Category Archives: Uncategorized

“In his White House coronavirus briefing, Donald Trump made clear that he wanted to lift restrictive public health measures as soon as possible, and that his major concern was the state of the US economy. He would re-open America for business in “weeks,” not months, Trump pledged, and refused to say whether he would simply ignore public health experts if they advised that restrictive measures to stop the spread of the virus needed to stay in place longer.”

Medicynical note: After 8 days of following the social distancing strategy it is apparent that the epidemic in the United States is accelerating. Deaths are doubling every 2 1/2 days. More than 100 people died today.

Yet this is the day, just one week in, that Trump showed his profound ignorance and seemed to buy into a FOX news pundit’s conclusion that the cure for the epidemic (in terms of the stock market and recession) was worse than the disease, which is in the process of killing hundreds of our citizens each day. Hundreds (over two hundred people died today)

It’s clear that Trump puts more value on stock prices than human lives……….is this an evangelical Christian value? And American value? Or simply the value of a sociopath without an ounce of empathy. He’s lost.

Donald doesn’t want the cure to be worse than the problem. To Trump the problem is the steep stock-market decline brought about by his late acceptance of the existence of a pandemic. He was slow to react and inadequately prepared the country for it. To M.D.s the problem is the thousands of people with the infection, caring for those needing hospitalization and prevention of further spread.

Donald’s cure is for the stock market, not the pandemic. He has a hunch and because he is a very very smart and it appears that he plans to over-rule his medical experts. That’s a big mistake.

Medicynical note: The man is a supreme egotist who has taken corporations into bankruptcy 5 times and in his first term in office during his self-proclaimed best economy ever, he doubled the governments budget deficit to the highest ever (in good times). He knows nothing of infectious diseases and can’t understand the difference between .1% and 1%. He has no judgment. The best advice for him is to follow his medical advisors suggestions rather than his own “hunches.”

“On Sunday, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo of New York made a public appeal for the federal government to take over the distribution of critical goods, arguing that Mr. Trump’s insistence last week that states should find the medical equipment for themselves was turning into a senseless free-for-all.”

“Yet, in declining to actually make use of the Korean War-era production act that he invoked last week, Mr. Trump is also avoiding taking personal responsibility for how fast the acute shortages of personal protective gear and lifesaving equipment are addressed.”

“”Don’t get into this mad bidding war,” Mr. Cuomo said, noting that the federal reticence was resulting in huge price surges, hoarding and shortages in some of the hardest-hit locales, including New York City.”

Medicynical note: Having 50 states compete with each other for rare resources is an invitation to disaster. Trump accepts responsibility for ……..NOTHING.

He fired his epidemic response teams in the NSC and CDC two years ago; cut funding and removed a CDC person from the Chinese equivalent of the CDC in 2019, thereby losing the early warning of the epidemic in China; ignored the epidemic as it evolved because of a uninformed hunch; refuses to centralize the nation’s response to a nationwide disaster. He’s literally killing us.

The airline industry is trying to hold up the federal government for $29 billion in grants and another $29 billion in loans. They threaten that if they don’t get the grants they will lay off employees, and that if they don’t get the loans they will use their remaining cash on dividends and stock buybacks.

Medicynical note: In the Trumpian dysfunctional world you waste and overspend during good times……….so that you can claim poverty when the economy changes. In Trum world you bankrupt your company and then move on to another scam. In the airlines case, they seek a bailout after spending their last ten years profits trying to increase shareholders wealth…….and executives own paychecks which are based on the enhanced stock price.

And I’m willing to bet these airlines pay little or nothing in income taxes. So, if you will, they want the government to bail them out with tax money to which they didn’t contribute. And as a bonus because of Citizens United they can buy votes in our congress with unlimited campaign contributions.

Only in America.

