Posts Tagged → public health
A silver lining
It is easy to become angry as it becomes clearer every day that the coronavirus lockdown response has been a partisan media hype job without any basis, and we have all been deprived of our most essential civil rights by a bunch of power-mad politicians.
After all, as of today’s Pennsylvania Department of Health statistics, exactly 2/3 of the deaths here attributed to covid19 Wuhan Flu occurred in nursing homes and other elder care facilities, among vulnerable elderly people who already had serious health problems.
And we are also learning that a great many of the Wuhan Flu – related deaths are not actually related to the CCP Wuhan Flu. But they are chalked up to it to artificially inflate the numbers, to make it seem worse than it is.
And we are also learning that the death rate of the Wuhan CCP Flu is actually very low. Lower than ye olde regular annual flu! In other words, a lot lot lot of Americans contracted the CCP Flu, showed little or no signs of it, and did not die or become hospitalized.
So as a bunch of justifiably angry Michiganders storm their state house, and as sheriffs in barely-touched rural areas defy state governors’ over-reach, and as counties and townships begin to open up for business on their own terms (with people wearing masks and standing apart), it is easy to see that a public powder keg could go up in dramatic fashion. Why not? It is the American way. It is how we founded our great nation. Hang ’em high!
But there has been a silver lining to all of this stay-the-f*ck-at-home stuff, and that is the result that American families have spent more time together, as families, than since 1952 and the advent of the television. Families have been forced together. In our own home we have had regular family dinners, family conversations, some doozy family fights, and lots of really valuable, really enjoyable, really loving time together. This has been the upside of all the artificial insanity.
And that said, I will also say that I lost a lot of acquaintances and some friends in New York City. They were mostly much older, almost all with some existing health challenges. Some died alone in a hospital, their family members unable to be with them at their time of passing, as they choked to death alone in unfamiliar surroundings. Bad deaths, really hurt and very sad families. There is no question that New York City and its environs have been the hardest hit from the Wuhan Flu, and it is turning out that most of their deaths were also in nursing homes, where Governor Cuomo ordered sick people to go, even as the virus spread.
So yes, there are going to be some lessons learned here. Some painful ones and some good ones. The main good one being that American families are still intact, much more so than we might have thought just eight weeks ago. Let’s not forget this nor let it go. Spending family time together is one of the very best ways to spend time. Hopefully we don’t need a public health emergency to remind us in the future.
Flumageddon II: Medical Community Asleep at Wheel
Since 1918, when the first known flu pandemic (named “war fever” because it resulted from the trench warfare conditions of World War I) swept the planet and killed about twenty million souls, the Western medical profession has known all about the danger of flu viruses.
No mystery here. None. Everyone who is a doctor today is at least aware of the flu and has studied it to some degree. And since 1918, SARS, Swine Flu, and some other deadly flu viruses have swept through Asia and America, leaving tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of people dead as a result. We have had plenty of warning about dangerous flu bugs. Plenty of time and opportunity to prepare.
Now in 2020 enter coronavirus19, which is the 19th known iteration/ strain of the corona virus, a well-known flu bug. But this time, the medical community has been caught absolutely flat-footed, unprepared, deer-in-the-headlights surprised. World-respected “DOCTOR” Anthony Fauci at NIH has openly stated that America is not as prepared as other countries to deal with this, and he openly wonders why this is….
Hello, Doctor Fauci, you have been a self-declared expert on flu viruses and other mass diseases for decades. And now you say that America is not prepared? Have you looked in the mirror lately to find the answer about WHY we are not prepared?!
Who else was supposed to prepare America for these dangerous diseases IF NOT YOU and your fellow doctors? Where the hell have you guys been all these years?
I mean, was there a prior massive call by doctors for flu testing kits and masks and all the other protocols and preparatory steps to defend against a flu pandemic, and the elected officials neglected to meet that call? If so, then we need to know about it. We need to know who dropped the ball and placed Americans at risk.
And no, oh no, no, you cannot blame the guy who just walked into the room. The one guy who knew nothing about this until weeks ago, like the rest of the public. The one guy who has not spent his career in government, or in medicine, or in critiquing government and medicine and public health, but who has spent just over three years total in government, Donald Trump, THIS is the guy who is supposed to take the blame? No, no way.
Please excuse my all-caps here, but I don’t know how else to convey in writing the feelings of amazement and disgust I feel for seeing the supposed best and brightest in Western Civilization literally pass the buck to the least culpable person on the planet.
