A scientific paper claims that humans acquired COVID-19 from a Chinese research lab, and not a food market. But instead of having the paper peer reviewed, they are trying to suppress it.
By Daniel Alman (aka Dan from Squirrel Hill)
April 3, 2020
One of the great things about science is the peer review process. When one group of scientists comes to a conclusion, other groups of scientists are allowed to peer review the work of the original group, to try to determine whether or not the original research has merit.
This link, which no longer works, used to show a scientific paper: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/339070128_The_possible_origins_of_2019-nCoV_coronavirus
Fortunately, the internet archive still has the paper at this link: https://web.archive.org/web/20200214144447/https:/www.researchgate.net/publication/339070128_The_possible_origins_of_2019-nCoV_coronavirus
The paper is titled, “The possible origins of 2019-nCoV coronavirus.”
The paper’s lead author is Botao Xiao, from the South China University of Technology.
The paper’s publication month is February 2020.
The paper states:
“An article published on The Lancet reported that 27 of 41 infected patients were found to have contact with the Huanan Seafood Market in Wuhan. We noted two laboratories conducting research on bat coronavirus in Wuhan, one of which was only 280 meters from the seafood market. We briefly examined the histories of the laboratories and proposed that the coronavirus probably originated from a laboratory…”
“… The bats carrying CoV ZC45 were originally found in Yunnan or Zhejiang province, both of which were more than 900 kilometers away from the seafood market. Bats were normally found to live in caves and trees. But the seafood market is in a densely-populated district of Wuhan, a metropolitan of ~15 million people. The probability was very low for the bats to fly to the market. According to municipal reports and the testimonies of 31 residents and 28 visitors, the bat was never a food source in the city, and no bat was traded in the market.”
This paper has not been peer reviewed. I hope it will be.
If the statistics cited in the paper are true, then which of these two scenarios is more likely:
a) Humans contracted COVID-19 from a food market that is more than 900,000 meters away from the wild population of this bat species
or
b) Humans contracted COVID-19 from a lab that was doing research on bats and on coronavirus, and the lab is located only 280 meters from this food market
I’m curious to read of any peer reviews that get published.
And I’m curious to know why no peer reviews have been published so far.
And I’m also curious to know why the original link no longer works.
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Identity Politics Lied. New Yorkers Died.
Identity Politics Lied. New Yorkers Died.
April 2, 2020
Last year, New York City Health Commissioner Oxiris Barbot was warning that “even brief contact with the police or indirect exposure is associated with lasting harm to people’s physical and mental health”.
“We as a public health department have really been trying to frame criminal justice system involvement as an exposure,” Barbot’s epidemiologist, Kimberly Zweig, claimed.
Zweig had a degree in epidemiology, but her focus was entirely on PTSD and stress. Not on disease.
Why was New York City so badly unprepared for the arrival of the coronavirus? The answer was radical politics. And Barbot and Zweig embodied the public health mismanagement of a radical administration.
Commissioner Oxiris Barbot, the disgraced figure at the center of the city’s coronavirus meltdown, had graduated from the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey in 1991. She had worked as a pediatrician, before being selected as the Medical Director for the Office of School Health in New York in 2003. Her qualification for the job was unclear and her bio doesn’t list any administrative degrees.
In 2010, Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake chose Barbot as Baltimore’s health commissioner. Blake would later become infamous for announcing that she had given the city’s race rioters “space to destroy”.
The city’s murder rate has continued hitting new highs since.
A few years later, Barbot came back to New York City and began working her way up through the Department of Health. When she was named Health Commissioner last year, the big news was that the city had its “first Latina commissioner” who had come out the Bronx housing projects.
Barbot succeeded Mary T. Bassett: a 17-year veteran of the University of Zimbabwe. Bassett had launched the Center for Health Equity and spent her time warning of the public health threat from racism in talks, “Why Your Doctor Should Care About Social Justice”, articles, “How Does Racism Affect Your Health”, and research papers, “Uprooting Institutionalized Racism as Public Health Practice.”
As Health Commissioner, Barbot’s bio boasted that “she uses a racial equity lens” and credited her with “spearheading the creation of the Center for Health Equity which operationalizes the Department’s commitment to racial justice.”
As the coronavirus bore down on New York City, Barbot and the Health Department were busy operationalizing social justice while remaining oblivious to the scientific realities of the pandemic. The department’s focus on health equity required it to discourage recent arrivals from Wuhan from going into self-quarantine or avoiding large public gatherings like the Lunar New Year celebrations.
