Post #24 — A Rant From Saugerties

There's a mountain behind that fog:





I went to bed last night not feeling well and I woke up the morning not much better. I have a dripping head, chest pains and a bit of a cough. Most likely it's allergies but the shortness of breath and chest pains, given my history of heart troubles (I had four coronary stent put in last year and during one procedure had a heart attack on the table) are frightening. So is it allergies or heart stuff? I try to treat the allergies and see what happens. Could it be a cold or worse, Covid-19? Since we're totally isolating, I'm not sure how I would catch a cold, and over and over in my head, I run through our perimeter defense against the virus, where could it get in? I just don't see it. We're not complacent for a second, so that leaves heart or allergies. But I can't go to the cardiologist for fear of being exposed.

So I sit, write, take the right meds, maybe take it easier and think about the people who are facing much more serious issues.

And I get furious.

Here's what set me off today. Yesterday, Andrew Cuomo announced that on the orders of the country's chief medical expert, Dr. Donald J. Trump, he would order hospitals to to treat patients with chloroquine, an anti-Malaria drug.

It's important because it sheds light on how and why the federal government makes its policy, and it's not based on science but on nut-job theories pushed by right-wing ideologues, all of whom have Trump's ear. This is taken from an important New Yorker story by Paige Williams. The New Yorker's coverage, by the way, has been outstanding, with must-read stories every day.

On March 18, Dr. Tucker Carlson featured a lawyer named Gregory Rigano on his show. Rigano apparently had self-published a story about chloroquine, in which he wrongly stated that doctors in France were testing it and had found that it had a 100-percent cure rate.

The segment was picked up by Charlie Kirk, who tweeted it out. Check out Kirk's frightening Wikipedia page. 

Guess who is a fan of Kirk? Last week, based on nothing other than Kirk's account, Trump announced at a subsequent press conference that he was "a fan" of the drug and had ordered the FDA to distribute it, and because he's anxious to prove to America that he alone can fix this pandemic and  sees the widespread suffering as an opportunity  to demonstrate he is a leader worthy off reelection, he pressured governors like Cuomo to force feed it to the ill.

Meanwhile, lupus patients who desperately need the drug can no longer get it.
And since people who take the drug are subject to fatal overdoses, how many people will die as a result?


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