Let’s flip the script on those who have rejected their role in quelling the pandemic and demanded their right to control their own bodies. It’s time to recapture common sense. Those who have advocated for increasingly unmoored and unfounded responses to the pandemic can’t stigmatize, criticize, mock, or abuse (physically or verbally) those who want….
Continue ReadingVaccinations
Just ‘live with it’? U.S. pandemic deaths hit 900,000-plus and rising …
The coronavirus pandemic, which has confounded medical experts and their efforts to quell it, also has created a baffling assault on reality by a large segment of U.S. society. The evidence-free opponents of vaccines, face coverings, social distancing, and other common sense public health measures are gaining a growing new coterie of off-kilter advocates. The….
Continue ReadingDeaths no longer a lagging indicator of Omicron variant’s grim toll
The lethal toll of the latest Omicron surge in the coronavirus pandemic lags no more. But even as overwhelmed doctors, nurses, hospitals, and clinics record new highs in disease deaths (see chart, courtesy the New York Times), exceeding some of the worst daily fatality numbers in what has become the planet’s worst public health crisis….
Continue ReadingFinancial tangles can trap poorer residents in costly nursing homes
As experts drill down to discover why nursing homes and other long-term care facilities are not playing a vital role in the U.S. health system by admitting improving patients from costly care in overwhelmed hospitals, a disconcerting explanation is emerging on who is filling some of the invaluable institutional space. They might be called system….
Continue ReadingAs Omicron rips through hospitals, new governor lifts Virginia pandemic measures
Gov. Glenn Youngkin has thrust Virginia into the ferocious battles over evidence-based efforts to quell the coronavirus pandemic, with the newly installed Republican issuing executive orders to bar schools from requiring face coverings and forbidding state employers from having vaccine requirements. His decisions, in keeping with what has become a GOP policy orthodoxy and reversing….
Continue ReadingVaccine mandate upheld for health workers but not large companies
What is good for geese is not for ganders, the U.S. Supreme Court has decided. The justices ruled 5-4 that the Biden Administration may force health employers to require their staff to get vaccinated or lose important federal funds, but in a 6-3 vote they rejected a vaccine-or-test mandate for companies with more than 100….
Continue ReadingD.C. area slammed hard as winter coronavirus surge blasts the U.S.
The coronavirus pandemic is tearing up the country with the Omicron variant shattering infection records and rates and this viral strain and the Delta variant overwhelming hospitals and threatening to break the already exhausted U.S. health care system. Uncertainty has returned to conversations about the pandemic’s course, as educators decide whether to return students at….
Continue ReadingOmicron tears across country, as Delta rips unvaccinated skeptics
The Omicron variant swiftly has become the nation’s dominant strain, with coronavirus infections skyrocketing from coast to coast. Officials are anxiously awaiting data to gauge the severity of Omicron infections and if the sharp rise in cases involving this variant will mean overwhelming numbers of patients requiring care in hospitals, too many of which already….
Continue ReadingMake the season bright: Get those shots and tests, and stay healthy!
It’s that time of year to offer seasonal greetings and best wishes for happiness, prosperity, hope, peace, and goodwill. May many good things especially go to the courageous, beleaguered, and stalwart folks struggling with the coronavirus pandemic 24-7 (including through the holidays), notably in health care, as first responders, and, of course, in service for….
Continue ReadingNursing homes hide violations with behind-scenes maneuvers
The battle to safeguard the elderly, sick, and injured residents of the nation’s nursing homes and other long-term care facilities is far from over — and the fight may be even tougher than advocates for the vulnerable may have imagined. That’s because the facilities employ aggressive tactics to contest safety and other violations found by….
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