Category: Health Care

Trust the science

Here’s what a year of novel coronavirus pandemia looks like in America measured by new confirmed COVID-19 cases and deaths per day. In retrospect, the impact of the pandemic looks eerily like what the epidemiology experts warned us in advance that it would look like.

COVID-19 cases confirmed in the United States per day
Deaths caused by COVID-19 per day in the United States

Epidemiologists said that cases would be a leading indicator, followed by hospitalizations about a week later, and the trailing indicator, deaths, about a week after that. These graphs show the peaks in deaths following a couple of weeks or so behind those in cases.

They also said that COVID-19 cases would start climbing after people began congregating on Memorial Day, which they did. Then they said cases would spike after Thanksgiving and Christmas gatherings, which they didーas high as 300,000 on one day!

So let’s let the science guide us to put an end to this pandemic as quickly as possible now that Americans are getting vaccinated against COVID-19. Until we reach herd immunity in the United States, continue to wear a mask and maintain social distance while out in public and avoid congregating in large groups for extended periods of time.

Shutting down America again

Just three weeks ago I praised the Trump administration’s guidelines for “Opening Up America Again.” I stand by that praise because I still think the guidelines make sense and are practical. Unfortunately, President Trump does not stand by his own guidelines.

Literally the day after releasing the guidelines, Trump encouraged people protesting the lockdowns in Virginia, Minnesota, and Michigan by exhorting the states to reopen in a series of tweets:

Liberate Minnesota
Liberate Michigan
Liberate Virginia

However, none of the states satisfied the gating criteria that the guidelines specified for proceeding to any of the opening phases. One gating criterion calls for a downward trajectory in coronavirus infections yet all three states were still on an upward trajectory.

The guidelines also make the states responsible for being prepared to do widespread testing and contact tracing. I see this as the linchpin to success reopening up America. However, my opinion is that the federal government is also responsible for this rather than leaving it up to the states alone. I called for the federal government to take leadership on the production and distribution of the resources needed to test and trace. But the federal government has failed to do so and, as expected, no state is yet prepared to test and trace at the level prescribed by the guidelines.

Nonetheless, states such as Texas, Indiana, Colorado, Florida, and Tennessee are beginning to reopen even though the number of confirmed cases are still increasing. Georgia began reopening businesses on April 24 even though coronavirus infections were still on an upward trajectory. But at the end of the month, Trump said of Georgia’s reopening that “I think it’s wonderful.” President Trump isn’t the only one encouraging states that are failing to follow Trump’s own guidelines for reopening. Vice President Pence also praised the thirty something states that have plans or have already begun to open up, even though none of them can pass the testing gate or have two weeks of a downward trajectory in infections.

I understand why the states want to reopen. Sheltering in place and social isolation will wreak severe economic damage not only across the United States but also around the entire planet. The only way to recover from the economic harm is by opening up businesses in all sectors of the economy and in every state. Setting aside the economy, the American people are personally wearying of social distancing for a couple of months now. We all want to begin gathering in large groups for all kinds of events again.

But that doesn’t assuage my concern at this point in the pandemic that we may be reopening society too soon. No one disagrees that opening up will cause an increase in COVID-19 hospitalizing and killing Americans. Everyone hopes that this will happen at a manageable level.

We need to reopen businesses and reduce social distancing with great caution to prevent the increases from occurring in major spikes. If other cities start experiencing overloaded health systems like New York City did (and still does) from COVID-19, they will have little choice but to begin shutting down again. And if we think the shutdowns we’ve all lived through already this year were painful, imagine how much worse it’s going to hurt if we have to shut down America again.

Opening Up America Again

President Trump’s administration released guidelines for “Opening Up America Again” today. They comprise a federal policy that can be effectively implemented nationwide. They are clear, objective, and achievable while also allowing flexibility.

The guidelines assume that they will be implemented by governors on a state-by-state (or even county-level) basis. They set gating criteria and preparedness responsibilities as a baseline. This baseline will be met at different times by different states, so it allows those that are ready now to embark on Phase One immediately while ensuring that states which are not ready yet don’t open up too soon. The guidelines also give governors the flexibility to enhance the guidelines with their own requirements for conditions unique to a given state.

