“I CAN’T KEEP DOING THIS”: Doctor pleads for review of data during COVID-19
Senate hearing
December 8, 2020
Pierre Kory, M.D., Associate Professor of Medicine at St. Luke’s Aurora Medical Center, delivers passionate testimony during the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee hearing on “Early Outpatient Treatment: An Essential Part of a COVID-19 Solution, Part II.”
This well known broadcaster is a stark example of the thinking of the Left today. How the Left can present itself as tolerant and compassionate is a mystery to me ! Nancy
Keith Olbermann: Trump supporters ‘must be prosecuted and convicted and removed from our society’
The longtime broadcaster did not say what they should be prosecuted for
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“So, let us brace ourselves,” he continued, saying, “The task is two-fold: the terrorist Trump must be defeated, must be destroyed, must be devoured at the ballot box, and then he, and his enablers, and his supporters, and his collaborators, and the Mike Lees and the William Barrs, and Sean Hannitys, and the Mike Pences, and the Rudy Gullianis and the Kyle Rittenhouses and the Amy Coney Barretts must be prosecuted and convicted and removed from our society while we try to rebuild it and to rebuild the world Trump has destroyed by turning it over to a virus.”
As infectious disease epidemiologists and public health scientists we have grave concerns about the damaging physical and mental health impacts of the prevailing COVID-19 policies, and recommend an approach we call Focused Protection.
Coming from both the left and right, and around the world, we have devoted our careers to protecting people. Current lockdown policies are producing devastating effects on short and long-term public health. The results (to name a few) include lower childhood vaccination rates, worsening cardiovascular disease outcomes, fewer cancer screenings and deteriorating mental health – leading to greater excess mortality in years to come, with the working class and younger members of society carrying the heaviest burden. Keeping students out of school is a grave injustice.
Keeping these measures in place until a vaccine is available will cause irreparable damage, with the underprivileged disproportionately harmed.
Fortunately, our understanding of the virus is growing. We know that vulnerability to death from COVID-19 is more than a thousand-fold higher in the old and infirm than the young. Indeed, for children, COVID-19 is less dangerous than many other harms, including influenza.
As immunity builds in the population, the risk of infection to all – including the vulnerable – falls. We know that all populations will eventually reach herd immunity – i.e. the point at which the rate of new infections is stable – and that this can be assisted by (but is not dependent upon) a vaccine. Our goal should therefore be to minimize mortality and social harm until we reach herd immunity.
The most compassionate approach that balances the risks and benefits of reaching herd immunity, is to allow those who are at minimal risk of death to live their lives normally to build up immunity to the virus through natural infection, while better protecting those who are at highest risk. We call this Focused Protection.
Adopting measures to protect the vulnerable should be the central aim of public health responses to COVID-19. By way of example, nursing homes should use staff with acquired immunity and perform frequent PCR testing of other staff and all visitors. Staff rotation should be minimized. Retired people living at home should have groceries and other essentials delivered to their home. When possible, they should meet family members outside rather than inside. A comprehensive and detailed list of measures, including approaches to multi-generational households, can be implemented, and is well within the scope and capability of public health professionals.
Those who are not vulnerable should immediately be allowed to resume life as normal. Simple hygiene measures, such as hand washing and staying home when sick should be practiced by everyone to reduce the herd immunity threshold. Schools and universities should be open for in-person teaching. Extracurricular activities, such as sports, should be resumed. Young low-risk adults should work normally, rather than from home. Restaurants and other businesses should open. Arts, music, sport and other cultural activities should resume. People who are more at risk may participate if they wish, while society as a whole enjoys the protection conferred upon the vulnerable by those who have built up herd immunity.
On October 4, 2020, this declaration was authored and signed in Great Barrington, United States, by:
Dr. Martin Kulldorff, professor of medicine at Harvard University, a biostatistician, and epidemiologist with expertise in detecting and monitoring of infectious disease outbreaks and vaccine safety evaluations.
Dr. Sunetra Gupta, professor at Oxford University, an epidemiologist with expertise in immunology, vaccine development, and mathematical modeling of infectious diseases.
Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, professor at Stanford University Medical School, a physician, epidemiologist, health economist, and public health policy expert focusing on infectious diseases and vulnerable populations.
This is the complete video. The one I sent you today was just a part of the address of Frontline Doctors. Tucker Carlson had a whole segment tonight (July 28, 2020) on this video. Thanks to Mary Lopez Carter for sharing. Nancy
Company teams up with one of the U.S.’s largest health systems in ‘Project Nightingale’
BY ROB COPELAND November 12, 2019
Google is engaged with one of the U.S.’s largest health-care systems on a project to collect and crunch the detailed personal- health information of millions of people across 21 states.
