Tag Archives: ventilators

November 7, 2020 · 00:36

Dubious Records: The United States Hits New COVID-19 Highs

Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

On 30 March 2020 as COVID-19 blew up with startling quickness I wrote an article called Very, Very, Very Dreadful: COVID-19 and Our Future:

Albert Marrin wrote in his book Very, Very, Very, Dreadful: The Influenza Pandemic of 1918: 

“No other disease, no war, no natural disaster, no famine comes close to the great pandemic. In the space of eighteen months in 1918–1919, about 500 million people, one-third of the human race at the time, came down with influenza. The exact total of lives lost will never be known. An early estimate, made in 1920, claimed 21.5 million died worldwide. Since then, researchers have been continually raising the number as they find new information. Today, the best estimate of flu deaths in 1918–1919 is between 50 million and 100 million worldwide, and probably closer to the latter figure.”

The current novel Coronavirus pandemic may not kill as many people as the Great Influenza pandemic did, but the numbers that it will kill will be catastrophic, not only in the number of lives lost, but in the unrest it causes in so many nations will lead to civil wars, usurpation of powers by authoritarian regimes of various ideologies, and subsequent wars that it helps spawn in the coming years. And frankly, after 75 years of relatively small wars, which admittedly have and tragically killed millions of people, the global order has remained relatively stable, until now.

The instability in the global markets, rising unemployment, shortages of so many items that we have come to rely upon, is just the beginning, and the virus has just begun. If it follows the course of the 1918-1919 pandemic, which most scientists believe that it will this is just the first phase. The second will be a slight lessening of infections and deaths in the summer followed by an explosion of it in the fall and winter, and the third wave will be far deadlier than today’s. It may even mutate into a far deadlier strain, as of now we know of two strains of it, and who knows how many there will be in the fall and winter? I cannot say, but I would put money on at least two or three, which even if we can produce a vaccine for the current ones, in record time, the mutations may be immune to it.

We were completely unprepared for this despite knowing that we were due for a pandemic. While industry can produce record numbers of ventilators and PPE, in a relatively short period of time, even which may not be deployed soon enough for this first phase of the pandemic; they cannot produce qualified ICU doctors, nurses and technicians that fast…

Even when we get the beds and ventilators, as well as additional rooms, we will have to staff them with doctors and nurses without or with minimal ICU experience, most gained during their medical or surgical residencies, or rotations through them during nursing school. It takes a special breed of physician or nurse to work in critical care, just as it does to be a cancer specialist, Emergency Medicine Doctor or nurse, or name the medical field. The fact is that you cannot make such specialists in a limited amount of time, and thanks to our managed care, for profit, system we don’t produce enough of them anyway. They are much more valuable than the equipment they have to use…

For brevity’s sake I left some out of the article but I covered what might happen in parts of the Third World. Also the infection and death rates up to that day, as well as the belated announcement of a shutdown by President Trump that was to continue to 31 April and we know what happened after that.

On 30 March there were 722,916 cases of the COVID-19 Virus worldwide, and 33,976 deaths and 536,454 active cases.  In the United States there were 142,178 cases, and 2,484 deaths with 135,135  active cases.

As of now the Worldwide count is 49,666,501 total infections, 1,248,779 deaths and 13,164,331 active cases. Daily deaths are higher than the spring peak, over 9,000 yesterday. In the United States we have 10,058,586 total infections, 242,230 deaths and 3,425,148 active cases and 1,248 new deaths.

In the past week the United States and many other countries records of new infections, deaths, hospitalizations and ICU bed utilization have skyrocketed. Many countries in Europe and in many American cities know that they are being overwhelmed. Many can create additional ICU beds but they don’t have the trained medical personnel to adequately staff them. I think I called that. One can manufacture amazingly beautiful ventilators but without the professionals  to treat the patients they are as good as useless.

I want a good vaccine that can be widely distributed as quickly as possible. I want a cure for those infected, but until that happens we need to do all we can to prevent infection. We have to be smart, but Friday we went over 10,000,000 infections, and Texas went over a million infections. The key is the leadership that President Trump and many other world leaders have not shown. John Barry in his book The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History, wrote:

“So the final lesson of 1918, a simple one yet one most difficult to execute, is that those who occupy positions of authority must lessen the panic that can alienate all within a society. Society cannot function if it is every man for himself. By definition, civilization cannot survive that. Those in authority must retain the public’s trust. The way to do that is to distort nothing, to put the best face on nothing, to try to manipulate no one. Lincoln said that first, and best. A leader must make whatever horror exists concrete. Only then will people be able to break it apart.”

There are many times that I wish I wasn’t right about so many things, but then I am a historian.

I could go on and throw out more statistics, historical references, and things I know having worked two pandemics before this in ICUs and ERs. The United States has recorded more daily infections than at any point in the pandemic, over 100,000 a day. This is only going to get worse, winter has yet to begin.

So until the next time,

Peace,

Padre Steve+

 

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Filed under Coronavirus, Coronavirus 19 Pandemic, COVID19, Diseases Epidemics and Pandemics, ethics, healthcare, History

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May 17, 2020 · 02:56

The Danger of an Unrestrained President and a Short History of His Coronavirus Lies, Using His Words

Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

i have been working on this article for a couple of days. Sadly, there is so much available on it, especially the words of the President and his closest allies and advisors are so numerous, contradictory, malleable, and misleading that they would fill a book. I have done what I can for a online article.

President James Madison wrote:

“The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, selfappointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.”

Tonight as the novel Coronavirus 19 raged across the country, President Trump blames everyone but himself for his administration’s incompetence and failure to act, most of the reasons for go back to him, he gave yet another pep rally as he announced new members of a vaccine task force; rage tweeted conspiracy theories and false information, and then tonight firing yet another of his administration’s Inspectors General, this time that of the State Department. This is the fourth of these officials, whose job is to provide overwatch of their agencies have been fired by the President during the last few months.

