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I'm A Doctor. The U.S. Response To Coronavirus Has Been Nothing Short Of Criminal.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/doctors-covid-19-united-states-response_n_5e74ba42c5b63c3b648e9014?ncid=engmodushpmg00000003&fbclid=IwAR0pnDe4-DkSny4hO2IFfuuhfJnsscJFG-adQ6w7-k5ljIh7FFvVfS6CyBw03/20/2020 01:39 pm ET
I’m A Doctor. The U.S. Response To Coronavirus Has Been Nothing Short Of Criminal.
“With every crucial delay, with every blunder and misstep, the toll is going to be measured in lives lost.”
Dipti S. Barot
snip//
We health care workers are, and have been, on our own. We are making decisions hospital by hospital because there is no centralized response or clear guidelines. Surgeons had to make their own decisions about canceling elective surgeries while the surgeon general, an anesthesiologist, lectured journalists on what type of stories they should be writing. With every crucial delay, with every blunder and misstep, the toll is going to be measured in lives lost.
Health care workers have had some of the worst outcomes when confronted with this virus, dying at higher rates than expected for their ages. And yet doctors will be the ones treating Elon Musk’s workers, who were expected to report to the Tesla factory in California — even though the county they were in had ordered citizens to shelter in place. Who is there to protect those frontline workers from the failure of this government?
Each day we get more reports of health care workers infected, hospitalized, and dying all over the world. This week we lost the brilliant Dr. Steven Schwartz to COVID-19 in Seattle. Others will follow. They will continue to die because of the inaction of their leaders. Their lives will end because factories were not taken over by their governments to manufacture test kits and personal protective equipment in time. They will die because they are putting their limp, used masks in little brown paper bags after their 12-hour shift, to be used again tomorrow; they are wiping down their lone allotted face shields with disinfectant, or wrapping them in saran wrap, and cutting plastic Coke bottles to make new ones. They will inadvertently infect their patients because they are reusing disposable gowns, and MacGyver-ing equipment to make do with what they have to serve as many they can. Meanwhile, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is issuing guidance about how to use bandanas and scarves to deal with the dearth.
snip//
There is a shooter looking down the barrel of a gun that points straight at each and every one of these people ― and every front line health care worker in this country. Once they are taken out, our first line of defense will be eroded. Many of us will get sick and more of us will die. This is a crime — and there are people directly responsible for it. Blood will be on the hands of those who have sent health care workers to war without armor, to fight battles brandishing pool noodles instead of swords.
Dipti S. Barot is a primary care doctor in the San Francisco Bay area. She is also a freelance writer.
34 replies
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Where are the masks?
Trump Told Governors to Buy Own Virus Supplies, Then Outbid Them
The shortage of personal protective equipment is particularly acute. Medical workers are supposed to be using N95 masks, which reduce their exposure by filtering out at least 95 percent of particles in the air. But on Wednesday, President Trump said his administration had ordered 500 million of these masks after receiving complaints about widespread shortages. To cope with the burgeoning coronavirus crisis, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention told nurses to use bandanas and scarves as last-resort masks. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers, meanwhile, have access to N95 masks as they apprehend immigrants during a national pandemic.
Trump Told Governors to Buy Own Virus Supplies, Then Outbid Them
Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker told Trump during a video conference on Thursday that his state three times lost out to the federal government on purchases of critical supplies, creating an awkward moment during the made-for-TV event at Federal Emergency Management Agency headquarters in Washington.
“I’ve got a feeling that if someone has the chance to sell to you and to sell to me, I am going to lose on every one of those,” a sheepish-sounding Baker told Trump, who chuckled at the remark.
“I’ve got a feeling that if someone has the chance to sell to you and to sell to me, I am going to lose on every one of those,” a sheepish-sounding Baker told Trump, who chuckled at the remark.
I usually have low blood pressure, but man, the past few weeks have been a challenge. I've been waking up pissed off for three years now, and now I wake up pissed off and scared. I hate this criminal piece of shit.
For the people deciding to take N95 masks from our healthcare professionals and give them to ICE. 
I did not know I could get any angrier than I already am. Well, congratulations-- that story just did it.
There may be actually steam coming off of my head.
once this is over we need to have Nuremberg-style trials, of Trump + fam + enablers.