“We are very clear: We wish New Yorkers a Happy Lunar New Year and we encourage people to spend time with their families and go about their celebration,” Barbot insisted.
A week later, Barbot appeared at a press event promoting Lunar New Year celebrations in Chinatown.
“As we gear up to celebrate the #LunarNewYear in NYC, I want to assure New Yorkers that there is no reason for anyone to change their holiday plans, avoid the subway, or certain parts of the city because of #coronavirus,” she insisted.
By then there had already been over 17,000 cases of the Wuhan Virus in China with nearly 3,000 new cases in one day. For the first time, someone outside Mainland China had died of the disease.
Manhattan’s Chinatown, where Barbot had appeared, is one of the densest parts of the city. The old core community where the Lunar New Year celebration is based is a maze of cramped tenements, narrow streets, tiny stores whose counters extend far into the street, and other unsafe conditions
Barbot went on urging people to participate in the parade while spreading misinformation about the risk. “You won’t get it merely from riding the subways – you get it from secretions,” she even claimed.
The commissioner went on with the happy talk in March.
After the first coronavirus case in the city, she claimed that “disease detectives” would prevent the spread of the coronavirus and that New Yorkers were “at low risk”.
“As we confront this emerging outbreak, we need to separate facts from fear, and guard against stigma and panic,” Commissioner Barbot signed off: warning that the real enemy was prejudice.
“There’s no indication that being in a car, being in the subways with someone who’s potentially sick is a risk factor,” she told New Yorkers.
Four days later, she finally admitted, “It’s not just prolonged household contact as we initially thought. We have evidence that there are other types of interactions that can occur that can transmit the virus.”
Barbot and her boss, Mayor Bill de Blasio, had been spreading dangerous nonsense with no scientific basis. When asked about some of her claims at a press conference, she said, “This is a novel virus that we’re still learning a lot about.”
That was better than Bill de Blasio who, when asked how Barbot’s Department of Health had decided that the virus dies quickly in the air, rambled, “All information is valuable, but the information that we’re gleaning from our own direct experience is the most valuable to us.”
Had New York City’s health authorities lost their minds? Not exactly. They had enveloped their medical decisions in a fog of identity politics pseudoscience which had redefined medicine around equity.
That was Barbot’s real job. The obsession with equity in everything had been the signature of the entire De Blasio administration. Just as Marxists had used class as the master theory explaining all the problems of human history, radicals in this country had redefined racism as the explanation for all ills.
To Barbot and De Blasio, the coronavirus wasn’t the real threat, racism was. Their job was to suppress overreaction to the coronavirus by persuading New Yorkers that there was no real risk of contagion.
The actual science, objective research, was irrelevant compared to the city’s own truths about racism.
In the midst of the pandemic, this may seem inconceivable, but all that happened was that New York City’s leaders applied the same approach to the coronavirus that they had used for crime and terrorism.
When it came to terrorism and crime, the policy had been to minimize the risk, cover up actual cases and to warn against prejudice toward communities likely to engage in crime or terrorism. This approach had failed miserably in preventing crime or terrorism, but the actual scale of the damage had not been so devastating as to actually make a major dent in daily life in New York City.
New York City’s Health Department had already medicalized this approach with HIV. Last year, the Health Department was back to running ads encouraging sex with HIV positive people.
“This new U = U campaign underscores the fact that people living with HIV have more choices than ever before,” Health Commissioner Dr. Oxiris Barbot boasted. “With a sexual health plan that includes taking HIV medication, regular medical care, and using condoms, New Yorkers with HIV can live long, fulfilling, and healthy lives with the options they have now.”
“People living with HIV are lovable, touchable, and should feel confident that, with effective treatment, they can live free of the concern of transmitting the virus,” Dr. Demetre Daskalakis, Deputy Commissioner for the Health Department’s Division of Disease Control added.
The difference with coronavirus was how quickly the risk of a disease outbreak turned into the reality.
New York City’s politicized government had inhabited its own bubble in which filling the streets with criminals, protecting terrorists and illegal aliens, or encouraging unsafe sex, was ideologically correct. And the casualties of this ideological destruction, whether bicycling tourists in Manhattan, young gay men, or young women in Central Park, were easy enough to bury in press releases full of Newspeak.
