.

I am not clear about why I bothered to watch and listen to the Liar in Chief’s statement today. He didn’t offer a single nugget of new information, he didn’t tell me something we haven’t heard ad nauseum about the “fantastic” job he is doing.

So, Trump has returned to the White House briefing room to tell us … nothing. Stay tuned. We’ll have more of the same.

national news

Trump to resume ‘briefing’ clown show

Well, let’s all get ready for it.

Donald Trump is going to take the podium once again in the White House press briefing room to provide daily updates on the government’s feckless response to the coronavirus pandemic.

Wow. What could go wrong?

Oh, wait! At one of the final such “briefings” that Trump delivered you might recall he talked about ingesting “disinfectants” as a way to cleanse the body of the killer virus. You know, snort a little Lysol or Clorox and you’ll be as good as new … just like that!

It didn’t go well, as you also might remember. That’s when Trump stopped delivering the hocus-pocus “briefings” in front of actual experts such as Drs. Deborah Birx and Anthony Fauci.

Trump is about to come back. The clown show resumes.

national news

How will history judge this guy?

It is not too early to start wondering how historians are going to write the saga associated with Donald John Trump’s time as president.

I hope they can start their drafts soon, as in right after the November 2020 election. I am not a historian, although I’ve witnessed enough presidential history to see how some men have grown into more respected, if not revered, individuals in the years since they left office.

How will Trump fare? My goodness, I cannot fathom how this guy can redeem himself.

The coronavirus pandemic has exposed for all the world to see clearly how this man is unprepared to lead a nation. He was elected in 2016 to “drain the swamp,” and to deploy his business executive’s skill to manage the massive government machinery. The pandemic struck at the beginning of this year and — boom!– just like, the nation collapsed.

Still, this clown keeps yapping about the “success” he has enjoyed. He tells us that he’s doing a “fantastic” job. My goodness gracious, he has done precisely the opposite .

This, though, is just the latest example of the trashing that has occurred on Trump’s watch as president. He has destroyed our alliances, he has turned us from the most indispensable nation into an international laughingstock. Trump has lied continually, incessantly, gratuitously. He is caught telling lies and then tells us he isn’t lying, that the “fake news” is reporting falsehoods.

How does a historian portray all of this? How do the men and women who write our history tell that story for generations that will come along and read about the aberration that occurred in 2016 and — I do hope — ends in just a few weeks from today.

I don’t envy historians the task that awaits them.

International news, Sports news

COVID response turns U.S. into pariah nation

The world’s most powerful nation, the one that sees itself as “indispensable,” has become a pariah state.

How do I know this? Well, a story in the Sunday Dallas Morning News caught my attention. It says that with Major League Baseball about to start, the Toronto Blue Jays — the only MLB team headquartered in a foreign land — will not be allowed to play games at their home ballpark.

And why is that?

The Canadian government led by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau does not want the Blue Jays players infecting anyone with the COVID-19 virus they might have acquired while playing hardball in the United States.

Roll that around for a just a moment.

The European Union has banned travel between the United States and all 27 countries that comprise the EU. The EU says travel also is banned from Russia and Brazil along with the United States because none of those nations has controlled the COVID virus sufficiently.

Now this from Canada.

Major League Baseball prides itself as being an international attraction. Indeed, many of its top players hail from places like the Dominican Republic, Cuba, Japan, Mexico and, yes, Canada. The Blue Jays are a premier MLB franchise.

And yet, the nation with the world’s greatest scientific researchers, the world’s pre-eminent medical establishments, the strongest military (by far!) in the history of the world cannot control a virus sufficiently for a neighboring country to allow its lone baseball franchise to play home games.

To think, therefore, that Donald John Trump calls his disastrous non-response to the pandemic a success. That he’s doing a fabulous job of controlling the virus. That the numbers of infection and death are the product of “fake news.”

My astute wife of nearly 49 years puts it in perspective. “I don’t care what the numbers say,” she told me. “I know that hospital workers are exhausted from the work they are doing to keep these patients alive.”

So, now we hear that a Major League Baseball team will be denied the chance to play baseball on its home field because its athletes will have traveled to the United States.

