Medicynic

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.

After a slow start people are taking social isolation seriously.

For those of you intent on denying the seriousness of this outbreak there were 4600 or so cases. With deaths at 85 this AM almost double that of two days ago, the death rate is around 1.8% which is, as Dr. Fauci has noted is 10 times or more that of our yearly flu. From the Hopkins site there have been about 185,000 confirmed cases world wide and 7300 deaths or a death rate of 3.9%.

At this point the epidemic in the US is in an early stage. The numbers, however, are alarming.

Medicynical note: The best advice at this point is to isolate yourself from others, particularly those in your family who are in the high risk groups (i.e. immune compromised and/or elderly over age 60) and stop listening to the minimizing evil doers of FOX news et.al.

They are politically motivated have been wrong since the epidemic started. Their propaganda contributed to the denial in which our President dwelled for almost two months and our nation’s criminally slow response to the epidemic.

From INC. here are the top 30 corporations that paid no income tax last year. How many are asking for subsidies from real tax payers during the Coronavirus downturn?

“”The report finds that in 2018, 60 of America’s biggest corporations zeroed out their federal income taxes on $79 billion in U.S. pretax income,” the group’s press release said. “Instead of paying $16.4 billion in taxes at the 21 percent statutory corporate tax rate, these companies enjoyed a net corporate tax rebate of $4.3 billion.”

Here’s the list of the top 30 U.S. companies that ITEP says managed to pay zero income taxes, ranked in order of how much money the companies made to begin with (in parenthesis):

• Amazon.com ($10.84 billion)
• Delta Air Lines ($5.07 billion)
• Chevron ($4.55 billion)
• General Motors ($4.32 billion)
• EOG Resources ($4.07 billion)
• Occidental Petroleum ($3.38 billion)
• Duke Energy ($3.03 billion)
• Dominion Resources ($3.02 billion)
• Honeywell International ($2.83 billion)
• Deere ($2.15 billion)
• American Electric Power ($1.94 billion)
• Kinder Morgan ($1.78 billion)
• Public Service Enterprise Group ($1.77 billion)
• Principal Financial ($1.64 billion)
• FirstEnergy ($1.50 billion)
• Prudential Financial ($1.44 billion)
• Xcel Energy ($1.43 billion)
• PulteGroup ($1.34 billion)
• Molson Coors ($1.33 billion)
• Devon Energy ($1.30 billion)
• Pioneer Natural Resources ($1.25 billion)
• DTE Energy ($1.22 billion)
• Wisconsin Energy ($1.14 billion)
• PPL ($1.11 billion)
• Halliburton ($1.08 billion)
• Ameren ($1.04 billion)
• Netflix ($856 million billion)
• Salesforce.com ($800 million)
• CMS Energy ($774 billion)
• Rockwell Collins ($719 billion)

You can find the rest of the list here.

Medicynical note: Thanks to our Supreme Court these entities are provided the rights of citizens and are able to provide unlimited campaign donations. As such, shouldn’t they they should also have the same right to pay taxes, at the same rate as other citizens? And, given the current law, is it fair to use real tax payers funds to bail them out?

My modest proposal is to selectively tax the still profitable non-tax paying corporations and use these funds in the bailout. After all they are citizens and we all must be united in sharing the pleasure and yes, the pain.

Trump has a feel for people. His “success” with Kim has been now documented. And now with the Coronavirus epidemic tanking our economy, Trumps other bosom buddy–Mohammed bin Salmon– piles on.

“Donald Trump made one of the biggest mistakes of his presidency in the spring of 2017, when he offered an unconditional embrace to the then-emerging 31-year-old ruler of Saudi Arabia, Mohammed bin Salman, and adopted his agenda of aggressively confronting Iran. Three years later, as Trump grapples with the greatest crisis he has faced, that choice is costing him dearly.”

“Trump’s slow and stumbling response to the novel coronavirus pandemic helped accelerate last week’s stock market dive and mounting public uncertainty. But the trouble in the markets was also turbocharged by the latest reckless moves by the Saudi crown prince. Against the advice of his own ministers, Mohammed bin Salman, known as MBS, moved to flood markets with cheap Saudi oil, causing the global price to plunge and endangering the U.S. oil industry.”

