Tag Archives: pandemic

national news

They do it out of love

Americans from coast to coast to coast are honoring a new generation of heroes who’ve been called to action to fight an “invisible enemy” we’ve come to know as the coronavirus pandemic.

We’re holed up in our homes. Many of us — such as me — have been doing a lot of binge-watching of TV. Today has been devoted to watching a series I didn’t know existed until I found it on my Netflix channel.

It’s called “Medal of Honor.” It tells the stories of heroism that often defy human understanding. I’ve seen stories of brave warriors who fought — some to the death on the battlefield — from Italy, France and Germany, to Korea, to Vietnam and to Iraq and Afghanistan. All of these men received the Medal of Honor for their valor.

What is the thread that runs through all these tales of heroism? It is love. The men perform these acts out of love for their brothers in arms.

One story tells of such love between two Army soldiers who didn’t get along … until the bullets started flying in Afghanistan. One of the soldiers leapt into action to save his wounded comrade, the guy with whom he didn’t get along; he ran through a hail of bullets, tended to his comrade’s wounds, lifted him and carried him back to safety. The wounded soldier didn’t survive his wounds, but the young man who sought to save him cries to this day when recounting the loss of life and the regret he carries with him that he was unable to save his comrade. He acted out of love.

It’s love that is the overarching theme of these tales. It is woven into the narrative that is being told so long after they have been performed. Just as love is the common denominator among those who are honored for their valor on the field of battle, I also believe we are able to ascribe that motivation to today’s heroes who tend to those stricken by deadly illness.

You know, maybe we should tell these heroes more than just a simple “thanks.” Maybe we should express our love to them.

medical news

Listen to your medical team and the governors, Mr. POTUS

Donald Trump took a question this past week from a reporter about the “metrics” he would use to decide whether to “reopen” the U.S. economy that the coronavirus pandemic has slammed shut.

He pointed to his noggin and said “my metrics are right here.” He’s going to make a decision, he said, after listening to the advice he will get from his team.

If only I could believe he would listen to anyone, let alone to the experts with whom he has surrounded himself.

The docs and many of the nation’s governors are imploring the president to resist seeking to restart the economy by May 1.

Too many Americans are still being infected. Too many also are dying from the COVID-19 strain of the virus and yet Trump still keeps talking about the need to get Americans back to some sense of “normal.”

The need must be first and foremost to stem this infection and to ensure that we test sufficient numbers of Americans to determine who is infected. To date we have tested a tiny fraction of Americans; we need to get many millions more tested. Only after we do that should we “reopen the economy” and seek to return to the way it was before the pandemic swept across the world.

The medical experts and many governors are pushing back against Donald Trump’s desire to act. Is he seeking a premature restarting of the economy? A lot of the “best people” advising Trump believe he must slow it down.

Pay attention to them, Mr. President. They have the “metrics” that need to matter more than those that are knocking around inside Donald Trump’s skull.

national news

We most certainly need a thorough look at our response failure

There can be no doubt that we need an independent blue-ribbon commission to examine the U.S. response failure early in the coronavirus pandemic.

There must be a commission modeled after the group that examined what occurred prior to the 9/11 terror attacks. The 9/11 commission was led by Republican New Jersey Gov. Thomas Kean and Democratic Indiana U.S. Rep. Lee Hamilton. It picked apart the national security breakdown that led to that terrible event when hijacked jetliners crashed into the Pentagon and the World Trade Center.

What is happening now? How has the United States failed to be ready for the pandemic that has killed more than 20,000 Americans?

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the leading infectious disease doctor assigned to work on the Trump administration’s pandemic response team, said that an earlier response clearly would have saved American lives.

Our government didn’t act as quickly as it should.

The New York Times detailed how Donald Trump was told in late 2019 about the threat of a pandemic. He blew it off.

Indeed, the president continued to downplay the threat for weeks after it had claimed its first victims. It wasn’t until mid-March before Trump declared the pandemic a life-and-death fight against what he called “an invisible enemy.”

A commission charged with getting to the bottom of our failure is not a vehicle designed for political retribution. Its intent should solely be to issue the sort of after-action report that can ensure we remain in a state of constant readiness when future crises present themselves.

We will get through this crisis. Our nation is likely to emerge, as Donald Trump has predicted, stronger than ever. We all want that to occur.