But the coronavirus crisis did not work that way. And Barbot and De Blasio were behind the curve. The radicals running the city were not only out of step with science, but with the rest of the country.
By the time reality, in the form of angry editorials, state action, local protests, intruded, it was too late.
The coronavirus outbreak has exploded in New York City. And everyone has gone all in on the cover-up. The inept De Blasio administration, which didn’t bother ordering protective equipment until March, when it was still assuring New Yorkers that there was nothing to worry about, has been blaming Trump.
But that’s a mistake.
The coronavirus pandemic contains important lessons. Trying to suppress those lessons will carry an even heavier price. The price can be postponed, but the interest rate on it will be even higher.
New York City’s dense grid, its cramped public transportation, and large foreign population put it at risk, but it was an ideological contempt for objective science by identity politics radicals that left it naked.
The Chinese Communist leadership had refused to believe that a virus could take off in their perfect system. Ideology blinded them to the outbreak the same way it did their leftist counterparts in New York City who were obsessed with making sure that the Lunar New Year celebrations went forward in their perfect utopia to prove that science doesn’t matter and that the only real virus is racism.
Mayor Bill de Blasio had dismantled the city’s Department of Health, replacing its personnel with unqualified hacks whose job was to medicalize social justice, and warn of the public health threats of the police, or hair discrimination, while assuring city residents that they had nothing to fear from COVID-19.
New York City Health Commissioner Oxiris Barbot warned New Yorkers that brief contact with the police was dangerous, but that brief contact with people infected with the coronavirus wasn’t.
Identity politics lied. New Yorkers died.
YouTuber laowhy86 claims that a Chinese science lab that was doing research on bats is located less than 1 km from the Chinese food market where the COVID-19 virus had allegedly originated
I don’t think this is an April Fool’s joke. If it is, then shame on me for thinking that it’s not.
I don’t know if this is true or not, but YouTuber laowhy86 claims that a Chinese science laboratory that was doing research on bats is located less than one kilometer from the Chinese food market where the COVID-19 virus had allegedly originated.
laowhy86 also says that lab workers came in contact with blood and other fluid from the bats, and that one of these lab workers has “disappeared.” No one know where this lab worker is. And she is no longer listed on the lab’s website, even though other former employees are still listed on their website.
I’m not saying that any of this is true, but I’m not saying that any of it is false either.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bpQFCcSI0pU
New England Journal of Medicine: “the overall clinical consequences of Covid-19 may ultimately be more akin to those of a severe seasonal influenza (which has a case fatality rate of approximately 0.1%)”
The New England Journal of Medicine recently reported the following:
“the overall clinical consequences of Covid-19 may ultimately be more akin to those of a severe seasonal influenza (which has a case fatality rate of approximately 0.1%)”
So then why is the mainstream media reporting much larger numbers?
Is the mainstream media trying to scare people in order to get bigger ad revenues?
Is the mainstream media scaring people in order to try to make Trump look bad?
How Shutting Down The Economy Much Longer Could Kill Tens Of Thousands Of Americans
How Shutting Down The Economy Much Longer Could Kill Tens Of Thousands Of Americans
It is vitally important, literally life and death, that the proper costs and benefits are weighed with the decision on how much and how long to shut down economic activity through the pandemic.
By Thomas K. Duncan and Audrey Redford
March 30, 2020
As the coronavirus pandemic continues across the world, leaders and policymakers have scrambled to respond to the growing health crisis. In the United States, multiple state governors have issued statements urging their citizens to follow social distancing guidelines.
Other governors have taken more extreme measures, issuing orders to effectively lock down entire state economies. The current goal of these responses has been to slow the spread of the virus in the hope of reducing the strain on the health-care system. Discussion over the proper precautions is a necessity in such a time.
There have been forecasted estimates of virus-related death totals for the United States from as high as 10 million, to 2.2 million, to more conservative estimates of 5,000. The models used to estimate the potential death rates are not without criticism and repeated adjustment. Sampling bias may be a significant problem. These data errors are an important problem to resolve as policymakers use these models to inform their responses.
Lives Depend on Economic Activity
The difference between social distancing and complete economic shutdowns is too dramatic not to be taken seriously. It is imperative that more testing be conducted to provide better access to data, as well as the health benefits that come with knowing who does and does not have the virus. However, as important as it is to get the cost of not shutting down right, it is also important that policymakers properly weigh the cost of the economic shutdowns themselves.
