MFA and COVID19 Update – October 11, 2020
By Dr. Bill Honigman, PDA Healthcare Human Rights, Coordinator – Progressive Democrats of America
This week, the world is now up another 2,200,000 known cases of the novel coronavirus #COVID19 to over 37 million. And despite his having been able to easily prevent himself from becoming a victim of the disease by following some normal public health non-pharmacologic measures U.S. President Donald Trump contracted COVID19, then praised God and the best drugs known to humankind for his complete recovery.
The fact is as economist Jeffrey Sachs points out, “…It is not a coincidence that populist politicians in Trump’s mold, notably UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, also became infected. Like Trump, both Johnson and Bolsonaro systematically downplayed the threat of the pandemic and brazenly flaunted routine public-health measures. And, like the United States, the United Kingdom and Brazil are among the world’s hardest-hit countries, with a COVID-19 death rate of 647 per million population in the US, 687 in Brazil, and 623 in the UK, compared with a global average death rate of 133 per million…”
And as regards Trump’s treatment and alleged recovery, world renown health insurance whistleblower Wendell Potter interjects even more reality therapy to the discussion, “…If you think the President can guarantee that all Americans will, “get the same medicine… free of charge,” you don’t know our health care system and the insurance industry like I do. For starters, Trump received several experimental, non-FDA approved medications that would likely cost upwards of $100,000 for the average American…”
Meanwhile, major news outlets are reporting significant surges in cases that have Emergency Room physicians stating concerns of the apparent arrival of the dreaded second wave of the pandemic, with Johns Hopkins University reporting the US death toll for just this last Friday of 990, and the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington School of Medicine, now projecting that daily deaths in the US will peak at about 2,300 per day by mid-January.
Folks, contrary to what the Fox News machine might say, this is not fear mongering precisely because this is not trivial or insignificant. This is worthy of fear, and worthy of deliberate action to mitigate that fear.
So much so that even now, in the middle of the 2020 presidential election, a long-standing revered academic institution of medical scientific journalism, the New England Journal of Medicine, has seen it necessary to weigh in on the importance of voting out the current administration in favor of one that would take this monumental public health threat seriously.
Also, it is clear now through at least one round each of presidential and vice presidential debates that the present administration has no plan to improve outcomes, in particular as it proceeds with its efforts to restrict Healthcare to those with the personal wealth to afford testing and treatments of various kinds, and those privileged to be treated in Single Payer financed facilities of public excellence like Walter Reed Medical Center or expanded Medicare for All plans provided by we the people to our all too often ungrateful Members of Congress.
Friends, it is past time we shift this paradigm, first by voting out this cruel and inhuman bunch of Trumpublicans, and then by pushing for what we all know that we need now more than ever, Medicare for All and the Green New Deal.
Click here to watch: PDA Healthcare Emergency Town Hall, Oct. 11, 2020
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