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Kamis, 29 Juli 2021

Doctor: The heartbreaking Covid cases I'm seeing
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Doctor: The heartbreaking Covid cases I'm seeing

 The summer got off to a fun start. As vaccines became increasingly accessible, many of us had a sense of relief. But somehow America has hit a wall: Only around 50% of the country is fully vaccinated, well below the target set by President Biden earlier in the summer. On Tuesday, however, the Biden Administration made a big announcement. They are once again recommending that masks be worn inside in areas where rates of transmission are considered "high" or "substantial," and on Thursday, they are expected to announce that federal workers and contractors will be required to be vaccinated or get tested regularly, according to CNN reporting. This follows closely New York City and California's plans to do the same for government workers.

Janice Blanchard

Janice Blanchard

These new requirements make a lot of sense to me as an emergency medicine physician. The threat of increased infections is real due the spread of the highly contagious Delta variant -- I have seen it firsthand. As the first day of summer came around, weeks had passed, and I had not seen a single Covid case. Now, I am treating patients with the disease daily.

This time, things seem different. Last year, it was the elderly and patients with co-morbid conditions who came into my care, gravely ill from the virus. Now, the cases I see are mainly among young healthy people, some who are presenting with life threatening complications due to the virus.

Treating a young person who is critically ill from a preventable illness is particularly heartbreaking. Most are unvaccinated. While those who are vaccinated are still at risk, they generally have less severe disease.

I worry about how we can get over this wall. Sadly, I fear that only experiencing the disease in themselves or others close to them will be what changes the mind of the unvaccinated. This is a terrible public health strategy.

The Biden Administration's plan seems to be the only logical step for addressing the persistent challenge of vaccinating a population thus far reluctant to get immunized. Vaccinations have to be incorporated as part of normal social behavior to overcome the pervasive problem of hesitancy.

Mandating vaccines for the military would send a powerful message

Mandating vaccines for the military would send a powerful message

Adding a vaccine requirement helps do this. Just look at the history of the measles vaccine. During the Carter administration, when vaccine mandates were required for school children, vaccination rates in this population soared to 90% and public health officials saw a clear path towards eradication.

Many skeptics are already gearing up to oppose the presumed restrictions that mask requirements and vaccine mandates impose. But perhaps they forgot what things were like last summer. It was bad. Hospitals had shortages of ICU beds. Caregivers faced inadequate personal protective equipment. People died alone in their hospital rooms.

Lately, I have been feeling a sense of dread as I recall these past experiences. As the world starts creeping back to "normal," there is something deep, dark, and destructive lingering on the horizon. I hear the song from Jaws that played just as the shark attacks the unwitting swimmer or diver enjoying their vacation in that big blue ocean.

Maybe I have a flair for the dramatic. But remember, when the pandemic initially hit the United States, it was reported in just one man in his 30s in January 2020. In March 2020, the former president was concerned that 21 disembarking cruise ship passengers would cause the number of cases in our country to double. Covid now seems an ubiquitous part of our everyday life with over 34 million cases and 600,000 deaths. The number of new cases has the potential to rapidly increaseparticularly as the Delta variant has become the predominant strain of Covid now being transmitted in the United States. As one public health expert announced, Delta is <a style="color: #1a1a1a" href="https://rentry.co/dep9e https://webhitlist.com/profiles/blogs/doctor-the-heartbreaking-covid-cases-i-m-seein g">Covid on steroids.

We had it bad last spring. I am simply not ready to go back to how things wereVaccine mandates and mask requirements make sense to me. Masks help protect us allLet's all pitch in to end this pandemic.

Jumat, 02 Juli 2021

Trump rolls out his defense for all seasons: It's all politics
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Trump rolls out his defense for all seasons: It's all politics

  No matter the charge, the defense is the same: Donald Trump is the victim of a vicious political vendetta.

