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COVID Hype and Hope

July 8, 2020

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July 7th, 2020

by Jane M. Orient, M.D.

The dictionary definition of “hype” is a deception or put-on, or promotional publicity of an extravagant or contrived kind. But regarding medical advances, it might be used to refer to hope.

Hope, or “false hope,” is something doctors are not supposed to give patients regarding a non-established treatment for a disease, especially one deemed to be incurable.

Hope is not needed if an outcome is assured. Hope is what sustains people when the outlook appears bleak. The alternative is despair.

Regarding COVID-19, the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and other established national and international agencies define what is hype or false hope. If “hype,” also called “harmful misinformation,” appears on a website or social media, it will be disappeared, cancelled, or labeled as dangerous, as people are referred to WHO or CDC websites.

Remember that most entities promoting panic and despair have an ulterior motive. They are selling a remedy, the only thing that they say can save you from certain disaster.

WHO, CDC, et al., and the medical organizations and physicians who trust their authority are saying that COVID-19 is incurable. We must remain locked down, separated, and masked. If we catch it, we must go home, self-isolate, and come to the hospital if we can’t breathe. We can take some over-the-counter medications for fever and pain, but there is nothing to prescribe.

Once in the hospital, we will be separated from family, friends, clergy, and independent doctors. If we’re about to die, there may be a ventilator available for us. Our chance of surviving then may be 50 percent—or less. The hospital we are in might have a clinical trial for which we are eligible. We’ll be assigned to get—or not get—a drug that they think might work. Or perhaps we’ll get remdesivir on an FDA Emergency Use Authorization. The government has committed to buy 3 months’ worth of production at $3,120 per 5-day course of treatment (500,000 doses). If each course has six doses, that’s about $260 million. If we survive—remdesivir doesn’t seem to affect that—it will save us about four days in the hospital. More

Congress Should Prioritize Healing, Not Hypocrisy

May 1, 2019

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May 1st, 2019

by Marilyn M. Singleton, MD, JD

 

Preview:

  • May is Mental Health Month and it should inspire us to think about family, community relationships, and our growing disconnectedness. It is not an invitation for Congress and other troublemakers to lose their collective minds.
  • Instead of looking for reasons to tear us apart, our congresspersons should be focusing on proposals trying to move us in a positive direction. Who cares what side of the aisle originated the ideas? Communities and their legislators must find solutions for hypodermic needles and human feces on the streets, the homeless, and drug addiction to name a few. There are 130 people a day dying from opiate overdoses with no easy answer as to the root cause. The Department of Health and Human Services formed a Pain Management Best Practices Inter-Agency Task Force including physicians and other professionals involved in caring for patients with pain and addiction issues. The task force concluded what most physicians already know: patient care must be individualized.
  • Save for a few rotten apples, physicians are doing their best to care for patients with complex problems. Mental Health Month offers physicians the opportunity to reaffirm that we are not automatons and patients are individuals, not data points. Congresspersons should take this month to stop squabbling and jockeying for power and explore legislation that allows physicians and patients freedom to choose their own path to a healthy life.

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May is Mental Health Month and it should inspire us to think about family, community relationships, and our growing disconnectedness. It is not an invitation for Congress and other troublemakers to lose their collective minds.

While folks of all colors and lifestyles are quietly living and working together and building relationships, the professional malcontents are looking for offense around every corner. Take the sports teams shunning Presidential Medal of Freedom recipient Kate Smith for having performed some songs with racially offensive lyrics in the 1930s. One of the songs, thought to be satirical, was also sung by black actor and well-known civil rights activist, Paul Robeson. Apparently, no one looked into Smith’s motives or other aspects of her life before shrouding her statue in black. How ironic that the very teams that excluded black players are “virtue signaling” at someone else’s expense.

Will the memorials to the progressive icons Eleanor and Franklin Roosevelt suffer the same fate? Historians note that Mrs. Roosevelt called black folks “darkies” and “pickaninnies.” Yet she was instrumental in having black opera singer Marian Anderson perform in an integrated setting and flew in an aircraft piloted by a Tuskegee Airman, among other things. More

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