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August 11: "“What makes me the maddest,” one of my doctor friends told me, “is that these people will reject science right until the second they need everything I have to keep them alive, and then they feel that they can come to our door and be entitled to that help and that hard work.” "
September: "The generators held, but like Terrebonne General, the hospital lost water and air conditioning. As the storm raged, a bleeding man arrived to drop off his fiancée, who had been sucked out of their wrecked home a few blocks away. The emergency room staff got to work mending her wounds as water poured from the ceiling." COVID-choked hospitals weathering a hurricane.
September 8: "Getting the first dose of COVID-19 [vaccine] resulted in significant improvements in mental health, beyond improvements already achieved since mental distress peaked in the spring of 2020." One piece of good news! Not only do the vaccines fight off COVID, getting them right now will literally help with depression.
September 13: "My wife and I don’t get to see much of each other. [...] Right now shifts start at 8 a.m. and we are currently working 19 to 20 hours the first day of our two-day shifts. Then we’re back up after sleeping a few hours, and we don’t sleep that second night of work. Then I go home and either work other places in my town ― [...] or, if I am lucky, I will sleep 30 hours straight." This isn't an account from a doctor or nurse. He's an embalmer.
September 15: "The U.S. has recorded more than 41.4 million confirmed COVID-19 cases and more than 665,800 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University data." That's 1 in 500 of the entire US population. (And 2 in 125 of people who have gotten it.)
September 17: "On Thursday, shortly after Idaho enacted crisis standards of care statewide, Dr. Steven Nemerson with Saint Alphonsus Regional Medical Center in Boise said that to his knowledge, no patient in the state had been removed from life support in order to provide the equipment to someone else. But he warned it would happen."
September 18 (NYT): "Vaccine-resistant Americans are turning to [monoclonal antibodies] with a zeal that has, at times, mystified their doctors, chasing down lengthy infusions after rejecting vaccines that cost one-hundredth as much." This treatment isn't any older than the vaccines! It hasn't had longer to develop. It hasn't been tested more. The only difference is that it hasn't been brigaded by antivaxxers...oh, and that it doesn't last. Unlike the vaccine, which teaches your body to make its own antibodies.
September 21: "We're in the worst state that we ever have been in the pandemic, this surge has been back-breaking for our health care facilities," said Katherine Hoyer, a spokeswoman for Panhandle Health District that covers five northern counties in Idaho. "Our case investigators, they cannot keep up."
October 3: “I did not appreciate the intensity of support for a vaccine mandate that existed, because you hear that loud anti-vax voice a lot more than you hear the people that want it,” Kirby said. “But there are more of them. And they’re just as intense.”
October 13: "We’ve demonstrated conclusively that saving nearly everyone who dies of the flu is within our power. To do nothing now—to return to the roughly 30,000-deaths-a-year status quo without even trying to save some of those lives—would seem irresponsible. So what do we do? Which measures do we maintain and which do we let go?"
The Onion: "Astounded by the damning information, local anti-vaxxer Pete Dixon was reportedly horrified Thursday after discovering that every single American who got a smallpox vaccine in the 19th century was now deceased."
And: "We found that when presented with a counterfeit vaccination card, Covid-19 was unable to distinguish it from the real thing approximately 7 out of 10 times."
Meanwhile, a bit of history: "When news of a successful [polio] vaccine came in 1955, The Christian Century lavished praise on Dr. Jonas Salk and other scientists. “We hope,” the editors wrote that April, “that services of thanksgiving to God are being held in millions of homes and thousands of churches for this answer to prayer, this successful completion of a decade of intensive concentration on medical research.”"
September: "The generators held, but like Terrebonne General, the hospital lost water and air conditioning. As the storm raged, a bleeding man arrived to drop off his fiancée, who had been sucked out of their wrecked home a few blocks away. The emergency room staff got to work mending her wounds as water poured from the ceiling." COVID-choked hospitals weathering a hurricane.
September 8: "Getting the first dose of COVID-19 [vaccine] resulted in significant improvements in mental health, beyond improvements already achieved since mental distress peaked in the spring of 2020." One piece of good news! Not only do the vaccines fight off COVID, getting them right now will literally help with depression.
September 13: "My wife and I don’t get to see much of each other. [...] Right now shifts start at 8 a.m. and we are currently working 19 to 20 hours the first day of our two-day shifts. Then we’re back up after sleeping a few hours, and we don’t sleep that second night of work. Then I go home and either work other places in my town ― [...] or, if I am lucky, I will sleep 30 hours straight." This isn't an account from a doctor or nurse. He's an embalmer.
September 15: "The U.S. has recorded more than 41.4 million confirmed COVID-19 cases and more than 665,800 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University data." That's 1 in 500 of the entire US population. (And 2 in 125 of people who have gotten it.)
September 17: "On Thursday, shortly after Idaho enacted crisis standards of care statewide, Dr. Steven Nemerson with Saint Alphonsus Regional Medical Center in Boise said that to his knowledge, no patient in the state had been removed from life support in order to provide the equipment to someone else. But he warned it would happen."
September 18 (NYT): "Vaccine-resistant Americans are turning to [monoclonal antibodies] with a zeal that has, at times, mystified their doctors, chasing down lengthy infusions after rejecting vaccines that cost one-hundredth as much." This treatment isn't any older than the vaccines! It hasn't had longer to develop. It hasn't been tested more. The only difference is that it hasn't been brigaded by antivaxxers...oh, and that it doesn't last. Unlike the vaccine, which teaches your body to make its own antibodies.
September 21: "We're in the worst state that we ever have been in the pandemic, this surge has been back-breaking for our health care facilities," said Katherine Hoyer, a spokeswoman for Panhandle Health District that covers five northern counties in Idaho. "Our case investigators, they cannot keep up."
October 3: “I did not appreciate the intensity of support for a vaccine mandate that existed, because you hear that loud anti-vax voice a lot more than you hear the people that want it,” Kirby said. “But there are more of them. And they’re just as intense.”
October 13: "We’ve demonstrated conclusively that saving nearly everyone who dies of the flu is within our power. To do nothing now—to return to the roughly 30,000-deaths-a-year status quo without even trying to save some of those lives—would seem irresponsible. So what do we do? Which measures do we maintain and which do we let go?"
The Onion: "Astounded by the damning information, local anti-vaxxer Pete Dixon was reportedly horrified Thursday after discovering that every single American who got a smallpox vaccine in the 19th century was now deceased."
And: "We found that when presented with a counterfeit vaccination card, Covid-19 was unable to distinguish it from the real thing approximately 7 out of 10 times."
Meanwhile, a bit of history: "When news of a successful [polio] vaccine came in 1955, The Christian Century lavished praise on Dr. Jonas Salk and other scientists. “We hope,” the editors wrote that April, “that services of thanksgiving to God are being held in millions of homes and thousands of churches for this answer to prayer, this successful completion of a decade of intensive concentration on medical research.”"