By a quirk of fate, two of the most troublesome threats to the ex-President's political viability and business legend unfolded almost simultaneously Thursday in two cities he once dominated. And he responded the way he always does, by going on the attack.
In New York City, prosecutors arraigned Trump's financial right-hand man, Allen Weisselberg, on charges including grand larceny and tax fraud. And the Trump Organization itself was accused of a fraudulent multi-year scheme to avoid due taxes.
Back in Washington, meanwhile, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi named those who will serve on a select committee on the January 6 US Capitol insurrection, which was incited by Trump in a bid to overturn his election defeat. In a poke in the eye to the former President, they include one of his mortal enemies, Wyoming's Rep. Liz Cheney, one of the few Republicans to speak truth to his abuses of power surrounding last year's election.
No recent former President has faced the kind of threat to his legacy, reputation and potentially even his fortune now being encountered by Trump. And the ferocity of his defense -- faithful to his mantra of never giving an inch to his adversaries -- suggests he plans to respond with the kind of all-consuming assault on America's psyche that unfolded during his presidency.
The line from Trump world is that the former President is being targeted not for what he did but for who he is, a construct that has carried him through the Russia probe, two impeachments and numerous other political, personal and business scrapes. "If the name of the company was something else, I don't think these charges would have been brought," said Alan Futerfas, an attorney for the Trump Organization. The Trump Organization legal team largely avoided a point-by-point rebuttal of 15 grand jury countsalleging that Weisselberg -- the organization's chief financial officer -- evaded taxes on $1.7 million in income and falsified documents in a 15-year scheme. The indictment said the activity allegedly involved other unnamed executives in a firm in which the Trump family itself holds all the top roles. Weisselberg and the Trump Organization both pleaded not guilty. The former President was not personally charged. Another Trump organization attorney, Susan Necheles, was even more aggressive than Futerfas in alleging a corrupt political conspiracy against Trump. "We will win this case, but this case should have never been brought," Necheles told reporters outside the courtroom. "This is a political prosecution." Earlier, prosecutor Carey Dunne anticipated the counterattack that the case was rooted in partisan distaste for the former President. "Politics has no role in the grand jury chamber, and I can assure your honor that it played no role here," Dunne told the judge, according to a transcript of his remarks released by the Manhattan district attorney's office. McCarthy plays politics card over January 6 probe Back in Washington, the nature of the turmoil surrounding Trump was political and not legal. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, who has repudiated his earlier criticism of Trump over the mob attack on the Capitol by "Make American Great Again" supporters, insisted the real issue was malfeasance by Democrats. "I regret the politics of Nancy Pelosi. For six months she played politics with this," said the California Republican, who crushed a plan for an independent bipartisan commission on the attack co-written by one of his own GOP lawmakers. There is an argument that Pelosi waited too long to agree to a compromise with Republican Rep. John Katko of New York on the makeup of a bipartisan panel. And there are obvious political upsides for Democrats in continuing to investigate Trump's abuses of power, with midterm elections ahead. But at the same time, the failure of the independent commission deprived the country of the kind of catharsis and historic marker that such panels have provided at moments of national tragedy, so there is a case to be made that a reckoning -- over and above probes by regular congressional committees -- was due. It is not all about politics. The witch hunt defense The complaint that any attempt to subject Trump to legal accountability is politically motivated is not a new refrain. Every time the former President is accused of wrongdoing, he and his acolytes rarely rebut the charges with any level of seriousness or specificity. And Trump himself never takes responsibility for his actions, but instead seeks to flood the zone with partisan confusion and misinformation. When the Justice Department and the FBI, for instance, became suspicious about multiple contacts between Russia, a hostile foreign power meddling in the US election, and his 2016 campaign aides, Trump claimed he was the victim of a massive "witch hunt." In his first impeachment, his Republican attack dogs complained about a politicized process while sidestepping allegations that he had tried to get Ukraine to launch an investigation into then-Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden. Trump's second impeachment -- after the most flagrant attack on the peaceful transfer of power in US history -- was branded by Senate Republicans as a political plot to persecute an ex-President by anti-Trump zealots as he settled into private life. And evenTrump's denials that he actually lost the last election are part of a sweeping and false narrative -- rejected by multiple courts -- that there was a vast Democratic Party conspiracy to deprive him of a second term in office. "They used Covid in order to rig the election and in order to steal the election," Trump said in a rally in Ohio last Saturday night. Trump knows what he is doing. He built his political appeal on the idea that he was a spokesman for millions of Americans who had been rejected by the cozy elite club -- just as the brazen billionaire was often mocked by Manhattan high society. This canny understanding of the politics of victimization helped a real estate tycoon from one of the most liberal cities in America, who flew in a personal airliner, bond with millions of working-class voters in the American heartland. Paradoxically, a new set of controversies might embolden Trump and help him refresh his appeal to his base, as he seeks to play the kingmaker in the midterm elections and teases another presidential run in 2024. His frequent message to his supporters might be paraphrased as: They are not coming after me -- they are coming after you. Or as the former President put it in a statement soon after Weisselberg left court, "Do people see the Radical Left prosecutors, and what they are trying to do to 75M +++ Voters and Patriots, for what it is?" Politics don't work in court Although the Trump Organization's legal team insisted that Weisselbergwas being used by the former President's enemies, the detailed indictment against him will require a staunch and formal legal defense. Political soundbites generally do not stand up in court -- as the multiple rejected cases