Over the same time the President has all over the map in his response to the pandemic is to but his most frequent to deny the reality, deflect from the issue, make unsubstantiated claims about miraculous drugs, make promises about testing, the amount of testing, and disparage testing, order people around him to wear face masks but refuse to do so himself, contradict his own experts advice about the virus, and encourage protests and uprisings against the very governors that he gave the freedom to deal with the virus in their states, or blame blame political opponents, the media, other countries, and anyone but him for his actions, indecisiveness, and incompetence during the greatest crisis to face the country in over a century.

His words since January have shown that he neither comprehends the danger or really cares about the American people so long as he can keep his hold on power. One January 22nd he told CNBC:

“We have it totally under control. It’s one person coming in from China, and we have it under control. It’s going to be just fine.”

On February 10th he told a campaign rally in New Hampshire:

“Looks like by April, you know, in theory, when it gets a little warmer, it miraculously goes away.” He couldn’t have been more wrong. In April the United States lost more people to COVID 19 than it did in the Vietnam War.

On February 24th he tweeted: “The Coronavirus is very much under control in the USA. … Stock Market starting to look very good to me!”

February 26th President Trump announced that Vice President Mike Pence would head up a new National Coronavirus Task Force, at the same Press conference the President said:

“We’re testing everybody that we need to test. And we’re finding very little problem.…It’s a little like the regular flu that we have flu shots for. And we’ll essentially have a flu shot for this in a fairly quick manner.” He says the number of cases “within a couple of days is going to be down to close to zero, that’s a pretty good job we’ve done.”

Unfortunately, that is not how vaccines, even for the the flu are developed, and certainly not how they stop a virus.

The next day he doubled down on his claim, he told a news conference on February 27th “It’s going to disappear. One day, it’s like a miracle, it will disappear.”

On March 2nd Trump met with pharmaceutical CEOs and later claimed that the drug companies are  “going to have vaccines I think relatively soon. And they’re going to have something that makes you better, and that’s going to actually take place we think even sooner.” Dr. Anthony Fauci said directly contradicted him saying  “a year to a year and a half, no matter how fast you go.”

In a Fox News Interview on March 4th he asserted “I think the 3.4 percent [fatality rate] is really a false number.”  The same day he told a group of airline CEOs “Some people will have this at a very light level and won’t even go to a doctor or hospital, and they’ll get better. There are many people like that.”

He touched on testing on March 6th speaking at the CDC saying “Anybody that wants a test can get a test. … The tests are all perfect, like the letter was perfect, the transcription was perfect, right?”  However, the testing capability was not there, and his words would again be exposed as a fantasy, but people believed it until they didn’t.

On March 8th he tweeted at Trump National Golf Course  “We have a perfectly coordinated and fine tuned plan at the White House for our attack on CoronaVirus….The Fake News Media is doing everything possible to make us look bad. Sad!” But these was no such plan, everything was being done on the fly, and even Mike Pence noted on March 5th   “We don’t have enough tests today to meet what we anticipate will be the demand going forward.” 

On March 9th he attacked the news media and Democratic Party on Twitter:

“The Fake News Media and their partner, the Democrat Party, is doing everything within its semi-considerable power … to inflame the CoronaVirus situation.”

The very next day on March 10th he told Republican Senators: “We’re prepared, and we’re doing a great job with it. And it will go away. Just stay calm. It will go away.” Of course, despite two months of warnings we were not prepared. We lacked testing kits, and health care workers lacked critical PPE in order to protect themselves, and enough ventilators to treat  COVID 19 infected patients.

On the 12th the President bragged that everyone coming in to the United States was being tested for the virus, despite numerous accounts to the contrary by travelers entering the United States, including  people I actually know. The President claimed with no justification:

“We have a tremendous testing setup where people coming in have to be tested and if they are positive and if they’re able to get through because frankly if they are not, we are not putting them on planes if it shows positive….Frankly, the testing has been going very smooth. If you go to the right agency, if you go to the right area, you get the test.”

On March 13th he declared a national emergency but then said:

“We have 40 people right now. Forty. Compare that with other countries that have many, many times that amount. And one of the reasons we have 40 and others have — and, again, that number is going up, just so you understand. And a number of cases, which are very small, relatively speaking — it’s going up. But we’ve done a great job because we acted quickly. We acted early. And there’s nothing we could have done that was better than closing our borders to highly infected areas.”

But this was a lie, he had dithered, denied and delayed and those numbers would grow exponentially over the coming weeks and months. He also claimed that nothing that had happened under his watch, his actions and inactions, to minimize, deny, deflect, and delay telling the truth regarding the virus, the testing, or the severity of the pandemic. His words From then are still haunting to remember “I don’t take responsibility at all…”

He finally began to acknowledge the severity of the crisis when in a March 16th news conference he acknowledged “We have an invisible enemy.” This was true and it appeared that he and the administration might finally be on the verge of responding to it. He followed that up with “We’re using the full power of the federal government to defeat the virus, and that’s what we’ve been doing.”  That was a hopeful sign, but as we have discovered since, there was little truth  in it. Experts were not being listened to and little was being done to coordinate a response at the Federal level.

The following day, March 15th at another news conference he acknowledged truth about the virus while spinning a lie in with it. He said, “This is a very contagious virus. It’s incredible. But it’s something that we have tremendous control over.”  His statement was contradictory, one does not have “tremendous control” over a virus that there is no vaccine.

On March 17th, again speaking at a news conference he told a whopper of a lie based on all of his early statements about it “I felt it was a pandemic long before it was called a pandemic.” Truthfully, when I heard that I had to throw the bullshit flag.