I also want a blue-ribbon examination that delivers a blue-ribbon report that lays out what happened, or failed to happen, as the crisis was emerging.

This effort needs the full-throated endorsement of Donald Trump, who must not be afraid of what the findings reveal.

local news, State news

Go slowly on relaxing restrictions

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott reportedly is planning to issue an executive order this week that sets in motion a relaxation of the restrictions enacted to fight to coronavirus pandemic.

Allow me to offer this bit of advice: Go slow on returning to what we call “normal” activity.

Abbott’s emergency response team tells us that social distancing is doing its job, that the infection rate is stabilizing if not declining. Indeed, we’re practicing it in our household, as are our sons. My wife and I haven’t socialized with anyone since the pandemic began creeping into our lives.

Abbott doesn’t seem like someone who is going to rush to return to normal activity. He was a bit slow to issue the stay at home order, although he didn’t call it that. Whatever. We’re staying at home and that’s worked well for us. We venture out only to buy food at the grocery store or to purchase weed killer at the garden shop.

Princeton has shut down dining in at restaurants and practically every form of service business you can name. Haircuts? Gymnasiums? Forget about it!

I did walk into a bank the other day wearing a face mask my wife had made and joked to the teller how strange it felt to be wearing a mask while walking into a bank. She didn’t have me arrested, for which I was much obliged.

This so-called “new normal” is beginning to feel more like just plain “normal” the longer we’re into it.

But … whatever Abbott does later this week, I urge him to go slow in suggesting how we should behave. For that matter, all of us on the receiving end of the governor’s suggestion would do well to proceed with all due caution.

Social distancing is working, man, but we ain’t in the clear.

local news

Clinging to good news

I find myself clinging desperately to snippets of good news that are coming forth.

New York officials report that the number of hospital emergency room admissions is starting to level off; the increase in deaths from the coronavirus is decreasing; some nations are beginning to lift restrictions; the projected death count in the United States is being reduced; social distancing is doing its job.

My wife and I sit in our house in Collin County, Texas. Our son and his family in a next-door community are isolating themselves, too. Our son in the Texas Panhandle is restricting his own movement per the warnings from the state and local officials.

We have been buried under an avalanche of frightening news. The pandemic that ignited in China and moved quickly to Europe has frightened us.

Now we’re getting morsels of news that give us a glimmer of hope.

But hold on! We aren’t nearly home free. The moment when the dust clears still appears to be a long way off. However, the moment is beginning to take shape way out there in the distance. It is getting a little more defined.

I am not naïve to think that the end of the crisis is at hand. I am enough of an optimist, though, to hope that the good-news nuggets we are getting will be more prevalent in the weeks to come than the avalanche of tragedy that has buried us.

As they say, every journey we take begins with a small step.

medical news

People are dying ‘alone’

One of the many tragedies associated with the coronavirus pandemic has been articulated by Mike Barnicle, a newspaper columnist and a cable TV talking head.

He has spoken of meeting individuals who have lost loved ones to the killer disease. One of the unique aspects of the COVID-19 virus is that those who are infected with it cannot have their loved ones nearby as their condition worsens.

Barnicle’s tale told of someone he met in Boston who watched a loved one succumb to the virus “on an I-Pad.” That’s right. The stricken individual was not allowed to die in the presence of his family. They were kept away because the doctors and nurses could not allow them to be exposed to the virus.

Therein lies arguably the singular tragedy of this pandemic, as articulated by a noted journalist.

It is such a sad aspect of this monstrous crisis.

Oh, let us hope and pray that the end of this worldwide pandemic is on its way.

medical news, national news

How can this ‘wartime president’ lead by declining to set example?

I cannot get past Donald Trump’s declaration that he would forgo a health agency’s recommendation to wear a mask while interacting with other human beings.

Think of this. Trump wants to be considered a “wartime president” as the nation fights the coronavirus pandemic. Then the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends that Americans should wear masks. Trump’s response? He said the CDC recommendation is “voluntary,” so he won’t follow the agency’s advice.

If he wants us to think of him as a wartime president, shouldn’t he act like one? To my way of thinking, that would entail a president setting the example that others would follow. Yep, that means wearing a mask in public.

Think, too, of how such a gesture might play to critics such as myself. I am, as you know, an avid — and at times admittedly angry — critic of Donald Trump. The sight of Trump wearing a mask while interacting with others would send a positive message to me. It wouldn’t entice me to vote for Trump this November, but it would draw praise from this blog.