brought by Trump's campaign legal team alleging election fraud in November demonstrate. The Trump Organization's lawyers did tip their hand as to one aspect of that defense, namely an argument that it is unprecedented to prosecute a tax case such as this as a criminal rather than a civil matter. Some legal experts said the practice is somewhat unusual given that this prosecution centers on rent-free apartments, car leases, school fees and other fringe benefits. But Harry Litman, a former deputy assistant attorney general, told CNN's Poppy Harlow that given the prominence of Weisselberg in the firm and the allegations of a scheme to defraud, the approach was in line with precedent. "This is spin and talking points that they prepared before, I think, they saw the indictment," Litman said. Two big questions were left unanswered by Thursday's indictment. The first is whether the robust indictment against Weisselberg may be designed to get him to cooperate with prosecutors in return for lesser charges -- and potentially to testify against Trump family members. Weisselberg has so far refused to do so. The second question is whether the unsealed indictment represents the full extent of the two-year investigations against Trump and his company or whether there is more to come for the ex-President. Trump's former personal attorney Michael Cohen, who himself went to jail after pleading guilty to campaign finance and tax charges, said he could have scripted the "witch hunt" defense in advance. "There is nothing that happened at the Trump Organization that did not go to Donald," Cohen toldCNN's Alisyn Camerota. "Whether it was the purchasing of paperclips or the payment of Allen Weisselberg's grandchildren's tuition. Every single thing went on Donald's desk for signature." U.S. needs a leader for all seasons America needs a "President for all Seasons" or at least a leader for all seasons. Could any of us have expected an international health crisis when we voted for Donald Trump four years ago? If we, in our worst nightmares, had anticipated a situation such as we are in today, would we have desired Donald Trump over any or all of the other potential leaders, Democrat or Republican? My view of the world at 80 years of age is much different than my two sons' views. They grew up in a very different world than my early years and our family's relocation from town to a small farm on Sugar Creek. As a result, my exposure to work was in a farm household that remembered the Depression and valued economic sacrifice and hard work. Four years ago Donald Trump appeared to be an innovator who could bring some leadership to a government that looked very dysfunctional to me personally and seemed to be in a perpetual political feud. Could we have asked ourselves at that time what should our "man for all seasons" look like, sound like and what style of leadership would he or she display in a crisis such as we now face? Until we see a person under the pressure of an event like we now experience it is difficult to know for sure. Wouldn't it be nice if anyone of us had an answer to the leadership qualities that our nation and the world needs now? Or is it possible, or more likely, no single individual presents the image we need to bring unity to a world in crisis? America has the opportunity to once again be seen (and acknowledged) as the leader of humanity and a stable economy. But the world will look to our national leader with the spot light on their every move and every verbal quote. They must put America, not themselves, first. We as a nation face a once in a lifetime health crisis. Because we are known for our spending on prescription health care costs, the world probably expects us to be the leader in research and anticipation of preparedness before a problem occurs. Even American pharmaceutical companies could not anticipate a problem in a Chinese city would dominate conversation and life style around the world as we see today. What we seem to be missing in our current president is an understanding of his role as America's leader "for all seasons." His attempt to be "in front of everything" including our health care needs seems to lead to more division than a solution to the situation. Apparently President Trump desires a loyal staff at a time when we need input from specialists in a variety of fields -- health care, economics, mass crowd control, negotiations with America's manufacturing base, etc. And, that input must be recognized as shared knowledge, respected and considered for its need and not controlled by a single-minded system whose focus is on re-election rather than problem solving. This will pass. A hundred years ago this month my grandfather died from a flu pandemic. It was not easy on the family to lose the head of the household before he was 40, but the family endured and there will be other world-wide health situations to face in the future. Learning from this current situation should be among our nation's priorities. We will be faced with a choice in the Fall when we are asked to make a choice about our current president's success. We may have a choice about replacing him with a new face and a person who seems to listen to experts. Someone who doesn't try to lead with daily Tweets and embarrass himself in press briefings. We must judge our current evaluation of the presidency and cooperation from Congress against what we expected. Can a former television personality lead our national legislators to solve our health care problems and the subsequent economic problems while spending his time keeping the spotlight on himself? Trying to read a press release covering technical terms that was obviously written by someone else is not my idea of leadership. Turning that responsibility for explaining a medical issue over to an expert who doesn't stumble over the words makes more sense to me. It demonstrates a quality of leadership and organizational understanding that shows a person knows how and when to utilize the knowledge of those that make up his or her team. Giving people the authority to do their job can save a lot of confusion and shows respect for those you have chosen to fill a need you are acknowledging must be done. The president does not do himself any favors (in my eyes) when he tries to be a one-man show in a press conference. It is one thing to acknowledge another's contribution for something but it must sound sincere for the public to believe it. The ability to select and organize a group of talented persons into a well functioning team is one of the highest priorities of a leader. If our president can't succeed in doing that, he will have a serious problem in November. Joe Biden may not be the best choice of the Democratic Party but he knows not to try to bluff his way when he isn't prepared to speak.
OP-ED: Reflecting on Canada Day and Canadas responsibilities This Canada Day Village Media reporter
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OP-ED: Reflecting on Canada Day and Canadas responsibilities This Canada Day Village Media reporter

