Tag Archives: Covid 19

Take it seriously, folks!

The death of one-time Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain ought to be a wake-up call to those who think the COVID-19 pandemic is some sort of “hoax” cooked up by Democrats to harm Donald Trump’s re-election effort.

Same for the infection of Rep. Louie Gohmert. Or perhaps the positive test registered by Trump’s national security adviser Robert O’Brien.

Let’s shut the hell up with the conspiracy nonsense, shall we?

Cain’s death is particularly poignant in this regard: He attended that Tulsa, Okla., rally where the sparse crowd piled into the arena, most of whom were not wearing masks or maintaining social distance. Cain was one of them.

Then he got sick. Now he is dead.

The Godfather’s Pizza mogul ran for president in 2012, touting his economic wizardry and assorted cures for what he said ailed the U.S. economy. He now will be known, arguably forever, as one of Donald Trump’s staunch minions who didn’t heed the warnings of medical professionals to take measures to protect himself and others from the killer virus.

Yet, there remains that cabal of goofballs who insist the pandemic is a made-up matter. It ain’t real, they say. They contend it’s part of some Deep State plot to deny Donald Trump a second term as president.

Those who foment that lie are full of sh**. They know it and so should the rest of us.

Herman Cain’s death is a sad but profound reminder that the best medical and scientific minds in the world are trying like the dickens to find a cure for this menace.

As a friend of mine in Amarillo — who, along with her husband has recovered from a positive COVID-19 test — has told me, she is in “take no prisoners mode” with regard to the conspiracy theorists. She vows to shut down anyone who refuses to take this killer seriously.

So will I.

Quack now advising POTUS?

Where in the name of Hippocrates did Donald J. Trump find the quack who’s saying masks won’t help stop COVID infection and talks about “alien DNA”?

Her name is Stella Immanuel, and even though she has a medical degree, I won’t put the “Dr.” in front of her name.

According to the Daily Beast: She alleges alien DNA is currently used in medical treatments, and that scientists are cooking up a vaccine to prevent people from being religious. And, despite appearing in Washington, D.C. to lobby Congress on Monday, she has said that the government is run in part not by humans but by “reptilians” and other aliens.

Joe Biden calls her a “disgrace.” He is correct.

Immanuel, who resides in Houston, has become a star on right-wing media. She also has Donald Trump’s ear.

God help us.

Oh, Louie … how did the mask avoidance work out?

I am no fan of Louie Gohmert.

In fact, I am embarrassed that he is a member of the Texas congressional delegation. Gohmert, a Republican from Tyler, happens to have been an obnoxious opponent of mask-wearing in light of the coronavirus pandemic. That is just one of the things that angers me about this guy’s presence in Congress.

Well, this just came in: Gohmert, who represents the Loony Bin Wing of the GOP, has tested positive for COVID-19.

Karma is a bitch, man … you know?

Now, I do not wish him ill. I do not want him to suffer the kind of agony that has befallen hundreds of thousands of our fellow Americans, about 150,000 of whom have died from the virus. However, just maybe this startling news about this outspoken critic of a known effective measure that helps stem the tide of infection will awaken this clown to the obvious need to do what the doctors keep telling us.

It is that we should wear masks; we should practice “social distancing”; we should wash our hands frequently.

Gohmert took part in a U.S. House Judiciary Committee hearing this week in which he yelled and bellowed his support for Attorney General William Barr. He obviously ignored warnings about how infection spores spread more rapidly when we raise our voices. And, of course, he did all this without wearing a mask.

Get well, Louie. When you do and when you are to return to work, then shut your skeptical-sounding pie hole and follow the doctors’ orders. While you’re at it, you should advise your fellow GOP lunatics to do the same.

Mother Nature deals cruel blow

Mother Nature can be the cruelest of elements.

Our friends and fellow Texans in Nueces County have been struggling against the COVID-19 virus. Reports of a spike in infections among infants has been particularly alarming. They’re running out of morgue space and are receiving refrigerated trucks to store the remains of those who have died from the virus. Good grief.

Then comes Hurricane Hanna, which blasted ashore south of Corpus Christi on Saturday. It was a Cat 1 storm, which isn’t catastrophic by definition … but it might as well have been a Cat 5 or worse, given the heartache that has struck that part of the state.

I am left while sitting up yonder in North Texas to offer my sympathy, condolences and, yes, “thoughts and prayers” to those who suffer from the pandemic and now to those who are battling storm surge, flash flooding and 100-mph wind.

What’s more, we should lift up first responders and the medical professionals who have been risking their health, their lives and those of their loved ones even before Hanna blew down the front door along the Gulf Coast.

Will any of this ever end? Can we get some help from our government and, by all means, from Mother Nature herself?

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.

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.

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”?

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.

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.

Get ready for another Texas nut job in Congress

Oh, I hate to say this but it’s got to be said: The Texas Panhandle is likely to send a nut job to Congress to represent them and, ostensibly, their interests.

Thirteenth Congressional District Republicans this week nominated Dr. Ronny Jackson to run for the seat being vacated by longtime GOP U.S. Rep. Mac Thornberry. What makes this upcoming contest so fascinating to me — a former 13th District resident — is that Jackson knows next to nothing about the district he likely will be elected to represent. I mean, he’s never lived there … until just in time to run for the House.

Jackson was born in Levelland. He joined the Navy, became a doctor, rose to thank of rear admiral, tended to two U.S. presidents — Barack Obama and Donald Trump — and then retired from the Navy after Trump sought to have him become the secretary of veterans affairs. The nomination didn’t go well. It turns out Jackson has no administrative experience and he also allegedly got caught prescribing drugs in a rather cavalier fashion.

He pulled out of the running for the VA job.  He sought a safe Republican seat and found one in the Texas Panhandle. Thornberry announced he wouldn’t seek a new term and in jumped Admiral/Dr.  Jackson.

He’ll run against the Democrats’ latest sacrificial lamb, Gus Trujillo, who beat a friend of mine, Greg Sagan, in this week’s Democratic runoff.

Now, though, it gets even more interesting. Dr. Jackson says face mask wearing should be an individual choice and has downplayed the importance of face masks in the wake of the COVID crisis that is killing Texans every single day.

I am quite certain that Ronny Jackson’s lunacy quotient doesn’t measure up to that of the guy who nominated him to be VA secretary … but statements like the one he issued about face masks make me wonder.

Texas has elected too many wackos to Congress over the years. The nuttiest of them all is Louie Gohmert, the East Texas birther conspiracist; a close second might be John Ratcliffe, the former Northeast Texas House member who happens to be the current director of national intelligence.

Step aside, gentlemen. You’re about to be joined by a medical doctor/carpetbagger who well could put your wackiness to shame.