The guidelines are broken into three phases. The baseline gating and preparedness must be met and in place before moving to any of the three phases. Each phase addresses those aspects of daily life for which restrictions remain appropriate due to COVID. Once a phase has begun, states should have no evidence of a rebound before moving to the next phase. They might even have to retreat back to the previous phase if they experience too great of a rebound in COVID-19. Each phase has a distinct set of guidelines for individuals, employers in general, and specific types of employers.

Even Phase Three, which eliminates most restrictions, is not a full return to normal. The United States will likely not be able to return to a state like what seemed normal at the beginning of the year until a coronavirus vaccine has been developed and administered to a large enough portion of the population to get herd immunity. That will not happen until the year 2021 at the earliest. And even then, it will be some form of a “new normal.”

How well and how soon the guidelines will be implemented in a given state will depend largely on its governor. There will be a wide variance among states depending on the resources available to the state and the competency of the governance. Some states have already banded together with their neighboring states to begin working toward opening up to their residents. These coalitions will likely facilitate implementing the guidelines by pooling their resources and people.

The president wants to see the economy return to a reasonable level of productivity as soon as possible. For that to occur, the federal government will also have to step up to the plate. The first obstacle states will face is testing and tracing. States will not be prepared to begin even Phase One until they have widespread testing and contact tracing in place. And they cannot move beyond Phase Three until vaccination for coronavirus is widespread among their respective populations. Neither of these are likely to occur in the near future without the federal government taking leadership on the production and distribution of the resources needed to test, trace, and vaccinate. So the president needs to begin immediately working on this if he wants to see the economy turn around. If President Trump won’t take the responsibility to do so, it will be President Joe Biden who will.

Guidelines: Opening Up America AgainDownload

The evil genius of the Democrats

I was watching Fox News when I learned that the Coronavirus is just another scam created by Democrats to impeach President Trump. I have long felt that the Democrat party is uniquely capable of leveraging a distinct advantage into a colossal failure. So imagine my surprise when they managed to exhibit amazing genius in creating their latest scam to remove Trump from office.

Coronavirus impeachment scam

It all started late last year when the Democrats found a pangolin that was infected with a strain of Coronavirus that was at that time unknown to scientists. They brought the pangolin to China and tricked a vendor into selling it at an open air market in Wuhan. Then the Democrats induced the virus to jump species from the pangolin to humans.

But this was just the beginning of their genius. The Democrats knew that the Chinese people’s behavior was such that there would be an outbreak of the Coronavirus infection in Wuhan. That way, in spite of Trump’s quick implementation of a travel ban from China, the Coronavirus would still manage to get inside the United States.

Once inside the US, the Democrats engineered a way for the Coronavirus to bypass Trump’s “perfect” testing program. Even though Trump assured us that he has “a natural ability” to understand the virus outbreak, the Democrats still managed to get it to break out across the country. This caused Americans to react in irrational paranoia by cancelling public events to mitigate the spread of the virus.

The Democrats’ next step in their vast left-wing conspiracy was to manipulate the mainstream media into reporting on the Coronavirus. Specifically, they got the American people to panic and the MSM to blame Trump for the Coronavirus hoax. The Democrats did all this to impeach the president since they failed miserably with the Mueller investigation and the Ukraine scandal.

What makes this conspiracy particularly heinous is the Democrats’ willingness to needlessly frighten millions of Americans just to get Trump out of office. In fact, the Democrats even got the World Health Organization to declare COVID-19 (the “scientists” name for the Coronavirus) to be a global pandemic so that everyone would fall for the Democrats’ scam.

World Health Organization declares that COVID-19 outbreak is pandemic

So forget about Russia meddling in our elections. Be much more concerned about the Democrats using the Coronavirus to steal the election from Trump. They have finally managed to show true genius in an election scam. But America does not need genius if it’s driven driven by evil.

Health care still needs reform

Yes, I know president Obama signed the Affordable Care Act (ACA) into law five years ago and the Supreme Court recently firmly solidified it in our health care system. But Obamacare was not health care reform, it was just health care change. Sure, more Americans are covered with health insurance because of it but the health care system is otherwise business as usual.

That includes continuing skyrocketing costs. Health insurance providers from around the country are planning to raise their premiums twenty- to forty-percent in 2016—some even more. The ACA was supposed to drive down the cost of health care. But it should come as no surprise that it’s not happening. Even before the law was passed, Dr. Marcia Angell from Harvard University Medical School said “we’re going to deliver the private insurance companies a captive market.” What did anyone seriously think would happen when you give for-profit insurance companies a captive market?