My wife and I are following the CDC advice. Given that the president works for us — and that we do not work for him — it makes sense to me that our “employee,” the president, ought to be follow the lead of his “bosses.” I trust you get my drift.

Trump made some lame and phony excuse for not wearing a mask. He said something about the “image” of a president wearing a mask in the Oval Office while greeting another head of state. Well, as former VP Joe Biden once said of the enactment of the Affordable Care Act … big fu**ing deal.

Why not make visitors to the Oval Office wear a mask, too? If Trump is going to declare himself to be a wartime president, then he ought to take charge and act like someone willing to sacrifice in a time of war. And he could demand that others make the same sacrifice.

That’s what real leaders do.

medical news, national news

Nothing from POTUS today? Ah, the silence is so golden!

1 Comment

Donald Trump didn’t go on the air today to blather on about the “fantastic job” he and his team are doing in response to the coronavirus pandemic.

Did you miss him? Neither did I.

The president has spent far too much time standing in front of us yapping and yammering about this and that. He has hogged the microphone away from the medical, military and logistical experts who stand with him on the White House briefing room platform.

There was that remarkable moment earlier this week when a reporter asked a question directly of Dr. Anthony Fauci, the leading infectious disease doctor in the world, and Trump wouldn’t let Fauci answer it. The president slammed the door shut on the reporter.

So it has gone, ad nauseum.

It is being said that Trump isn’t helping himself by talking too much. To be candid, I don’t give a rat’s a** about whether he helps himself by stepping away from the microphone.

What interests me more is whether this clown would turn the mic over to experts who have something relevant and important to say. I want to hear from the truth tellers, not from the Liar in Chief.

Accordingly, I don’t begrudge the silence that emanated today from the White House.

national news

Cuomo to replace Biden? Seriously?

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Who in the world is actually thinking seriously about New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo being nominated by the Democratic Party to run against Donald Trump in the 2020 election?

Whoever harbors that thought has rocks in his or her noggin? It ain’t gonna happen! Nor should it happen!

Oh, and I believe I heard the former vice president of the United States declare categorically that he is going to recommend a woman to run with him once he secures the party’s presidential nomination. So, that rules out Gov. Cuomo to run as VP, unless he undergoes an emergency sex-change operation.

A reporter asked Cuomo about those two matters today at the governor’s daily coronavirus pandemic briefing in Albany, N.Y.

Joe Biden has earned the title of presumptive nominee by vanquishing a huge and qualified field challengers in the Democratic primary contest. He still needs about 600 more delegates to have enough votes to be nominated.

The notion that Gov. Cuomo, whose conduct during his daily briefings has been nothing short of spectacular, would somehow emerge as a late-blooming nominee is preposterous.

Cuomo today shot down the twin rumors in flames. He’s not going to accept a VP nomination and he’s not going to run for president. He said he’s got a full plate in front of him now, managing the impact of a killer disease on residents of the state he governs.

Let’s stop the political gossip, shall we?

religious news

Numbskull preachers need to get a grip

I hate speaking ill of men and women of the cloth … but the religious numbskulls around the country who are defying “stay at home” orders to celebrate Easter need to have their heads examined.

I won’t mention their hearts, because they must think their hearts are in the right place by flinging open their church doors on Easter.

These individuals claim to be trumpeting their “God-given right” to conduct worship services in churches full of parishioners. How does one cope with such nonsense?

They have no right given by the Almighty to put others in jeopardy while we are in the midst of a fight against COVID-19, the strain of coronavirus that has killed tens of thousands of Americans.

Local officials have issued orders that limit gatherings of human beings; they are instructing us to maintain proper “social distance” from each other to stem the rate of infection during this worldwide pandemic.

That hasn’t stemmed the idiocy coming from some of these religious crackpots. They proclaim the First Amendment guarantee of religious freedom allows them to conduct these services, even though health officials issue dire warnings of the consequences of flouting these restrictions.

Well … the First Amendment makes no guarantee of anyone’s right to jeopardize the health — and the lives — of other human beings.

Scripture reminds us as well that we can pray without ceasing anywhere we wish. We do not need to sit in a church pew to celebrate Easter. We are fully able to do that very thing in our living rooms.

Thus, the religious goofballs are off their rocker by insisting that their parishioners must flock to church on Easter.