Getting the cost right is not simply a matter of valuing “profits over people,” as the social media memes may suggest. Rather, even in times of crisis, the ability to operate in a functioning economy is important for the people within it.
The economy is the people, and the people are the economy. The ability to continue to function in a market system does matter to individuals within the system, particularly when the ability of business to remain open and continue to employ them is in question.
We have already started to see some of these human effects as the unemployment has quickly rocketed beyond even the early initial projections. A rise in unemployment is correlated with a number of negative socio-economic effects. For some, these effects can be quite deadly, particularly when the changes are rapid, as is currently the case.
The Longer the Shutdown, the More People Will Be Hurt
The economic predictions for the shutdowns may be as varied as those for the virus itself. The Federal Reserve’s James Bullard has noted that unemployment may rise to as much as 30%. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin has estimated a possible unemployment rate of 20%.
Bullard’s number is higher than the unemployment seen in the United States during the Great Depression (25%), and both estimates are significantly higher than the unemployment during the Great Recession (11%). Even if we take the more conservative estimate of 20% unemployment, that is a 16.5% rise in unemployment from its recent historic lows of 3.5% unemployment.
Although it is difficult to estimate how long this downturn may linger, that is a severe shock to the economic system. It is possible that people return to work and economic activity returns in strength in short order after the shutdowns are lifted.
Even then, the costs of shutting down will have been quite large. However, it is also possible that some businesses who had to pause activity for a month or more may not be able to return at all. The recession could be longer than some economists are projecting. If the economy does linger in its downturn, the human costs to the shutdown will inevitably begin to increase.
Possibly 28,797 More Deaths from Opioids
A 2017 National Bureau of Economic Research paper finds a 3.6% increase in the opioid death rate per 100,000 people for a 1% rise in unemployment. There were 14.6 opioid death rates per 100,000 in the United States in 2018. If we use the more conservative estimate of a 20% unemployment rate without a quick return to lower levels, then there would be an estimated 59.4% rise in deaths per 100,000, leading to an increase of 8.7 deaths for a total of 23.3 for opioids.
With a current U.S. population of 331 million, there are 3,310 groups of 100,000, meaning there is potential for an additional 28,797 deaths from opioids annually. Consider that for 2018, the Centers for Disease Control reports that there were 67,367 deaths from all-drug deaths, with 46,802 of those coming from opioid use. The 46,802 deaths were considered an opioid crisis. A possible 75,599 should not be dismissed quickly.
The negative effects will not be felt just through opioid use either. The numerical increase in deaths provided above is only for opioid users, but the all-drug death number will rise as well. In a 2018 study, Bruguera, et al, found that of the 180 drug users they surveyed about use during the Great Recession, 58.3% reported an increase in use while only 25.6% reported decreasing use, resulting in greater all-drug use for the period.
Similarly, Mulia, et al, (2014) connects a rise in alcoholism to economic loss during the Great Recession. The CDC estimates that 2,200 people die in the United States just from alcohol poisoning annually, not to mention the additional alcohol-related deaths that occur. In 2017 alone, there were also 22,246 deaths resulting from alcoholic liver disease. As the jobless rate increases and the economic losses continue to mount, these numbers are likely to rise.
Unemployment Increases Suicide, Homicide
The deaths related to economic downturns go beyond those from chemical dependency, also. The mental toll is not inconsequential. For example, Blakely, et al, (2003) find that being unemployed may also increase the risk of suicide two to threefold. Milner, et al. (2014) similarly finds that unemployment is associated with a higher relative risk of suicide, with prior mental health issues being a key factor in that association. While a study by Kerr, et al, (2018) did not find that unemployment is directly linked to suicides, it did find a significant link between poverty, suicide, and alcoholism.
When breaking the population into age groups, Lin and Chen (2018) do find that unemployment does have a direct impact on older portions of the population, the portion of the population many of the current shutdowns are most meant to protect. Whether it is the direct unemployment effect or the potential poverty produced from the economic shutdown that leads to greater suicides, an increase from the 48,344 suicides and 1,400,000 suicide attempts in the United States in 2018 should give decision-makers pause during their response to this pandemic.
Increased harm to oneself is not the only harm caused by economic downturns. There is also the threat of rising crime in general. Ajimotokin, et al, (2015) estimate that a 1 percent change in unemployment will increase the property crime rate by 71.1 per 100,000 people and the violent crime rate by 31.9 per 100,000 people.
