Tag Archives: infectious disease

medical news

Thank you, Dr. Fauci

While we’re giving thanks to this or that person, I want to offer a word or two of gratitude for the public service delivered by someone who served seven U.S. presidents.

Anthony Fauci has retired from his post as chief medical adviser to President Biden. He is calling it a career after serving as the nation’s chief infectious disease expert.

I want to offer him thanks for taking on a job that earned him as many foes as friends over the years. Why is that? Because he was unable to predict the course that infectious diseases would take, but he still managed to save literally millions of lives over his many years of service.

Republicans who are about to take control of the House of Representatives have promised to bring Dr. Fauci back to Capitol Hill to answer stern questions about his service during the COVID pandemic. The good doc likely will stand strong against the GOP onslaught.

I had the pleasure of meeting Dr. Fauci while attending the International Conference on HIV/AIDS in Bangkok back in the summer of 2004. He was there to provide wise counsel to those seeking answers to that disease. I was in Bangkok as part of a journalist contingent traveling through Southeast Asia to learn about the impact of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in that part of the world.

Fauci served with distinction in presidential administrations dating back to Ronald Reagan. He served under the administrations of George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama, Donald Trump and finally, Joe Biden.

Yes, there were some rocky times, particularly during the Trump years as the administration sought to get its arms around the COVID virus. The vitriol hurled against Dr. Fauci from those on the far right has been unfair and just plain wrong.

I just want to take this brief moment to express one American patriot’s deep thanks for the service Anthony Fauci delivered. Those who survived illness from the killer virus well might owe this good man their lives.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

medical news

Thank you, Dr. Fauci

I hereby want to be among the first Americans to offer a word of thanks to Dr. Anthony Fauci for his dedicated service to the nation as its leading infectious disease expert.

Fauci said he is going to retire by the end of President Biden’s current term. Frankly, he’s earned some peace and quiet and some time with his family.

The good doctor, who’s 80 years of age, has become a punching bag among those on the right who have objected to his constant lecturing to us about masks, about social distancing, about the need to vaccinate ourselves against the COVID 19 virus. He has been on the front pages of newspapers and on our TV screens endlessly since the pandemic broke in late 2019.

Now, to be clear, Fauci hasn’t always gotten everything spot-on correct every single time. Do I blame him for that? Do I expect this learned medical scholar to get every single detail correct upon its first utterance? No. The man is a human being.

He has sought to educate himself along the way about the pandemic and for my money he has given us solid advice along the way. He is not, as Donald Trump once described him, a loser or an idiot … or some such epithet.

Joe Biden has shown the good sense to let the scientific team led by Fauci do the speaking for the administration on the pandemic.

You can take this to the bank, too: Right wingers are going to say something like “Just wait until we get Congress back under our control and we’ll launch investigations into how Fauci ‘lied’ to us.” Bullsh**!

The man has served through seven presidential administrations and has devoted his career to public service. Anthony Fauci has served the public in the finest tradition imaginable.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

medical news, national news

POTUS is getting it, finally: Pandemic is serious … and deadly

Donald Trump has signed on to what his medical response team has known all along: that the coronavirus pandemic is serious, it is deadly and it deserves an all-hands-on-deck response.

It took far too long for the president to accept what the scientists and medical gurus were telling him. However, his statement today tells me that the warnings he has heard are finally sinking into his thick, and vacuous skull.

Trump said today we can expect a very difficult two-week period ahead. The rate of COVID-19 infections are going to increase, as will the rate of death.

Governors have gotten it. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has extended the shelter in place directive to the end of April; he also has extended public school closures to May 4. Those dates remain fluid, of course, but at least our state government is taking the kind of proactive approach that — until this moment — has been missing at the federal level of government.

The president now projects 100,000 to 200,000 deaths from the virus. It’s a far cry from what he said not that long ago. It was just in February when Donald Trump said the infection stood at 15 and would vanish all by itself before too long. Hmm. It didn’t happen.

Indeed, it has gotten far worse than the president was letting on.

But … now he is on board with what the experts have told him. Drs. Deborah Birx and Anthony Fauci are stellar infectious disease experts assigned to the task force led by Vice President Mike Pence. They have delivered a grim prognosis.

If only the president had accepted the bad news long before now. At least, though, he has signed on.

For now.