Medicynical note: Like Trump the notion of working together is not in the Saudi repertoire……..or that of our demented self-absorbed president either.

This appalling description of a once mighty country’s best effort is pathetic and somewhat medieval— like something from “A Journal of the Plague Year (Defoe 1722). Imagine the number of new cases not only just imported but also created because of ignorance, lack of planning and miserable implementation.

Elections have consequences.

Medicynical note: Policy without planning, that’s the motto of the Trumpist response to the covid-19 epidemic. Trump has a hunch, denies, delays, mocks, obfuscates, and then reacts……… and …….. then …….. asks his genuflecting subordinates to provide cover. I look forward to his excuses for this weekend’s airport travesty.

This sums up Trump’s remarkable mishandling of the Coronavirus epidemic, and it’s just beginning. And it is not all inclusive.

“His first misstep came two years ago when he disbanded the global health security team on the National Security Council (NSC) that was responsible for preparing for a pandemic. The NSC’s global health security chief, Rear Admiral Tim Ziemer, was fired the day after an Ebola outbreak was declared in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Last year intelligence agencies warned that the US remained vulnerable to the next flu pandemic but Trump, it seems, hoped that his long streak of political luck would hold.Advertisement”

“Distracted by impeachment in January, the president showed little urgency when the coronavirus exploded in China, apparently unwilling to sour his relationship with authoritarian leader Xi Jinping, whom he praised for having the outbreak “totally under control” even as it raced across that country and beyond.”

“The White House did impose a limited travel ban on China but that alone was not enough. Former US Food and Drug Administration commissioner David Kessler told the Politico website: “They needed and still need to be searching for where the cases are, instead of trusting that limited travel bans were keeping out a virus that was probably already on the march.””

“Perhaps Trump’s greatest blunder was turning down the offer of a German-made diagnostic test approved by the World Health Organization and taken up by many countries. The US government’s own painfully slow progress led to a nationwide shortage of test kits at the most critical moment. It was reported that just 11,000 tests have been conducted in America so far, whereas South Korea is carrying out 10,000 tests per day.”

Trumps response to a question from PBS’s correspondent Yamiche Alcindor today was classic

ALCINDOR: You did disband the White House pandemic office, and the officials that were working in that office left this administration abruptly. So what responsibility do you take to that, and—the officials that worked in that office said the White House lost valuable time because that office was disbanded. What do you make of that?

TRUMP: Well, I just thank it’s a nasty question, because what we’ve done, and Tony had said numerous times that we saved thousands of lives because of the quick closing. [Ed.: The closing of borders to some travelers.] And when you say me, I didn’t do it. We have a group of people, I could ask perhaps, in my administration, but I could perhaps ask Tony about that, because I don’t know anything about it. I mean, you say we did that, I don’t know anything about it. Disbanding, no, I don’t know anything about it …

ALCINDOR: You don’t know about the reorganization that happened at the National Security Council.

TRUMP: … It’s the administration, perhaps they do that, let people go, you used to be with a different newspaper than you are now, you know, things like that happen.

And:

“In any case, this was amazingly not the moment in Friday’s press conference that best demonstrated the president’s refusal to take responsibility for the United States’ response to the coronavirus. That’s because he answered another question, about the nationwide shortage of viral testing kits, by saying, “I don’t take responsibility at all.””

Medicynical note: Who is in charge? The answer, a resounding no one. In Trumpworld there is neither a buck nor a place where it could stop.

Wonder why, in addition to poor leadership, the CDC seems to be such ineffective player in the COVID-19 epidemic? Perhaps the following is a partial explanation. (Emphasis Medicynic)

Inside the USA, meanwhile, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has seen its overall budget plummet from about $11·5 billion in fiscal year (FY) 2018 to $7·7 billion in FY 2020. For FY 2021, Robert Redfield, the CDC’s Director appointed by US President Donald Trump, is seeking a further cut to $7 billion, and the White House proposes reducing CDC funding to levels below $6·7 billion. The Redfield FY 2021 budget reduction would be partly achieved by reductions in spending on programmes for emerging and zoonotic infectious diseases, global health, and public health preparedness and response—the three areas most closely tied to the COVID-19 epidemic.”

Anyone expect Trump to admit his errors?