Is this how you “make America great again”?

national news

Not so fast on ‘moving on,’ Mr. POTUS

Donald J. “Buck Passer in Chief” Trump reportedly is trying to change the subject from the coronavirus pandemic that has grabbed the attention of the entire planet.

No such luck, Mr. President. He’s got a full-blown crisis on his hands and we expect our head of state/commander in chief to take charge and to, um, lead us.

Oh, wait! This guy can’t do it. Dang! I damn near forgot. That must explain why he wants to change the subject. Why he wants to move on to other matters that have nothing to do with death, disease, heartache, misery, mourning. He wants to talk about the economy, which certainly is serious stuff. It doesn’t have as much to do about stemming the pandemic infection as dealing directly with strategies aimed at quelling the infection rate.

I will concede that devoting the vast bulk of Trump’s attention to this crisis requires him to acknowledge — in some fashion — that his strategy to date has failed. He won’t do that, either. He cannot admit failure, even when statistics demonstrate categorically that he has failed.

At some level, I happen to agree with Trump that we need to get the economy rolling again. I am with him … to a point! The first priority must be stemming the infection/hospitalization/death rate from the coronavirus. He isn’t listening to those who agree with my point of view. He is listening instead to those who have bought into the claptrap that the virus is a “hoax,” and that the media are employing scare tactics to frighten American needlessly.

Donald Trump needs to get to work — finally! — to assemble a coherent national strategy.

Aww, what the hell. He won’t heed these words, either. I just had to get them off my chest.

education news, medical news

What is White House hiding now?

The White House is playing a stupid game of keep-away with the U.S. Congress.

What it is keeping away from Congress happens to be information vital to the public — you know, the folks who pay the bills in Washington — on the best way to resume public education for our children.

The White House has decided to block Centers for Disease Control and Prevention director Dr. Robert Redfield from testifying to the House Education and Labor Committee. The panel wants to know about the strategies being developed to allow schools to reopen eventually in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Let me see. What might be the White House be fearing? Oh, might it fear that Redfield is going to say something that contradicts Donald J. Trump’s desire to reopen the schools this fall without little or no regard to the effects of the pandemic that still is raging across the country? That’s what it looks like to me. And to others, I should add.

According to CNN.com: “Dr. Redfield has testified on the Hill at least four times over the last three months. We need our doctors focused on the pandemic response,” a White House official said, confirming the decision to block the CDC’s participation in the hearing. But a spokesman for the House Education and Labor Committee said the panel had requested testimony from any CDC official, not necessarily Redfield.

The CDC is one of the go-to agencies in this fight against the pandemic. It seems to me that hearing from the head of this critical agency is, shall we say, critical to understanding what’s at stake and what the government is doing to protect our lives.

What in the name of government transparency are trying to hide within the West Wing?

education news

Happy to report sanity in our local school system

I am delighted to report some good news — if you allow me to call it that — regarding the COVID-19 pandemic.

It is that our granddaughter and her brother are going to be kept out of their classrooms for at least the first semester of the upcoming academic year. We got the word from our son and daughter-in-law that the Allen (Texas) Independent School District, absent any guarantee that it can prevent spread of the virus in schools, has decided to give parents the option of online schooling at home.

Our son and daughter-in-law have exercised that option.

Thus, the Allen ISD will not follow Donald Trump’s blind and stupid call to reopen our classrooms despite the surge in coronavirus infection in states such as ours.

For the president to insist on school reopening is beyond irresponsible. He exhibits no outward interest in protecting the lives of our precious children and the teachers who expose themselves to potential illness or worse.

So local school districts here in North Texas are calling their own shots. Princeton ISD, where my wife and I live, isn’t going along with the president’s urging. Neither are the Amarillo and Canyon ISDs, from where we moved two years ago. They are going to online teaching, giving students materials they can study at home.

Our granddaughter and her brother — who is entering his senior year in high school — did well in the second half of the preceding school year learning at home. They will do so again once the new year begins in August.

Meanwhile, the search for vaccines continues. May the brainiacs assigned to find them hit pay dirt sooner rather than later.

media news, medical news, national news

Pence is wrong; media telling the truth

REUTERS/Nicholas Pfosi

Donald Trump’s top-tier toadie, the vice president, has decided that the media are to blame for sowing seeds of panic among Americans concerned about the coronavirus pandemic.