The next day he took to his medium of choice, Twitter, and said whipped out another doozy, “I always treated the Chinese Virus very seriously, and have done a very good job from the beginning, including my very early decision to close the ‘borders’ from China – against the wishes of almost all.” Once again there was a bit of truth in this, many in business and Congress opposed it, but that being said, after the so called “travel ban” went into effect, another 40,000 travelers from China entered the United States by commercial air.

On the 19th he claimed, despite indisputable evidence that American intelligence agencies had warned of it going back to December 2019. He claimed at a press conference  “It’s something that surprised the whole world. If people could’ve known about it, it could’ve been stopped in place.”  In fact for years people have been warning of a new pandemic for decades, including people in the administration. According to Politico, the administration was briefed on the 69-page National Security Council playbook, titled “Playbook for early response to high consequence emerging infectious disease threats and biological incidents,” back in 2017. It was never fully staffed by the National Security Council and never became policy.

But then as states and cities began to enact stay at home orders and shutting down businesses, restaurants, sports, entertainment venues and churches to minimize contact and try to stop the spread of the virus he turned to the only thing that matters to him, the economy. Knowing that only the good economy could get him re-elected he tried to pivot to economic concerns, he began his pivot   At a March 19th news conference:

“We took the best economy we’ve ever had and we said ‘Stop. You can’t work. You have to stay home.’ … Here’s a case we’re paying a lot of money to stop things because we don’t want people to be together so that this virus doesn’t continue onward.”

But by the 23rd it was becoming evident that he was beginning to panic about the economy as the stock markets hit their lowest point since the second week of his presidency. At a press conference that day he stated “Our country wasn’t built to be shut down,” and then went on into his cloud cuckoo land of delusional think that no responsible economist, immunologist, virologist, or public health official could ever back. He claimed “America will again, and soon, be open for business — very soon — a lot sooner than three or four months that somebody was suggesting. … We cannot let the cure be worse than the problem itself.” The next morning on Fox News he engaged in more hopeful fantasy saying “I’d love to have the country opened up and just raring to go by Easter.”

On March 25th he revealed his true feelings about the factual reporting being done on the virus in a very angry Tweet “The LameStream Media is the dominant force in trying to get me to keep our Country closed as long as possible in the hope that it will be detrimental to my election success. The real people want to get back to work ASAP.  We will be stronger than ever before!”

In the mean time the Congress worked on a stimulus package and the markets began to look up a bit.   As this was going on the President adopted wartime language to describe the battle against the virus. At his March 19th news conference he described himself as a wartime President. However, when it came to the weapons need to win this war and save lives he attacked the medical experts and the governors who were critically short of ventilators for the the COVID 19 packed ICUs:

“I don’t believe you need 40,000 or 30,000 ventilators. You know, you go into major hospitals sometimes they’ll have two ventilators, and now all of a sudden they’re saying, ‘Can we order 30,000 ventilators?’”

Returning to the language of war on the 28th on Twitter he boasted “WE WILL WIN THIS WAR. When we achieve this victory, we will emerge stronger and more united than ever before!” His language was almost Churchillian, but like everything he says his future actions would undermine his words. At a press conference on the 29th he seemed to continue that “Nothing would be worse than declaring victory before the victory is won.” And his next news conference on the 30th he ““We’re going to have a great victory.” When Anthony Fauci warned that 100,000 to 200,000 could die the President said that the county would be doing good if it “can hold…the number of deaths below 100,000. 

On March 30th he backed off of his Easter restart and extended his social distancing measures until April 1st but predicted that by June things would be roar

“The “The better you do, the faster this whole nightmare will end. Therefore, we will be extending our guidelines to April 30th to slow the spread. … We can expect that, by June 1st, we will be well on our way to recovery. We think, by June 1st, a lot of great things will be happening.” 

April the April 1st news conference the President made another unsubstantiated and unscientific claim  “In a month or so, I think once this passes, we’re not going to have to be hopefully worried too much about the virus.” 

On April 3rd he went back to his initial claims stating at a White House briefing “I said it was going away – and it is going away.”

On April 9th he went back to testing, trying to blame the failure on the Obama Administration. He claimed that “Initially speaking, the tests were old, obsolete, and not really prepared.”  However, the virus was a new virus and since it was unknown during the Obama presidency the statement was yet another attempt to deflect responsibility. Continuing on testing on April 9th Trump claimed in a press conference that the United States had the best  testing program in the world. He said  “We have the best — right now, the best testing system in the world.” That wasn’t true then or now. When he said it the United States had yet to test 1% of the American population. Over a month later we still have not even gotten to five percent.

Then on April 13th the most troubling statement to date was uttered by the President. It concerned his disputes with the State Governors who have the Constitutional authority to enforce the law in their states and who Trump had abdicated the responsibility for managing the pandemic response in their states. The President said “When somebody is the President of the United States, the authority is total, and that’s the way it’s got to be.” However, that is not true according the Article II of the Constitution. However, two days later he began to backtrack a bit saying “We have the right to do whatever we want. But we wouldn’t do that.” On the 16th he announced that the reopening of states could begin as early as May 1st, but was  “dependent on what the governor wants to do.”

But the very next day the President tweeted:  “LIBERATE MINNESOTA!” then “LIBERATE MICHIGAN!” and “LIBERATE VIRGINIA, and save your great 2nd Amendment. It is under siege!” His Tweets would lead to action by Second Amendment extremists, White Nationalists, Neo-Nazis, so-called Militia groups, and other anti-government groups, many fueled by conspiracy theorists. However, the authority he gave to the governors was about stay at home and business closures, not the Second Amendment. His tweet was tantamount to an attack on the State governments.

The next day at a Press Conference he said  “You must remember that the governors wanted to have total control over the opening of their states, but now they want to have us, the federal government, do the testing.  And again, testing is local.  You can’t have it both ways.”  But that also was untrue, during a pandemic testing is not local, and the President early on abdicated his responsibility to the governors who he was now attacking.

