Medicynic

Asleep at the wheel, playing ignorant hunches and expecting miracles, the president and his band of incompetents ignored their experts and were unprepared for the epidemic.

Medicynical note: And now our leader wants to call off the community distancing/ isolation strategy after 15 days and return America to work. Such experts as a demented Texan, a two bit second rate church affiliated private college owner and Glenn Beck think it fine to kill off the vulnerable in our society in the name of stock market prices. Now I’m not a believer but I do wonder whether the any religion’s deity or belief system would condone the notion of money having precedence over human lives. Just wondering if sacrificing the most vulnerable in our society is part the “theological” values we hear so much about? Just wondering.

I should hasten to note that I believe the people I know would not ascribe to this amoral principles

“”The administration has repeatedly and systematically corroded critical parts of the CDC,” Sellers said. “This was just begging for an epidemic to hit us. It was a perfect storm of lack of preparation.””

“Sellers added: “It’s kind of incredible they are now trying to rewrite history to say we have plenty of resources when they’ve systematically targeted them. They should be held responsible by the American people as it is outrageous.””

“Donald Trump initially reacted to the onward march of coronavirus by calling it a “hoax” before then, also inaccurately, claiming that the US had completely contained the disease.”

“The president has since declared a national state of emergency but the federal response has been dogged by a severe lack of testing, a dearth of crucial medical supplies such as ventilators and false and misleading statements by Trump over the need to avoid large gatherings of people.”

Medicynical note: Sadly, this is what happens when you elect an incompetent sociopath as your leader. Yes it’s bad luck that covid-19 emerged but maybe in the end if Trump is force out of office……one way or another…..there will be a greater good. He is a cancer.

I’m not particularly enthused by the other septuagenarian candidates but I guess beggars can’t be choosers and defeating Trump is the first priority.

“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?