Mike Pence has been wrong about a lot of things. This one ranks near the top.

Vice President Pence spoke this week in defense of the Trump administration’s handling of the pandemic that has killed 138,000 Americans and infected more than 1 million of us. He then offered a critique of the media, declaring that the media have hit the panic button.

Pence keeps referring to the “whole of government response” that he says has been a success. It has not!

A nation with 4 percent of the world’s population has more than 25 percent of the world’s deaths from the pandemic. That’s how you define success, Mr. VPOTUS?

Donald Trump has failed to lead the nation. He is challenging the expertise of actual medical experts. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s guidelines for school reopening have been pushed to the back of the shelf as Trump insists that schools reopen this fall with classrooms full of children and teachers.

Do I need to remind everyone that Trump said at the beginning of the outbreak that it would disappear … just like that? It hasn’t.

Meanwhile, the media are doing what they are empowered by the U.S. Constitution to do. They are seeking to hold government accountable, which is part of the media’s mission. Every president — until Donald Trump — has understood the media’s role and they have accepted their role as part of the job they inherited.

To that end, Mike Pence is far from alone in criticizing the media’s coverage of the pandemic. He is part of the Trumpster Corps of loyalists that has endorsed Trump’s idiocy that the media are “the enemy of the people.” Therefore, when the media deliver bad or “negative” news, the Trumpsters call it “fake,” when in fact the news is as real as it gets.

This media criticism, which is unfounded, cuts me to the quick. I loved pursuing my journalism craft for more than three decades. It hurts to see newspapers floundering as they are these days. However, there still is some great journalism being practiced. The media are doing their job. They are telling us the hard truth about a disease that is killing and sickening too many Americans.

A big part of that truth the media are telling is that Donald Trump is failing this supreme test of presidential leadership.

medical news, national news

What happened to the summer pandemic miracle?

I’m trying to recall something I thought I heard from Donald John “Miracle Man in Chief” Trump.

Back when the coronavirus was taking wing, I thought I heard Trump declare that the virus would disappear miraculously when temperatures heated up in the country. Didn’t he say that?

Well, here we are. The southern regions of the country, from Arizona to Florida, are roasting in 100-plus-degree temperatures.

Oh, wait! Where is the spike in COVID-19 infection occurring? It’s in the southern parts of the United States of America.

So, what happened to Trump’s prediction? Hey, I get it. He didn’t know what the hell he was talking about then. He doesn’t know now.

medical news, national news

Georgia governor: No. 1 knucklehead

I hereby nominate Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp as Knucklehead of the Month, maybe the year.

How did the Republican governor earn this dubious distinction? By issuing an executive order that overrides local officials in Georgia who have ordered residents to wear masks to help prevent the spread of COVID-19.

What in the name of public safety has gotten into Kemp?

Kemp issued the order because, by golly, he just doesn’t see the need to wear masks. He ignores the stern and serious advice from damn near every medical professional on Earth who tell us that masks — along with social distancing — are sure-fire preventatives against the disease that continues to sicken and kill Americans.

I am heartened that fellow Republican governors — such as Texas’ Greg Abbott — see the situation quite differently. Abbott has gone in the opposite direction, ordering masks when Texans venture into indoor settings.

Moreover, companies that are doing business in Georgia have ordered their employees and customers who enter their establishments to wear masks. That means that Gov. Kemp can issue executive orders until the cows come home, some folks in his state aren’t going to listen.

This is part and parcel of what has happened in this country. We have politicized a global pandemic that is taking no prisoners. The coronavirus has killed 138,000 Americans. It has sickened more than 3 million of us. Our nation’s rate of death and infection far exceed the percentage of the worldwide population that resides in the United States.

And yet we have Republican politicians — led by the Idiot in Chief, Donald Trump — flouting medical advice by refusing to wear masks. Their political followers walk in lockstep with them, refusing to maintain proper distance. What happens then? The rate of infection skyrockets, right along with the rate of hospitalization … and death!

Then we get my nominee for Knucklehead of the Month issuing an idiotic executive order that seeks to override local officials’ tough decisions on how to keep their constituents safe from a viral infection that could kill them.

Stupidity is alive inside the Georgia statehouse.