Night Owls, a themed open thread, appears at Daily Kos seven days a week
Caroline Chen at ProPublica writes—The Enraging Déjà Vu of a Third Coronavirus Wave. Health care workers don’t need patronizing praise. They need resources, federal support, and for us to stay healthy and out of their hospitals. In many cases, none of that is happening:
There’s a joke I’ve seen circulating online, over and over during this pandemic, that goes along the lines of, “Months this year: January, February, March, March, March, March, March…”
My lips pull into a smile, but my heart’s not in it. […]
As a health reporter covering the pandemic, I’ve experienced too many moments of deja vu. This summer, as the virus swept through the South, news footage of overwhelmed hospitals in Houston turning away ambulances recalled similar scenes from March and April in New York City. Now, we’re in the so-called third wave of the pandemic, with the virus slamming into Midwestern states, and this week, Dr. Gregory Schmidt, associate chief medical officer at the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics, said his colleagues are converting 16 hospital beds into new ICU beds in anticipation of an influx of COVID-19 patients. “People in leadership are starting to say things in meetings like, ‘I have a sense of impending doom.’”
I’m exhausted and infuriated to be doing the same interviews and hearing the same stories for a third time. Why haven’t we learned? What have we been doing between March and November?
Why is Dr. Peter Wentzel, in Grafton, West Virginia, only now able to order a point-of-care test system for his community clinic, just to be told that the cartridges for it will arrive in December at the earliest? Why are clinicians at Mountain Family Health Centers in Glenwood Springs, Colorado, once again facing seven- to 10-day wait times for their patients’ test results?
THREE OTHER ARTICLES WORTH READING
- What Joe Biden Could Learn From Harry Truman About Hiring Republicans, by Eli Lehrer. Don’t give a cabinet department to a GOP has-been, says a leading free marketer. Pepper the government with a few real but loyal conservatives in advisory, not operational, roles.
- My Grandparents’ Redlining Story Shows Why We Must Do Better, by Denzel Tongue. As we face the impact of COVID-19, now is an opportune time to create equitable housing policies that can close the yawning gaps created by racial inequity.
- 72,000 Food Workers Have Contracted COVID-19. OSHA Is Ignoring Them, by Petruce Jean-Charles. “It’s seriously disappointing and dangerous the way the head of the Labor Department has been running OSHA.”
TOP COMMENTS • RESCUED DIARIES
QUOTATION
“He who controls the spice controls the universe.” ~~Frank Herbert, Dune (1965)
TWEET OF THE DAY
At Daily Kos on this date in 2003—Army fires gay Arab linguists:
How can the US make any credible claims that it is fighting the terrorist threat with all available means when this sort of crap happens?
Nine Army linguists, including six trained to speak Arabic, have been dismissed from the military because they are gay.
The soldiers’ dismissals come at a time when the military is facing a critical shortage of translators and interpreters for the war on terrorism.
[…]
The government has aggressively recruited Arabic speakers since the Sept. 11 attacks.
“We face a drastic shortage of linguists, and the direct impact of Arabic speakers is a particular problem,” said Donald R. Hamilton, who documented the need for more linguists in a report to Congress as part of the National Commission on Terrorism.
Crazy…
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