 This Canada Day, Village Media reporter Miriam King reflects on ways in which the country can do better

There has been talk of the need to listen to the stories that have come out of the Residential Schools; to listen to the survivors, to build respect and reconciliation. But aside from lowering flags to half-staff and describing this Canada Day as a day of national reflection, there has been little concrete action on the part of Canada’s federal government. The very least the Canadian government can do is to return the children who perished at Residential Schools across the country to their families and communities.
It is incumbent upon this government to address the historic and more recent wrongs and to do whatever is needed to find and identify every child who died while in the custody of a government-sanctioned residential school - no matter what it takes. If other jurisdictions can spend time and money identifying victims of violence, through DNA technology, then the Canadian government can spend the time and money to identify these youngest victims of neglect, abuse, cruelty, and racist policies. As Canada Day approaches, I can say that I am proud to be a Canadian, proud of what Canada has accomplished in terms of attempting to build a more equitable country that recognizes rule of law and strives to be fair. But I would be so much prouder if Canada would live up to its lofty ideals, and truly address the inequities and systemic racism that too long have been hidden in plain view. I would be prouder if Canada followed the lead of Ontario and Alberta, in setting aside funds to identify and return the bodies of the young victims. If it addressed the existing inequities in education funding to create a level playing field for First Nations and Aboriginal students. If it ensured that access to clean water, nutritious food, and health services were truly universal. I am a proud Canadian, but I also bear a part of the shame and the sorrow associated with the Residential schools. We as Canadians need to know and understand this part of our history, face it, understand the long-lasting and multigenerational impact of tearing children from their families and subjecting them to abuse and do better. Something to reflect upon, this Canada Day. Celebrations of Canada’s national day muted amid furor over unmarked graves TORONTO — Celebrations of Canada’s national day were more subdued than usual in parts of the country Thursday amid mounting fury and grief over the recent discoveries of more than 1,000 unmarked graves on or near the grounds of former residential schools for Indigenous children. Several communities said that their festivities would be altered. Others said that they were scrapping or postponing them altogether. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau resisted calls to cancel virtual celebrations, but said that the Canadian flag on the Peace Tower in Ottawa would remain at half-mast. In a statement Thursday, Trudeau acknowledged that “for some, Canada Day is not yet a day of celebration.” “We, as Canadians, must be honest with ourselves about out history because in order to chart a new and better path forward, we have to recognize the terrible mistakes of the past,” he said. “The truth is we’ve got a long way to go to make things right with Indigenous peoples.” The holiday comes as Canada grapples with one of the darkest chapters of its not-so-distant history: Wednesday saw the announcement of another discovery of unmarked graves at or near a former school for Indigenous children — at least the third such find since late May. Remains of 215 Indigenous children discovered at former Canadian residential school site The Lower Kootenay Band, part of the Ktunaxa First Nation, said ground-penetrating radar had revealed 182 human remains in unmarked graves — some as shallow as three feet — near the grounds of the former St. Eugene’s Mission School in British Columbia. The school was run by a Catholic group until it closed in the 1970s. The discoveries have been vindication for Indigenous people, who have long told stories about the graves, and a visceral, jolting reminder of Canada’s mistreatment of them. Indigenous leaders expect to find many more unmarked graves as communities across the country turn to ground-penetrating radar to unearth dark secrets buried for decades. “This is the beginning of these discoveries,” tweeted Perry Bellegarde, the national chief of the Assembly of First Nations, on Wednesday. Nearly 150,000 Indigenous children were sent to the government-funded and often church-run boarding schools, which were set up in the 19th century to assimilate them and operated until the late 1990s. Many students were forcibly separated from their families to be placed in the schools. Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission said in a 2015 report that many of the students were subjected to physical and sexual abuse at the schools, which barred them from practicing their traditions and speaking their languages. It said that schools carried out “cultural genocide” and effectively institutionalized child neglect. The commission identified more than 3,000 students who died at the schools, a rate that was far higher than for non-Indigenous school-age children. That number has since grown. Children, who were often malnourished, died of diseases. Others died in fires, accidents or while trying to escape. Pope Francis, who has expressed sorrow over the graves but stopped short of apologizing for the Catholic Church’s role, has agreed to meet with residential school survivors. The Canadian government and some Catholic groups, as well as the Presbyterian, Anglican and United churches of Canada, which also ran the schools, have apologized for their roles in the abuse. Since the first graves were discovered, more than a half-dozen churches across the country, including a number on Indigenous land, have been vandalized or burned. Authorities have cast the fires as suspicious. On Wednesday, police in Alberta and Nova Scotia said that they were investigating two suspicious fires at Roman Catholic churches, at least the fifth and sixth such fires in 10 days. Others churches have been defaced. In Saskatchewan, a Catholic church was splattered with red handprints and the words, “We were children.” Trudeau on Wednesday denounced the spate of vandalism and the fires. “This is not the way to go,” he said. “The destruction of places of worship is unacceptable and it must stop.” “Hate-inspired violence, burning down faith communities, targeting them with these acts of violence and intimidation is not reconciliation,” Alberta Premier Jason Kenney told reporters as he toured the charred remains of a century-old church in the town of Morinville. Bellegarde, the First Nations chief, urged restraint. “I can understand the frustration and the anger and the hurt and the pain,” he said. “But to burn things down is not our way.” Celebrations of Canada’s national day muted amid furor over unmarked graves With the rediscovery of thousands of graves at residential schools across the country there have been multiple calls to either cancel or rename Canada Day. Sadly, there is some merit to the idea as Canadians come to grips with our history as sometimes-brutal colonizers of lands that were once in the care of First Nations. There is also a growing recognition that we are the beneficiaries of a genocide that has been going on since Jacques Cartier sailed up the St. Lawrence River looking for a shortcut to Asia. A cloud is hanging over us. The Canadian genocide has taken many forms over the centuries. There was the accidental (and sometimes deliberate) spread of sicknesses like smallpox that some historians believe wiped out up to 90 per cent of First Nations after first contact. Many of the unmarked graves at residential schools are there because of the unchecked spread of tuberculosis in crowded dormitories. There has also been a kind of geographical genocide where First Nations were separated from each other and pushed into isolated reserves that have not offered much in the way of opportunities, services, or even necessities like clean drinking water. These actions were then followed by a wider cultural genocide and the attempts of various nation builders to “westernize” First Nations. That approach gave rise to a residential school system where children were taken from their parents, sometimes neglected or abused by their caregivers, and forced to abandon their culture. Driving all of this is a relentless economic genocide where resources that First Nations had claim to were taken and sold without much—if any—benefit going back to the people who never legally ceded their rights to the land. There aren’t many countries on the planet that don’t have horrible histories involving war, genocide, slavery, religious persecution, or various forms of racial/cultural/sexual exploitation. But Canada is different in that we’ve never honestly acknowledged all the uncomfortable truths that made it all possible. The fact that so many people are only learning about residential schools today reveals a serious and obviously deliberate gap in our education system. What Canada does to right these wrongs is what is ultimately going to define us as a nation in the future. Being great starts with being good. Our shameful treatment of First Nations is just one example of Canada’s seldom-explored darker side. There’s the Komagata Maru; the heartless decision to send a ship with 900 Jewish refugees back to Europe and into the path of Nazis; internment camps; a ban on black immigrants in the early 1900s, and racial segregation that persisted as late as the early 1980s in some parts of Canada. This is a country where one in five children is living in poverty, despite being one of the wealthiest nations on the planet. We’re also increasingly known on the world stage for wolf culls, the seal hunt, and logging of old-growth forests. None of this easily squares with the sunny image that we’ve constructed for ourselves over the years. However, despite the sad facts of our origin story, I don’t think Canada Day should be cancelled or renamed. I would rather see it