Coronavirus19 has become a political football, only because a single political party and its communications arm, AKA “the media,” has politicized this flu bug, just like they have politicized literally every other thing that this president has said or done. Only because this one political party and its propaganda arm want to create hysteria and blame for political gain is this hysteria and medical failure now happening. Every other flu that has come and gone and left tens of thousands of people dead in its wake have been left up to the facts of life. Already this “flu season” about 20,000 Americans have died from “the flu.” And another ten thousand Americans are expected to die before the flu season ends this spring. No one was ever blamed before for any of this, least of all an American president.
So why now? Hmmmm?
What really irks me about lazy and incompetent doctors is that their hospitals are the most dangerous places to go. If you want to really get sick, or even die unexpectedly, then go stay in a hospital. Not only will you be unnecessarily exposed to lots of germs that can kill you, but you will also be exposed to massive doses of medical malpractice and incompetence. Hospitals and the doctors in them are extremely dangerous to public health. That is a cold numeric fact. And it is a fact that Americans accept, because we presume that the risks of not having those very same hospitals is higher than having them.
Doctors make the worst policy people. The very worst. Because unrealistic and impractical zero risk is usually what doctors demand; from everyone else. They usually want to spend huge amounts of money to reduce minor risks to almost zero percent chance of happening. And yet they themselves are often walking, talking killing machines, dispensing oopsies and my-bads right and left as they step over the twitching corpse of their latest malpractice victim and go on to the next one. Look at the stats on this!
These are the same doctors who tell Americans that all guns are bad, and that guns kill by themselves, and that we cannot possibly have guns in our homes. Yet, statistically speaking, if you have a doctor in your home, you are at much greater risk for a whole host of gruesome deaths than you are from a gunshot.
These are the same doctors and medical know-it-alls who have dropped the public health ball with coronavirus19 and are now pointing their fingers at the American president.
You must be kidding me. No, you are not going to fool me, not this time. Not again. If any mistake has happened with coronavirus19, it is squarely on the shoulders of the medical and public health communities. And it is made worse by the silly media hysteria causing people to fight over rolls of toilet paper and to hoard canned vegetables. It is quite literally an insane situation, brought to us by lazy doctors, lazy bureaucrats, and evil political activists who will burn down America in order to get control of America.
What the heck is in EPA’s water?
Something bad is in the water the EPA staff are drinking in DC. It is making them nuts.
EPA (US Environmental Protection Agency, a place I once worked, a job once fraught with much philosophical disagreement) has proposed new regulations on air and water that basically put the agency in charge of every breath you take and every glass of water you drink. It is an unconstitutional power grab by regulation that flies in the face of existing law.
EPA now asserts control of every body of water in the country, and that includes farm ponds, man-made drainage ditches along your hunting camp road, little intermittent rivulets that run for a few days in the spring and winter and then sink into the ground all other times, etc. It is a remarkable effort to control, control, and control Americans. The stories now emanating from citizens clashing over this rule change with heavy-handed EPA staff are extraordinary. What amazes everyone with a bit of knowledge of these issues is how little the new rules do to actually protect water quality. In fact, they create incentives for private landowners to take matters into their own hands, before some bureaucrat shows up for a show down over an issue totally, completely outside the purview of federal government.
Of course, promoting centralized decision making and big government is what this is all about, not environmental quality.
Second issue: EPA’s new air regulations, basically putting a heavy damper on wood burning stoves. Yes, it is true that EPA is trying to shut down America’s best source of sustainable, renewable, biodegradable, natural, native, cheap heat – firewood. And firewood-burning stoves.
If you look at the new standards for wood burning stoves, the particulate emissions restrictions on new stoves are technically impossible to meet, and old stoves that are in stock are not grandfathered in; stove manufacturers might go out of business because they cannot sell off their existing wood stoves.
But like the water regulations, this is not about public health or air quality. Rather, these new rules are about undermining those citizens who are most self-reliant, least dependent upon others, most off-the-grid. You know, rural conservatives.
Even more than when I worked there, EPA has become a tool for inflicting harm on Americans, for advancing anti-American policies. It is time to put this rabid animal out of its misery, and start over with a new agency that is devoid of the cultural residue that allows this sort of behavior to happen in the first place. The role of government is to serve its citizens, not dominate them.