The initiative, code-named “Project Nightingale,” appears to be the biggest effort yet by a Silicon Valley giant to gain a toehold in the health-care industry through the handling of patients’ medical data. Amazon. com Inc., Apple Inc. and Microsoft Corp. are also aggressively pushing into health care, though they haven’t yet struck deals of this scope.
Google began Project Nightingale in secret last year with St. Louis-based Ascension, a Catholic chain of 2,600 hospitals, doctors’ offices and other facilities, with the data sharing accelerating since summer, according to internal documents.
The data involved in the initiative encompasses lab results, doctor diagnoses and hospitalization records, among other categories, and amounts to a complete health history, including patient names and dates of birth.
Neither patients nor doctors have been notified. At least 150 Google employees already have access to much of the data on tens of millions of patients, according to a person familiar with the matter and
the documents.
In a news release issued after The Wall Street Journal reported on Project Nightingale on Monday, the companies said the initiative is compliant with federal health law and includes robust protections for patient data.
Some Ascension employees have raised questions about the way the data is being collected and shared, both from a technological and ethical perspective, according to the people familiar with the project. But privacy experts said it appeared to be permissible under federal law. That law, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996, generally allows hospitals to share data with business partners without telling patients, as long as the information is used “only to help the covered entity carry out its health care functions.”
Kevin Pham / Kevin Pham, a medical doctor, is a contributor to The Daily Signal and a former graduate fellow in health policy at The Heritage Foundation. October 28, 2019
Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., was recently on comedian Jimmy Kimmel’s late night show to discuss, among other items on his agenda, his vision for health care in America.
In one interesting statement, Sanders described the rollout of his plan: “I want to expand Medicare to include dental care, hearing aids, and eyeglasses, and then what I want to do is lower the eligibility age the first year from 65 down to 55, then to 45, then to 35, then we cover everybody.”
There is a sleight of hand here.
What Sanders seems to be describing is the gradual expansion of the existing Medicare program, which currently covers Americans 65 and over, to include everyone eventually. In reality, Sanders’ signature bill, “Medicare for All,” is anything but Medicare.
The demand for socialism is on the rise from young Americans today. But is socialism even morally sound? Find out more now >>
Medicare comes in several forms, including Parts A and B, which pay for inpatient and outpatient visits along a fee schedule with premiums and deductibles, and Part C, also known as Medicare Advantage.
It is now deplorable to offer ‘thoughts and prayers’ for the First Baptist church families.
November 7, 2017 by William McGurn
Imagine you are a sane Democrat who recognizes that a big reason Hillary Clinton lost to Donald Trump in November was that she alienated many members of the white working class. In the year since, you have been working on your fellow Democrats to change their message in hopes of wooing these voters back into the fold. Then a gunman opens fire at a Baptist church in Texas, and suddenly progressives are in full deplorable mode, attacking anyone who dares offer . . . prayers.
This is the extraordinary turn of events since Devin Patrick Kelley turned his rifle on the innocent churchgoers inside First Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs, Texas. What provoked the left, if it can really be called a provocation, was President Trump’s statement from Japan Sunday, in which he said that “our thoughts and prayers are with the victims and families of today’s horrible and murderous attack.” House Speaker Paul Ryan likewise set off the furies by tweeting, “The people of Sutherland Springs need our prayers right now.”
The responses have to be read to be believed. Here’s one of the more charming: “The murdered victims were in a church,” tweeted actor Wil Wheaton to Mr. Ryan. “If prayers did anything, they’d still be alive, you worthless sack of [expletive].”
Sen. Elizabeth Warren chose less inflammatory wording for her own tweet. “Thoughts & prayers are not enough, GOP,” wrote the Massachusetts Democrat. “We must end this violence. We must stop these tragedies. People are dying while you wait.” In short, if you are a Republican praying instead of passing gun control, you’ve got blood on your hands.
More praise needs to be given to the Texas rifleman who stopped the carnage. If anything, more people need to be armed to protect their families, neighbors and themselves from the crazies and terrorists that live in our communities. Nancy
The world is trying to figure out what evil, or madness, caused Devin Kelley to kill 26 people and wound 20 more at the First Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs, Texas, on Sunday morning. But forgive us if we focus on Stephen Willeford, the local plumber who saved lives by grabbing his rifle and firing at Kelley.
Freeman Martin, the Texas Department of Public Safety chief, said Mr. Willeford “grabbed his rifle and engaged the suspect” as he left the church. Kelley dropped his Ruger AR-15 and fled, and Mr. Willeford jumped in a truck driven by another local resident, Johnnie Langendorff, and pursued the killer. After a 95-mile-per-hour chase, Kelley crashed his vehicle, where police found him dead a short time later. Police believe Kelley killed himself.