On April 21st the Director of the CDC, Dr. Robert Redfield said “There’s a possibility that the assault of the virus on our nation next winter will actually be even more difficult than the one we just went through.”  Trump claimed that Redfield was misquoted and Redfield denied that.

But the absurdities that have continued to flow out of the White House and the mouth of the President continue unabated, getting more strident, absurd, accusatory, and irresponsible by the day. On May 9th the President while visiting a plant making N-95 respirators the President was asked about reopening parts of the country. He replied:  “I’m not saying anything is perfect, and yes, will some people be affected, yes, will some people be affected badly—yes, but we have to get our country open and we have to get it open soon.”

The fact that his administration predicted that the numbers of dead could double by June didn’t seem to register to him. Instead of saying that people could become seriously ill, or die, he used the euphemism “be affected.” Honestly that sounds much better than get seriously ill and die, but euphemisms are the way that those responsible for mass murder, or even genocide speak of what they do when committing murder on a mass scale. Truthfully, I find little difference between the words, euphemisms and policies of regimes that have committed mass murder and genocide. This time instead of active measures like mass shootings, gassings, death marches, and working people to death, this administration is simply allowing people to die from a viral pandemic because they don’t care for they die, especially the elderly, the chronically ill, the mentally ill, racial or religious minorities, the poor, needy, the addicted, or those with congenital illnesses and deformities which require substantial amounts of money to give a modicum of decent human care  And compassion to keep alive, means that to use the words of the Eugenicists of the 1920s and 1930s Which were put into use by the Nazis beginning in September 1939, such people are considered life unworthy of life.

I could keep going. I have left so much out simply because it was repetitive or because I have been working on this article for over two days and am tired. So I won’t say more about those comments today. That being said I have to mention this, because it matters a lot.

Over the same period of the coronavirus pandemic, the Attorney General of the United States, Bill Barr, has been doing all he can to subvert the Article One authorities of the Congress, aided and abetted by the Senate Majority Leader, Senator Mitch McConnell. 

For me this was something I could never imagine until Trump announced his candidacy, conducted his campaign, and has dealt with the responsibilities of the office of the President. Instead of upholding his oath of office, he has systematically tried to ensure the loyalty of the most powerful Federal Agencies and Departments protected him and carried out his personal agenda and those of his political allies. Attorney General Bob Barr is little different than Trump, and probably much worse, because he should know better, yet he has only assisted in the President’s dismantling of the Congress, the Courts, and undermining the Federal Agencies entrusted with maintaining the guardrails of the American Experiment, those guardrails which maintained by apolitical career civil servants help maintain the continuity and competence of government.

One of the key components of this are the inspectors general of the various departments of the Federal Government. Most are long time civil servants which legal and ethics training who are apolitical and have served under numerous presidential administrations. They are the ethical and legal watchdogs without which the government could not function without becoming a literal den of thieves. Since the outbreak of COVID 19 the President has fired five of these watchdogs. Intelligence Community IG Michael Atkinson, Acting Department of Defense IG Glen Fine, Acting Department of Health and Human Services IG Christi Grimm, and finally State Department IG Steve Linick. All of these men and women had weighed in about Administration policies and decisions during the crisis or were investigating high ranking members of the administration.

Combined with all the President’s lies and distortions, these actions suggest that he is is moving towards doing all he can to remain in power even by extra constitutional means. With a compliant and activist Attorney General like Bob Barr, and a subservient Senate majority, House minority, and the many allies he has appointed to the Federal judiciary, and the numerous existing Executive Orders, and the certain provisions of the Patriot Act, and the armed thugs who call themselves militia, as well as many Sheriffs, the President is not far from being able to take full authoritarian power, and use the Coronavirus 19 pandemic, that he did so much to make worse, as cover to do it. Snyder wrote:

“Be calm when the unthinkable arrives. Modern tyranny is terror management. When the terrorist attack comes, remember that authoritarians exploit such events in order to consolidate power. The sudden disaster that requires the end of checks and balances, the dissolution of political parties, the suspension of freedom of expression, the right to a fair trial, and so on, is the oldest trick in the Hitlerian book. DO NOT FALL FOR IT.”

It would not be the first time that a democratically elected ruler would do something like this. On a side note, yesterday  the United States topped 90,000 deaths and a million and a half total infections. Within the next week, probably less we will have surpassed 100,000 deaths. And so it goes…

Peace,

Padre Steve+

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Filed under authoritarian government, Coronavirus, Diseases Epidemics and Pandemics, ethics, History, laws and legislation, national security, News and current events, Political Commentary

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April 2, 2020 · 03:07

The COVID-19 Tsunami is Here and The Pro-Life is Exposed as Profit over People

Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

The disaster that few prepared for, including our President despite having verified and validated evidence of it in January is here. Back then we were given a moment in time to prepare, something that people that experience tsunamis ever get. An administration in denial dismissed evidence that could have mitigated the novel Coronavirus and minimized the number killed by it. I will not go through the litany of deception and false claims that he made made, and the actions of his administration in giving away tons of vitality needed Personal Protective Equipment  from our national stockpile, to China. PPE that our doctors, nurses, and other medical personnel are crying out for because they are having to reuse or use makeshift gear to treat the victims of the novel Coronavirus. 

Back in January there were only a few cases, which the President said would soon disappear along with the virus, and the President’s “band played on,” to borrow words the late Randy Shilts in his monumental volume about the initial response of the Reagan Administration to the AIDS pandemic. However, despite the warning the President played politics by minimizing the threat, and later bragging about how he has responded to it, constantly upstaging, and contradicting the experts of the CDC including Drs. Fauci and Brix, while ignoring the rising infection rate and death toll until it became a political liability. When that happened he and is enablers, supporters, and propaganda network, you know them well Fox News began to deflect the blame to the Democrats, the impeachment hearings and Senate trial, the Chinese, the media, and anyone else for his multiple failures when simply listening to experts and being honest with the American people would have been far better. In fact he took his impeachment trial and COVID-19 so cavalierly that he kept having campaign rallies beating his chest, demonizing his opponents, bragging on himself, and exposing his followers to to a deadly virus in massed rallies who God knows how many were exposed to satiate his vanity. That is the mark of a true sociopath, he doesn’t even care about his supporters. Think about that.