I’ve been saying since the beginning of president Obama’s term that real health care reform means a single-payer system. It’s as true today as it was then. Thanks to the ACA, health insurance companies are more entrenched in our health care system than ever. Unfortunately, they are the problem not the solution.

Health care reform means a single-payer system

Where is the change President Obama spoke of in his campaign? It certainly is not in the form of the health care reform bills going through congress right now. I still have hope that the bill that finally gets signed into law is real health care reform but things are moving in the wrong direction right now. The problem is that insurance companies are still at the core of the various bills being developed right now.

As long as for-profit insurance companies are part of the equation, health care will not see reform. Marcia Angell, a physician and Senior Lecturer in the Department of Social Medicine at Harvard University Medical School and the first woman Editor-in-Chief of the New England Journal of Medicine, put it well when she said:

We are the only advanced country in the world that has chosen to leave health care to the tender mercies of a panoply of for-profit businesses, whose purpose is to maximize income and not to provide health. And that’s exactly what they do.

Dr. Angell was referring to Obama’s position that Americans who do not get health insurance from their employers be mandated to purchase it under the health care reform plan. She says that by so doing, “We’re going to deliver the private insurance companies a captive market…And they love that.”

In fact what we need to do is eliminate the market—at least from the insurance companies—by creating a single-payer plan. Insurance companies deliver no value to patients or recipients of health care whatsoever in the current health care system. All they do is generate costs—almost one-third of what Americans are currently paying for health care goes to administration by health insurance companies.

Opponents of a single-payer system say that patients would get no choice in their health care. It would be completed dictated by the government. But the evidence contradicts this assertion. Dr. Angell goes on to point out about this claim:

It’s phony, in the sense that Medicare is a single-payer system, embedded within our larger market-based system. You have totally free choice of a physician in Medicare. You don’t in most employer-sponsored private plans. Canada, totally free choice of doctors. So, this is simply not true.

Opponents also claim that a single-payer system would lead to rationing. But the fact is that it’s our current “free market” system that rations health care by providing it to the insured and denying it to the poor and uninsured. In fact, even middle class families are falling victim to the status quo: sixty percent of bankruptcies are caused by health problems. Dr. Angell says:

If we continue to spend what we do, right now, on health care, but had a system that distributed it according to medical need, there would be no rationing. And if we held it at that cost, there would never be any rationing. So, it’s simply not right. The problem is not the money, it’s the system.

The system America needs right now is a single-payer system. Just a year ago, President Obama said, “If I were designing a system from scratch, I would probably go ahead with a single-payer system.” Even though congress is not designing a system from scratch, a single-payer system is still the only real way to reform health care if we want a sustainable and affordable system.

Medical marijuana makes more sense

According to NORML, thirteen states have active medical marijuana programs. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that residents of those states can use marijuana to treat medical conditions without risk. Even though the people of those states democratically legalized such use, the Supreme Court demonstrated that it has no compassion for the chronically ill. The Federal government outranks the state government.

It’s about time the Feds get enlightened. Earlier this year, a group of medical doctors, endorsed using marijuana for medical purposes, urging the government to roll back a prohibition on using it to treat patients and supporting studies into its medical applications. This endorsement did not come from a bunch of quacks practicing on the fringes of medicine; it was the American College of Physicians, the second-largest doctors group in the United States.

Sadly, the Bush administration is immune to the logic of science. However, it’s become more difficult for the administration to ignore the benefits of marijuana for treating conditions that pharmaceuticals do not effectively treat. Last month, a study found that giving carefully calibrated doses of smoked marijuana to people with neuropathic pain, which can be difficult-to-treat and extremely painful, can ease their pain without clouding their minds. Those racked with chronic pain will tell you that the value of such relief cannot be counted in dollars and cents.

This is not the only medical condition that marijuana can treat. Because of the variety of ailments that can be treated with it, marijuana could improve the quality of life of countless Americans if the Feds would just lighten up. The emerging clinical applications for cannabis & cannabinoids range from Alzheimer’s disease to Tourette’s Syndrome:

Diagram of human body showing health conditions that could potentially be treated with medical marijuana
Potential Therapeutic Uses of Medical Marijuana