Tag Archives: coronavirus

medical news

Waiting on the vaccine

I have concluded something about this pandemic and to be honest it doesn’t make me feel all too comfy.

It is that I now believe that the only “end” to this crisis will arrive when a vaccine becomes available to every human being on Earth. Prior to that, we had all better get used to wearing masks, to keeping our “social distance” from friends and even loved ones, to a decided lack of recreational activities such as arena sports with fans jammed shoulder to shoulder, and with our children studying “virtually” at home.

Why the wait? Two reasons: a lack of discipline among billions of us who don’t follow the rules and a lack of leadership from the highest levels of government in the United States of America.

I am dismayed at the sight of all those morons who cannot or will not keep their distance from others. Or those who refuse to wear a mask because, they contend stupidly, that they infringe on their civil liberties. Those dipsh**s are taking their cue from — dare I say it — the White House or from right-wing media that continue to insist that the coronavirus pandemic is a hoax, a conspiracy cooked up by people with some sort of nefarious political agenda.

Sinclair Corp., a right-wing media company that owns a chain of TV stations around the country, is fomenting that hoax with a fake “documentary” that accuses Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert, of being at the center of that conspiracy. What’s shocking is that so many Americans believe that BS.

So I am going to wait on big pharma researchers’ work on their fast-track search for a vaccine. It’s going to take time to ascertain its effectiveness; then it will take more time to get it certified by drug regulators and then kick into massive production.

I am willing to wait.

medical news

This is winning the COVID war?

The rate of infection in the United States from the coronavirus pandemic is increasing.

Yep. We’re getting sick at a faster rate now than we were at the beginning of the pandemic. Consider this tidbit from U.S. News and World Report:

The United States took 98 days to reach one million confirmed cases of COVID-19 but just 16 days to increase from 3 million to 4 million, the tally showed. The total suggests at least one in 82 Americans have been infected at some point in the pandemic.

The average number of new cases is now rising by more than 2,600 per hour nationwide, the highest rate in the world.

Roll that around for a moment. It took more than three months to record 1 million COVID-19 cases, but just 16 days to log another million to reach the 4 million mark.

Is that how you define “success” in the fight against this killer virus? Donald Trump says he is doing a great job. His team is doing a fantastic job of fighting the virus. He tells us that our testing program is the best in the world; I do not quarrel with that final point.

But wait! How can we declare we are winning this fight when the infection rate is accelerating? Meanwhile, other parts of the world, in Europe and in Asia, are reporting virtually zero new infections from the virus.

How is it that the world’s most advanced nation, with the world’s most skilled medical and scientific researchers is still logging more infections from this virus than the rest of the entire planet?

We are not winning this fight. We are losing it. Hopefully, though, the losing won’t continue forever.

education news, medical news

Cancel the RNC, but send kids to school?

The Stable Genius continues to baffle me.

Donald J. Trump insists that our children must attend school in classrooms. It’s better to put the students in classrooms than to require them to study at home via online instruction.

What, then, shall we do about the scheduled Republican National Convention that will nominate Trump for a second term as president? He cancelled the RNC in Jacksonville, Fla., citing health concerns. “It’s not the right time” to have a convention with delegates crammed into the same arena, he said.

Mixed messaging anyone? Anyone?

This is part of a much larger problem associated with the Trump administration’s response to the coronavirus pandemic. At one level, Trump says one thing. At another level, he says something quite different.

He scoffed at masks. Now he’s all for them … more or less. He called the pandemic a “Democrat hoax.” Now he says the worst of the pandemic is yet to come before it gets better.

Trump ignores advice from medical experts. Then listens to talk show hosts and acts on their “advice.”

Trump says he’s doing a “fantastic” job, but the rate of infection is accelerating, not slowing down.

The latest bit of news involves the GOP nominating convention. Trump is concerned about potential health hazard to politicians and delegates. I applaud his decision to forgo the in-person gathering in Jacksonville.

If only, though, he would express as much concern about the health and safety of our children, their friends and families and the teachers who educate them.

This guy confuses the daylights out of me.

national news

What happened to bounty outrage?

It’s been clear to me for many years that yesterday’s outrage too often becomes today’s afterthought.

Such as it is with the story that got the media’s attention regarding reports that Russian intelligence officials had placed bounties on the heads of American soldiers fighting Taliban terrorists in Afghanistan.

Yep, we were filled with rage over the notion that Vladimir Putin’s goons were paying money for every soldier the Taliban killed. What’s more, we became even more outraged at Donald John Trump’s lack of outward anger at the reports.

Instead, Trump attacked the media outlets that were reporting this stunning news. He called it “fake.” He became angry at whoever it was who leaked the information to the Associated Press, to the New York Times and to CNN. His anger at the Russians? Silence, man!

I happen to be mad as hell — still! — at Donald Trump over this story. Sure, there are plenty of things Trump has done to incur my wrath: the insults, the hideous pandemic response, the incessant lying.

The idea, though, that the president of the United States would ignore briefing material that had landed on his desk that told him of bounties being paid to Taliban fighters who kill Americans is the utmost betrayal of the oath he took to become commander in chief.

However, the outrage that we heard from all across the country seems to have subsided. Granted, it has been overtaken by another huge event, one that has worsened on Donald Trump’s watch as president of the United States.

The coronavirus pandemic demands our national attention. So do the reports of bounties paid by a hostile power to our battlefield enemies who kill the men and women our president sends into harm’s way.

We cannot let up in our demand for accountability at what many of us consider a hideous dereliction of duty by a man who vowed to protect the men and women who serve under his command.

national news

Unwillingness vs. inability?

I keep struggling with how to describe Donald J. Trump’s lack of empathy in time of crisis.

Two words keep tugging at me. One of them is “inability.” The other is “unwillingness.” My struggle occurs as I ponder how to define what we witness in Trump’s demeanor while he speaks publicly about any number of issues that pull and pound our hearts.

Whether it’s race relations, or natural disaster, or medical crises I find myself torn between defining Trump’s lack of empathy and compassion as his “inability” to exhibit it or his “unwillingness” to show it.

The nation has heard in recent days from one of Trump’s nieces, Mary Trump, who writes in a new tell-all about Uncle Donald that he was brought up in a sociopathic household led by a domineering father, Fred Trump Sr.

Grandpa Fred instilled in his children an ethic that required them to be always tough and to not let the world see a softer side of them. Apologizing for mistakes is a sign of weakness, Mary Trump writes.

Did this upbringing create, as Mary Trump’s book title suggests, “the most dangerous man in the world”? I am left to wonder whether Trump is who he is because he just cannot find the empathy and compassion that he lacks or is it because he is unwilling to search for it, to apply it to the job he inherited when he became president of the United States in January 2017.

I’ve known many men and women who have been brought up in trying circumstances. Yet they power through it. They become better human beings because they are able to search for — and eventually find — the trait that instills some sense of kindness in them.

Thus, I am left to rely on the belief that Trump is merely “unwilling” to show us compassion, to demonstrate a semblance of empathy toward those who are hurting. He says the words, as he did Tuesday when he spoke to us about the COVID-19 pandemic. He speaks to us as though he is reading from a statement written under duress. I hear him speak those words as if he is being punished by a schoolteacher who caught him cheating on an exam.

Could this guy ever find a way to exhibit genuine, authentic compassion or empathy? I do not believe he is willing to look deeply enough for it within himself.

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.

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.

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.