Just 24 days ago, on 8 March, the United States reported 541 infections and 22 deaths. By March 18th there were 9,259 cases and 150 deaths. Four days later we were at 46,182 cases and 582 deaths, a death rate of 66%, well over the worldwide percentage. Two days later we were over 66,000 infections and over 1,000 deaths. Now we lead the world in number of infections, as infections and deaths are spiking, and the healthcare system is being overwhelmed without enough resources to care for the victims or protect their caregivers. In two and a half months we went from a barely noticeable situation, unless you pay attention to potential pandemics. But in 24 days we went from a noticeable wave to a tsunami of infection and death, not to mention economic carnage, and worldwide instability. But, instead of doing what almost all of his 44 predecessors did, President Trump declared “I don’t take responsibility for anything.” Forget President Harry Truman who declared “the Buck stops here,” or any other President, this President denies any blame for anything regardless of how serious it is. But that is his history: draft dodging, divorces, affairs, corporate bankruptcies and failures, leaving employees, contractors, and now the American people in the lurch to protect himself.

As of now the United States has 215,300 of the world’s 936,204 infections, or 23% of the world total. That is a 338% increase since 8 March. Our death rate since 8 March has gone up by 223%. By the way we have the unfortunate distinction of having the most infections or any country in the world. But wait, there’s more. Of the 47,249 deaths we went from 3,ooo to over 5,000  deaths in 48 hours. Our death toll is now 5,110, or 11% or the worldwide death total, and supposedly we have the best medical system in the world.

But that is not the case. Public health ranks at the bottom of our priorities. Expensive specialty procedures and interventions are at the top, not to include medical procedures performed simply for our vanity and good looks. Preparation for pandemics and disasters  is also low, because our medical system is profit based predicated on what insurance companies will pay for, if an American is fortunate enough to have medical insurance. The fact is that our private and even public hospitals operate with very little surge capacity, because it takes profits down. ICU beds, ventilators, and the highly trained staff need to man them are expensive. Insurance companies don’t like to pay those costs, nor do hospitals and medical systems. For the corporations, profit takes priority over people, even when the doctors, nurses, and other staff are committed to life and the Hippocratic Oath.

As of today that number is far lower than it was a week ago, as failing businesses end their COBRA policies, and then fire their workers. It looks great on a corporate balance sheet but it fucks all of their employees, especially those who devoted their lives and careers to those corporations, while the Trump Administration refuses to let the millions of people impacted by this to purchase health insurance through the Obamacare exchanges. The President rejected that today, it is quite obvious that he would rather destroy the lives of people than to save them and then claim victory despite the loss of 100,00-240,000 people or more. Those are not the actions of a man who stands for the sanctity of life, but rather a sociopath willing to sacrifice lives to keep power.

The cruelty of profit over life exposes that our real civil religion and morality is not life, but profit. As a historian and scholar of Nazi Germany and the Holocaust, I have to ask when palliative care transitions to euthanasia, and those deemed life unworthy of life, are euthanized by the people who supposedly there to care for them and protect the sanctity of their lives. As this cris continues, and the Trump Administration remains in change that such a decision will be made, not to protect the sanctity of life, but to enhance corporate profits, and political power, regardless of the human cost.

It is late and I am tired, but as of now of those whose cases were resolved by death and recoveries, 36% resulted in death. The worldwide death rate has gone up to 20%, up from 16% at the end of last week.

I believe in God, faith and prayer, but without the actions of responsible human beings in leadership positions, elected, appointed, or commissioned, we are headed to a human, economic, sociological, and eventually war based solution, regardless of whatever nation starts it,

So until tomorrow I wish you all the best. Please be careful out there.

Peace,

Padre Steve+

 

 

 

 

 

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Filed under civil rights, Coronavirus, Diseases Epidemics and Pandemics, economics and financial policy, ethics, euthanasia, faith, healthcare, History, holocaust, laws and legislation, leadership, life, national security, natural disasters, News and current events, Political Commentary, pro-life anti-abortion

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March 30, 2020 · 00:00

Very, Very, Very Dreadful: COVID-19 and Our Future


At Kroger Today 
Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

Albert Marrin wrote in his book Very, Very, Very, Dreadful: The Influenza Pandemic of 1918: 

“No other disease, no war, no natural disaster, no famine comes close to the great pandemic. In the space of eighteen months in 1918–1919, about 500 million people, one-third of the human race at the time, came down with influenza. The exact total of lives lost will never be known. An early estimate, made in 1920, claimed 21.5 million died worldwide. Since then, researchers have been continually raising the number as they find new information. Today, the best estimate of flu deaths in 1918–1919 is between 50 million and 100 million worldwide, and probably closer to the latter figure.”

The current novel Coronavirus pandemic may not kill as many people as the Great Influenza pandemic did, but the numbers that it will kill will be catastrophic, not only in the number of lives lost, but in the unrest it causes in so many nations will lead to civil wars, usurpation of powers by authoritarian regimes of various ideologies, and subsequent wars that it helps spawn in the coming years. And frankly, after 75 years of relatively small wars, which admittedly have and tragically killed millions of people, the global order has remained relatively stable, until now.

