What the White House wants, it apparently will get — even if that hangs out to dry the prized nonpartisan reputations of the Federal Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The political meddling and leadership errors at two of the nation’s premier health agencies, critics say, will have disconcerting….
Continue ReadingArchives for August 2020
Maryland inspects 226 nursing homes and slaps three with six-figure fines
Maryland officials have wrapped up pandemic-prompted inspections of 226 nursing homes with a pricey rebuke to long-term care facilities that have failed still to safeguard the elderly, sick, and injured from Covid-19, putting them at “immediate jeopardy,” instead. Three facilities were slapped with six-figure fines after state inspectors faulted them in June and July for….
Continue ReadingPandemic prompts more focus on junk foods, shots, domestic abuse, booze
Stepped up vaccinations, bans on junk food for kids, worries about domestic abuse and booze consumption by men — yes, these seemingly disparate things have something in common. They’re all getting heightened attention from experts due to the coronavirus pandemic. Let’s start with a grito (a whoop) for the leyes antichatarra or anti-junk food laws….
Continue ReadingEthics clarity would benefit D.C. deal for new hospitals for underserved wards
The City Council in the nation’s capital soon will delve into more details and give crucial approvals to a positive-seeming agreement to provide under-served areas of the District of Columbia with not one but two new hospitals. This deal could be improved quickly, however, if leaders also resolve what has become a prickly revolving door….
Continue ReadingNursing homes, still coping poorly with Covid-19, turn to lobbyists to shield them from legal accountability
Covid-19 infections and deaths are spiking anew in nursing homes and other long-term care facilities, hitting worrisome levels not seen since months ago in the pandemic. The unchecked mess in centers nationwide, but especially in the South and West, is prompting more attention to them — from lobbyists boasting White House ties, health worker “strike….
Continue ReadingAre kids wrong in describing the pandemic school chaos as a ‘cluster …’ ?
If the young are the nation’s future, they are getting a sorry eyeful now of how not to deal with widespread death and disease, uncertainty, and inequity. What will kids say years from now about how parents and politicians handled young folks’ schooling during the Covid-19 pandemic? The student journalists at the University of North….
Continue ReadingLoneliness and fear taking big toll on locked down elderly, sick, and injured
For the old, sick, and injured who are institutionalized, the Covid-19 pandemic and the efforts to halt the spread of the disease into care facilities has created debilitating side-effects: isolation, loneliness, silence, fear, and worries of abandonment. Facility lockdowns, combined with the relentless governmental bungling of the coronavirus response, are taking a terrible toll that….
Continue ReadingSurgeons prosper anew as primary care doctors and pediatricians struggle
The Covid-19 pandemic continues to slam the practice of medicine, with patients’ infection fears and treatment delays putting at serious financial risk the providers of crucial medical services like primary care doctors and pediatricians. At the same time, as is too often the case in U.S. medicine, the rich may be getting richer, as resuming….
Continue ReadingBig Pharma is laying out big cash to try to paint election results red
Big Pharma won’t be waiting for the nation’s two major political parties to hit the broadcast airwaves with their presidential nominating conventions to see which candidates will best benefit the profit-ravenous drug industry. The big pill merchants already have pulled out their corporate checkbooks and rained millions of dollars of donations onto politicians across the….
Continue ReadingWith as many as 200,000 U.S. dead already, grimmer days may still be ahead
The Covid-19 pandemic, with grim outcomes already, may get even worse in the days ahead. That troubling forecast — from one of the nation’s less-than-outspoken medical leaders (Dr. Robert Redfield, right, head of the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) and as laid out in a seasoned journalist’s detailed reporting — may seem hard….
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