The two locals are being hailed as heroes since their quick action was the only deterrent to more murders until police arrived. Kelley, who was discharged from the Air Force for bad conduct, should not have been able to obtain a gun legally, but the Journal reports that the military failed to send his conviction record to the FBI. The harsh reality of mass murders is that often only the presence of someone with a legal weapon to shoot back can stop the rampage.
We saw this in Virginia this year when Capitol Hill police saved the lives of many Members of Congress. Security officers in Garland, Texas, prevented mass casualties by killing two jihadists in 2015 trying to shoot up a contest featuring cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad.
No one wants crowds of vigilantes looking for someone to shoot, but we’re sure glad Stephen Willeford had a rifle and knew how to use it. Like the passengers aboard Flight 93 on 9/11, or the Yanks who foiled a terror attack on a train in Belgium in 2015, he didn’t wait for orders to protect his fellow human beings.
Paul McHugh, MD, isUniversity Distinguished Service Professor of Psychiatry at Johns Hopkins Medical School and the former psychiatrist in chief at Johns Hopkins Hospital. He is the author ofThe Mind Has Mountains: Reflections on Society and Psychiatry.
The idea that one’s sex is a feeling, not a fact, has permeated our culture and is leaving casualties in its wake. Gender dysphoria should be treated with psychotherapy, not surgery.
For forty years as the University Distinguished Service Professor of Psychiatry at Johns Hopkins Medical School—twenty-six of which were also spent as Psychiatrist in Chief of Johns Hopkins Hospital—I’ve been studying people who claim to be transgender. Over that time, I’ve watched the phenomenon change and expand in remarkable ways.
A rare issue of a few men—both homosexual and heterosexual men, including some who sought sex-change surgery because they were erotically aroused by the thought or image of themselves as women—has spread to include women as well as men. Even young boys and girls have begun to present themselves as of the opposite sex. Over the last ten or fifteen years, this phenomenon has increased in prevalence, seemingly exponentially. Now, almost everyone has heard of or met such a person.
Publicity, especially from early examples such as “Christine” Jorgenson, “Jan” Morris, and “Renee” Richards, has promoted the idea that one’s biological sex is a choice, leading to widespread cultural acceptance of the concept. And, that idea, quickly accepted in the 1980s, has since run through the American public like a revelation or “meme” affecting much of our thought about sex.
The champions of this meme, encouraged by their alliance with the broader LGBT movement, claim that whether you are a man or a woman, a boy or a girl, is more of a disposition or feeling about yourself than a fact of nature. And, much like any other feeling, it can change at any time, and for all sorts of reasons. Therefore, no one could predict who would swap this fact of their makeup, nor could one justifiably criticize such a decision.
The federal bureaucracy is anti-patient, anti-family and anti-medical care. Reform is essential
ByTim Murphy
Mr. Murphy, a Republican, is a U.S. representative from Pennsylvania and a psychologist in the Navy Reserve Medical Service Corps.
Oct .9, 2015
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In 1955 there were 558,000 inpatient psychiatric beds in the U.S. Today there are fewer than 45,000. The severe shortage is due to the decades-long deinstitutionalization that began in the civil-rights era. But it has been exacerbated by a Medicaid reimbursement rule known as the “institutions for mental diseases exclusion,” which prohibits federal matching payments for inpatient care at psychiatric hospitals with more than 16 beds. My bill moves away from the arbitrary 16-bed cap and establishes a clinical standard for patients with serious mental illness.
These past few months have brimmed with tragedy. Americans are struggling to make sense of horrific acts of mass violence like the August shooting on live television in Roanoke, Va., and last week’s college campus shooting in Roseburg, Ore.
We all know how this plays out in Congress: a moment of silence on the House floor and a fraternal feeling of melancholy when the flag over the Capitol is lowered to half-staff. But that moment of silence will not heal the hearts of those who lost a loved one, and it will not stop the next tragedy. Here and now we need action; we need real change.
That’s why I’ve authored the Helping Families in Mental Health Crisis Act. The bill focuses resources and reform where they are most needed: to foster evidence-based care, fix the shortage of psychiatric hospital beds, empower patients and caregivers under HIPAA privacy laws, and help patients get treatment well before their illness spirals into crisis.
As chairman of the House Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee, I led a congressional investigation into our failed mental-health system after the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting. What we found was shocking and disgraceful: a wasteful federal bureaucracy that is anti-patient, anti-family and anti-medical care. The federal government has more than 112 programs that deal with mental health in one way or another, yet a person with serious mental illness is 10 times more likely to be in a prison cell than a psychiatric hospital bed.