The instability in the global markets, rising unemployment, shortages of so many items that we have come to rely upon, is just the beginning, and the virus has just begun. If it follows the course of the 1918-1919 pandemic, which most scientists believe that it will this is just the first phase. The second will be a slight lessening of infections and deaths in the summer followed by an explosion of it in the fall and winter, and the third wave will be far deadlier than today’s. It may even mutate into a far deadlier strain, as of now we know of two strains of it, and who knows how many there will be in the fall and winter? I cannot say, but I would put money on at least two or three, which even if we can produce a vaccine for the current ones, in record time, the mutations may be immune to it.

We were completely unprepared for this despite knowing that we were due for a pandemic. While industry can produce record numbers of ventilators and PPE, in a relatively short period of time, even which may not be deployed soon enough for this first phase of the pandemic; they cannot produce qualified ICU doctors, nurses and technicians that fast.

Even when we get the beds and ventilators, as well as additional rooms, we will have to staff them with doctors and nurses without or with minimal ICU experience, most gained during their medical or surgical residencies, or rotations through them during nursing school. It takes a special breed of physician or nurse to work in critical care, just as it does to be a cancer specialist, Emergency Medicine Doctor or nurse, or name the medical field. The fact is that you cannot make such specialists in a limited amount of time, and thanks to our managed care, for profit, system we don’t produce enough of them anyway. They are much more valuable than the equipment they have to use.

If the hospitals of the First World are being overwhelmed, just imagine what will happen when the virus begins to explode in the Third World, where a lack of basic medical care is standard, and critical care physicians and nurses are at the university and government run medical centers in major cities, most often the national capitals. The virus will spread through the major cities with a vengeance, and then to the hinterlands. Millions will die, simply because they live in countries too poor, and often politically unstable to deal with it.

As of tonight the numbers continue to explode. As of this moment there are 722,916 cases of the COVID-19 Virus worldwide, and 33,976 deaths. This is up from 532,362 cases of COVID-19 and 24,090 deaths Friday.  Today 536,454 of the cases are still active. Of the closed cases 151,756 have recovered and 33,976 have died for a 18% death rate, up from 16% less than 48 hours ago. That is a increase in infections of 190,553 cases and an increase of 9,886 deaths in just 48 hours. Say what you want, but the numbers don’t lie.

The same is true in the United States the numbers are not encouraging because we are so far behind the testing and preparation stage. As of now there 142,178 cases, and 2,484 deaths, and 4,559 recoveries a death rate among the closed cases of But at this same time on 27 March there were 85,984 total reported infections with 1,300 deaths and 1868 recoveries. Currently 135,135 of these cases are active. The mortality rate among the closed cases is 35%. Sadly we are nowhere close to the peak, which despite efforts to mitigate the spread in some states, others are refusing to make take any precautions, including those bordering some of the hot spots where the virus is now exploding.

Thankfully, despite his many lies, obfuscations, and refusal to take responsibility for anything, while blaming state governments and even health care providers for the growth of the virus, has at least admitted that many more lives may be lost and expanded his restrictions on gatherings to at least April 30th. I expect that he will have to push it further back.

But Americans, especially his supporters hate this, and are likely in states they control will ease restrictions as early as next week.

However, it is late and I have to get ready to go to bed so I can get to work in the morning.

Until tomorrow,

Peace,

Padre Steve+

 

 

 

 

 

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March 18, 2020 · 23:59

“Therefore Never Send to Know for Whom the bell Tolls, it Tolls for Thee” The Victims, Costs, and Threat of COVID-19


Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

On December 31st the Chinese Government reported the first death from nouveau Coronavirus 19, or COVID 19. By the end of January there were over 12,000 cases and 259 deaths. The first infected American arrived from China in the middle of January. At first, the American Government led by the Trump Administration paid little attention to it or downplayed its significance. It did that until the bottom began falling out of the stock markets, bond markets, and the oil market, the latter was not due to Coronavirus but the productions and price oil war between Saudi Arabia and Russia.

The Trump Administration finally labeled the situation a health emergency at the end of January, but did nothing to prepare.  Belatedly, it began to organize a response led by Vice President Pence at the end of February, but even still the President in his speeches and tweets continued to downplay the situation as members of his political, religious, and media cult amplified his message, until a week ago.

The day I wrote my first article about Coronavirus, March 8th there had been almost 110,000 cases and nearly 3800 deaths. That was an increase of 98,000 cases and over 3500 deaths in just 38 days.

Around midnight last night, there were nearly 198,500 cases and just shy of 8,000 deaths, 7,987 to be exact. So in ten days there were around 100,000 new cases, and close to 4200 new deaths. As of this evening there are a total of 218,721 cases, of which 125,392 are currently active. 93,329 are closed, meaning either recovery or death. Of the closed cases, 8,983 or 10% have died. This means there were over 20,000 new cases and almost 1,000 deaths since last night. Italy was hit hardest in the past day, over 4,200 new cases and 475 deaths.  In other European countries the numbers are spiking, and are about a week or two behind Italy in the progression of the disease.

Since last night the United States, in which testing capabilities are being expanded, there are now a total of 9,301 cases, with 2,890 of them being reported in the last day, and a total of 152 deaths, 43 since yesterday. Our numbers are about two or three weeks behind Italy, and despite the measures to quarantine, shut down, or shelter-in-place enacted by state and local governments there is no uniformity to those actions in light of the limited guidance or funding provided by Federal agencies.

In the United States, we were not prepared despite the warnings of experts that such a deadly pandemic would happen. The country was underprepared and unready for such a condition of affairs. Despite the recent flurry of action by Trump and his administration dithered and denied any real emergency or crisis for over two months, not taking precautions, not ramping up production of test kits, N-95 masks, surgical masks, other personal protective gear for first responders, hospital personnel, or nursing home workers, nor did it anticipate the need for anti-viral disinfectants, cleaners, or urge Americans to begin wearing surgical masks in order to mitigate the possible transmission of the virus.  Nor did it take of whole of government approach to the developing crisis until last week. Even with that move there is much confusion and bureaucratic infighting.