It’s quite evident that the U.S. is woefully unprepared for the covid-19 epidemic. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out why:

“People say Contagion is prescient. We just saw the science. The whole epidemiological community has been warning everybody for the past 10 or 15 years that it wasn’t a question of whether we were going to have a pandemic like this. It was simply when. It’s really hard to get people to listen. I mean, Trump pushed out the admiral on the National Security Council, who was the only person at that level who’s responsible for pandemic defense. With him went his entire downline of employees and staff and relationships. And then Trump removed the [early warning] funding for countries around the world.” (Emphasis medicynic)

Medicynical note: our lack of preparation is obvious. We are reacting not anticipating and are so far behind that the epidemic is unlikely to be easily stopped. We are on the same disastrous fatal path as Italy.

Our leadership, a motley crew of deniers and inexperienced administrators under the thrall of the denier – in – chief, seem unable to act, mobilize and anticipate. To do so would, of course, would contradict our ignorant president who had a hunch that it would just go away…….like a miracle. People who contradicted his uninformed beliefs simply disappeared from view.

Totally clueless.

“On Feb. 10, nearly three weeks after the first coronavirus case was diagnosed in the United States, Mr. Trump submitted a 2021 budget proposal that called for a $693.3 million reduction in funding for the C.D.C., or about 9 percent, although there was a modest increase for the division that combats global pandemics.”

Guess what Donald you can’t make cruise ships into intensive care units. This masquerades as news when a medical neophyte is in charge.

“Trump said cruise ships may be used to help with the coronavirus crisis. The president said he had spoken to the chairman of one cruise company about using the ships, an announcement that comes one day after Trump said two Navy hospital ships would be deployed to free up hospital beds.”

Medicynical note: How about one of those empty Trump hotels?

Saw these two stories in the New York Times. One presents reality, the other, several proponents of what can only be described as a fraudulent alternative perspective.

Tragically a New Jersey family has had three fatalities from Coronavirus. This is the first case of multiple deaths in one family in the US epidemic. Whether the strain of the virus to which they were exposed was exceptionally virulent or whether they were , for some reason, exceptionally sensitive to it is unknown. I weep for this family.

At almost the same time five epidemic deniers were also featured in an article. They include Falwell Junior, Pinsky, a third rate comedian (whose name I won’t mention), Hannity, a defrocked CBS news type and the forever contrarian Ron Paul. Each has a blind spot dictated by their need for notoriety. They are either stupid or incredibly politically driven to try make facts fit their political narrative. Hopefully they will arrive, sooner than later, disgraced on the scrap heap of history.

Medicynical note: What is there to say about the deniers. First I’d note that the least fact based president in history understands reality better than this motley crew.

Pinsky and Paul, one a so-called addiction specialist and the other a non practicing ophthalmologist, haven’t cared for hospitalized patients in a generation. in Paul’s case his misuse of his Senator label makes me sympathize with his neighbor. Neither understands disease processes and in the case of the coronavirus, that there is a pandemic going on.

Falwell, a doctor in name only, inherited the family business, a university. He is a religious type, also in name only, and is similar to others in the same religion based family businesses in that they are dedicated more towards being making money and being political sycophants than being saintly or even truthful..

Hannity and the former correspondent are hacks–trying for political gain even out of other folks misery. Why they remain prominent has more to do with pervasive ignorance and bigotry in our country than we are willing to admit.

Medical authorities in China have said a drug used in Japan to treat new strains of influenza appeared to be effective in coronavirus patients, Japanese media said on Wednesday.

Medicynical note: that would be nice. Still needs further evaluation, but an optimist report in a time of overall gloom.

Some are still in denial, continuing in a tradition of the Trump Republican Party.

It’s a sad fact that the Republican Party and it’s president destroyed the infrastructure in the NSC and CDC set up to anticipate and respond to epidemics. Trumps tariffs have destroyed our businesses access to foreign markets and his doubling of our government’s financial deficits during what was a “good”economy makes more difficult the further deficits required to tide us over a deep recession. It will be known as the Trump recession.

Medicynical note: Without a bit of irony Trump has proposed further cuts to the CDC and NIH budgets just this year. And with a great deal of irony and incompetence (for which he will be evermore known) Trump denied there was a serious epidemic until just a day or two ago further slowing the response. His administrations ineptitude has created a medical and economic disaster. Vote.