Frankly, most departments are still trying to make sense of what they need to do. Today the Navy was ordered to prepare the Hospital Ships USNS Comfort and USNS Mercy for deployment. Both are converted supertankers built in 1974 and 1975 before being purchased and converted and equipped as 1000 bed hospital ships in 1987. They are approaching 50 years old. They are equipped with operating rooms ICU beds, and medical and surgical wards, Radiology suites, and a full range of labs, but it takes a lot to staff them and make them ready to deploy. In addition to normal pre-deployment activities everyone deploying on them will need to be test for Coronavirus before they set foot on the ship to ensure that they do not become “plague ships.”  Comfort will deploy to New York, and Mercy to a yet to be determined West Coast metropolis. It will take at least a week, and probably more to make them ready to deploy. The crews of the ships are Merchant Marine Officers, deck, and engineering personnel, but the physicians, nurses, other providers, and technicians will leave their duty stations in Naval Hospitals and Clinics which are already at critical manning levels. They have to be augmented by activated Naval Reserve Medical personnel, Uniformed Public Health Service Officers, civilians employees of Navy Medicine and medical personnel from Humanitarian Service Organizations. There also has to be a Navy Security detachment, communications section, and an aviation detachment with its helicopters, as well as Chaplains and Mental Health Providers. These ships seldom deploy at the same time so the demands on Navy Medicine will be quite severe in Navy Medical Centers, Hospitals, and clinics.

Likewise, the administration ordered the activation of a number of mobile field hospitals. There are a number of types and sizes of such self-contained units which can be deployed by air sea, or ground. But like the Navy’s Hospital ships they draw almost all of their medical personnel from active duty hospitals, and mobilized reservists. Likewise,  the reserve and National Guard field hospitals depend on the very civilian health professions working in hospitals and private practices already dealing with the pandemic.

While China has flattened its infection and death curves due to its draconian police power to enforce the will of the government over the past few weeks, COVID-19 has spread across the globe. This includes all  50 U.S. States, Washington D.C., and Puerto Rico. The numbers are expanding exponentially in Europe and the United States, and today, two members of the House of Representatives announced that they had tested positive for the virus. With every passing day that curve will spike in the United States and Europe, and evidence in other countries suggest that a second wave of the virus is spreading in countries that did pretty well in the first wave.

On Friday, the President attempted to contain the damage with a press conference where he again minimized the threat, denied personal responsibility for anything, and then spoke to supporting financial markets, which briefly caused a rally on Wall Street, which collapsed as he and the administration began to acknowledge the truth of the matter and he turned the answering of medical, logistic, and disaster response to experts, such as Dr. Anthony Fauci, and even Vice President Pence seemed to eclipse Trump as more presidential. Over the weekend the President looked like a man who knew that he was in way over his head, even when he blustered and tweeted. Despite the actions being planned to mitigate the economic, public health, and personal costs of the virus, the damage was done. On Monday the stock markets took their heaviest losses ever, gained a little bit back Tuesday, and crashed again today.

Scrambling to find a way out of the situation the Administration and Congress, thanks largely to Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi have been attempting to work out a stimulus bill which hopefully, would directly benefit all Americans, not just the banks, oil companies, and financial industries. Congress passed a measure to provide paid sick leave for all, and the Treasury Department is arguing for direct monetary payments to Americans who are now being hit with the full reality of an uncontrolled pandemic, massive business closures, job losses, and quarantine in some cities and states. The details of that are still to be worked out, but even that may not be enough to save some people from financial disaster.

Today the President used his authority to use the 70–year–old Defense Production Act to force companies to make more respiratory ventilators, testing kits, and personal protective gear for medical personnel. But none of these measures can make up for the lack of ICU beds, General Medical beds, that are a feature of our mostly for profit medical industry. Hospitals have lost their ability to surge because maintaining an unused surge capacity is too expensive, until you really need it. Now, thirty years after the end of the Cold War, even the military medical system too has little surge capacity because like its civilian counterparts it has adopted the business models of civilian medical corporations.  Fewer staff, fewer beds, and less surge capacity.

The economy is taking massive hits, large numbers of the people who can least afford it are being laid off with little chance of going back to work anytime soon.

This is especially true of the airline, cruise, hotel, entertainment, hotel, and restaurant industries. In the restaurant industry nearly 15 million jobs are at stake, by the time it abates, there could be 50 million job losses in the hotel, restaurant, and entertainment sectors as local, state and the Federal government begin shutdowns of these businesses. Sadly most of the workers are living paycheck to paycheck, work for minimum wage and tips. Many are single parents, students, and people who chose the jobs because they liked dealing with people, or who were working to support themselves to get a better paying and more stable career. We know a lot of them. Good people, hard working people who constantly get screwed regardless of whether they work for large or middle sized companies who do not value them as people, or local restaurants which do not have large financial reserves, but it will expand as commercial food suppliers lose their corporate restaurant, entertainment, hotel and resort customers who will have no need of their supplies until the situation gets better.

Hopefully the measures being worked out will not only include direct payments to Americans, support for the restaurant, hotel, entertainment, and travel industries which employ far more people than the oil companies, and financial industries, as well as a provision for paid sick leave which is standard in most countries of the world.

But my friends, every one of these victims of Coronavirus and government incompetence is a real person. Many will recover from the virus but will suffer long term effects. Many will die, leaving behind friends, families, and holes in the community. Others, not infected by the virus will lose their jobs, businesses, or people that they love and care about. These people are not just numbers no matter what country or industry they live or work in. They are real live, men and women, sons and daughters, fathers and mothers, friends, co-workers, and acquaintances.

Behind every number there is a name, and a life connected to others. John Donne put it so well in his No Man is an Island:

“No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend’s or of thine own were: any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bells tolls; it tolls for thee.”

For me and Judy, these are not numbers or statistics, they are friends, neighbors, and even family.

I am old enough to have worked as a hospital chaplain during two pandemics, and seen people die. I helped write the Army personnel policies for HIV infected personnel and worked with many so they could remain in the service back in 1987 and 1988. I worked in a homeless shelter for abysmal wages caring for those with less working for a board of 30 very well off members who didn’t value me as a person. I have been a company commander in the Army at the young age of 25 with just two years of active duty service before I took command. I have also done two combat tours, seen things most Americans have never seen, been shot at by rockets, machine guns, and small arms, all while unarmed. During this current pandemic I am essential personnel. A chaplain cannot telework. Ministry involves real contact with real people, in the flesh. This involves risks, I am almost 60, but I will take them but attempt to mitigate them in order to care for those who be they military.

The sad thing is that I will have friends and family members who will despite the overwhelming evidence downplay the situation, ignore it, or claim it to be “fake news.” Unfortunately, many will become victims of it or be the typhoid Mary’s of our day, spreading the virus without even knowing they have it.

Ignorance and negligence carry a heavy human price. As stupid and senseless as it may be to some, I have to speak out. As Sophie Scholl, who died as a peaceful resistance leader at the hands of the Nazis when she was just twenty-two years old wrote:

“The real damage is done by those millions who want to ‘survive.’ The honest men who just want to be left in peace. Those who don’t want their little lives disturbed by anything bigger than themselves. Those with no sides and no causes. Those who won’t take measure of their own strength, for fear of antagonizing their own weakness. Those who don’t like to make waves—or enemies. Those for whom freedom, honour, truth, and principles are only literature. Those who live small, mate small, die small. It’s the reductionist approach to life: if you keep it small, you’ll keep it under control. If you don’t make any noise, the bogeyman won’t find you. But it’s all an illusion, because they die too, those people who roll up their spirits into tiny little balls so as to be safe. Safe?! From what? Life is always on the edge of death; narrow streets lead to the same place as wide avenues, and a little candle burns itself out just like a flaming torch does. I choose my own way to burn.”

Nothing is safe now. The fantasy world that we lived in since the fall of the Berlin Wall is over. Pandemics and economic crashes are real, as is the potential for military conflict over areas of vast natural resources, and regions where ancient racial and religious scores are still aching to be settled.

Those are unpleasant facts, and until a vaccine is available that can treat the disease, we have to flatten the rate of infection, and the best way to do that is to  practice appropriate levels of  social distancing. The includes attempting to maintain a six foot separation, no hand shaking, and not going to work if you are sick. Actions taken by various, state, county, and local governments, include closing schools and universities and moving to online education, canceling large festivals, shows, and sporting events, and the voluntary shutting down of professional sports leagues, and prestigious tournaments. In response to these measures many restaurants, hotels, and entertainment centers have had to shut down, or limit services.

We were in a locally owned restaurant with a bar tonight when police entered the establishment to make sure that it was observing the state set number of no more than ten patrons inside. The manager on duty was warned and the three or four excess patrons, most who had been there a long time paid up and left. Once the people left the restaurant, the manager locked the door to ensure that no excess people would enter without a corresponding number leaving. The penalty after the warning would have been a $5,000 fine. The place will either set strict limits and hire security to enforce it, or shift to take out.

As we drove around our Town Center, all the major restaurants were closed. They cannot remain open except for take outs or delivery. Many other restaurants that depend on the volume of customers to make a profit are closed. In our area alone thousands of restaurant employees have been laid off. Likewise, movie theaters, museums, zoos, and concert venues shut down. Outside of our area both GM and Ford have shut down their American assembly plants, laying off thousands of workers, airlines have cut back the number of flights and at least one has shut down all of its overseas services. On Sunday I drove by a local mega church which had empty parking lots because they were being responsible and cancelled their services. That was a strange sight.

With people losing their jobs at such a rapid rate there is a likelihood that the rising real estate market could also suffer price devaluation, and while HUD has banned evictions or foreclosures until the end of April, the market could crash as it did in 2008.

As the disease begins to impact the military, infect service members, their families, and our Civilian Workers, it will degrade readiness. Important exercise with allies have already been cancelled, and soon deployments could be impacted, even if military action is required. Transfers are all now on hold, temporarily duty for schools, command visits, inspections, and other operations are now suspended unless they have a direct impact on combat operations. The movement of trainees to their new duty stations or technical schools is now suspended. New recruits cannot go into training and within weeks the effects will be felt throughout the military.

The President called this a wartime situation. If it really is he should declare a Stop Loss to keep as many military personnel ready in case of conflict. Worldwide economic crises often trigger insanely violent nationalistic movements, and subsequent wars. The possibility of that becomes greater as countries become unstable, and local conflicts could quickly become regional conflicts involving open, and undeclared enemies of the United States attacking our friends, allies, and vital interests in the world, which include natural resources not available in the United States, and yes, those include materials used in products that we all depend on.

I started this last night but was too tired to finish it. Hopefully this will help my readers better understand the very real impact that this virus will have on our society. It knows no class, profession, religion, ethnic, political, or racial division. A lot of people will be infected, and many will die. By the time it passes it will probably impact every one of us, if not directly, but because of it sickening and killing relatives and friends, or impacting our personal lives in terms of employment, earnings, and maybe even how we live.

I do a lot of listening, and I hear a lot of conspiracy theories spouted by people who know nothing of this virus, nothing of the powers of local, state and the Federal government in time of national emergency that it is useless to try to convince them that they are wrong.  Most of the time I I listen but don’t comment because I realize that it won’t do any good.

But I am done for tonight. I could write a lot more, and probably will do weekly updates on this crisis.

So until tomorrow, be careful out there.

Peace,

Padre Steve+

 

 

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