With our estimated 16.5% rise in unemployment, we could see a significant increase in both property and violent crimes. The violent crime also may add to the death toll in this period. Kposowa and Johnson (2016) find that unemployed workers are more than 50% more likely to become homicide victims than those who are employed. They also find people not in the labor force are 1.3 times more likely to be victims than those who are employed. As workers become discouraged due to an inability to find jobs during a recession, their lives as well as their livelihoods are called into question.
The future during such a pandemic is largely uncertain, and misinformation is rampant in the current panic. Policymakers face tough decisions as they navigate the issues of data collection, virus transmission, and economic ramifications of doing too little or too much. It is vitally important, literally life and death, that the proper costs and benefits are weighed with the decision on how much and how long to shut down economic activity through the pandemic.
This article originally appeared from the American Institutes for Economic Research and is reprinted with permission, with slight alterations to implement AP style plus an editor-chosen title and subheds, as is the industry norm.
Thomas K. Duncan, Ph.D., is an associate professor of economics at Radford University. He received his Ph.D. from George Mason University. Audrey Redford is the assistant professor of economics at Western Carolina University. She earned her Ph.D. in agricultural and applied economics from Texas Tech University.
The real death rate of COVID-19 in the U.S. may be 140 times smaller than what is being reported
By Daniel Alman (aka Dan from Squirrel Hill)
March 30, 2020
It’s possible that the number of people in the U.S. who are infected with COVID-19 is much bigger than the number that is being currently reported, but many of those people haven’t gotten substantially sick, and so haven’t gotten tested.
The death rate is calculated by dividing the number of people who die by the number who get infected.
But while we do have accurate information about the numerator, we really have no idea what the denominator is. It’s possible that the real denominator is magnitudes bigger than what is being reported, because most infected people have either no symptoms or minor symptoms, and thus, don’t get tested. If this is indeed the case, then it’s possible that the real death rate is far, far lower than the one that is being reported.
As of this writing (early March 30, 2020), in the U.S., 142,735 people have tested positive for COVID-19, and of those, 2,489 have died from it. (I got those numbers from this link, which is continuously being updated.)
Based on these numbers, the fatality rate in the U.S. is 1.744%
Meanwhile, Iceland tested a large segment of its population, including people with no symptoms, and found that 6.3% of them have COVID-19.
The U.S. has 328 million people. If we extrapolate Iceland’s figure of 6.3% to the U.S., it would suggest that more than 20 million people in the U.S. have COVID-19. (I realize that extrapolating Iceland’s test results to the U.S. is not the ideal way to determine the rate of infection in the U.S. But given the absence of this particular type of widespread testing in the U.S., it’s probably the most accurate guess that we can make at this point in time. Hopefully, such widespread testing will be done in the U.S., and we will then have a more accurate number.)
So for the U.S., the real denominator may be 140 times bigger than the one that is being reported.
Which, if true, would indicate that the estimated real death rate in the U.S. is more than two magnitudes smaller than what is being reported.
And, if true, would mean that the estimated real death rate in the U.S. is 0.01246%.
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Stanford medical professors: COVID-19 death toll estimates may be ‘orders of magnitude’ too high
https://www.theblaze.com/news/stanford_coronavirus_too_high_death
Stanford medical professors: COVID-19 death toll estimates may be ‘orders of magnitude’ too high
They believe the projections are ‘deeply flawed’
March 26, 2020
A pair of public health experts from Stanford, Drs. Eran Bendavid and Jay Bhattacharya, warn Americans in a Wall Street Journal editorial that the current estimates about the coronavirus’ fatality rate may be too high by “orders of magnitude.”
According to Bendavid and Bhattacharya, both of whom are medical doctors, while they are supportive of social distancing guidelines and efforts to contain the disease, they fear that orders to shut down the entire economy may be based on shoddy research data.
Death toll projects may be ‘orders of magnitude too high’
“If it’s true that the novel coronavirus would kill millions without shelter-in-place orders and quarantines, then the extraordinary measures being carried out in cities and states around the country are surely justified,” they wrote. “But,” and what a big one it is, they add, “there’s little evidence to confirm that premise — and projections of the death toll could plausibly be orders of magnitude too high.”
The two submit that because the United States and other countries largely focus their testing on symptomatic patients, the number of people who are infected with COVID-19 is likely much larger than the number of confirmed cases being reported by public health agencies throughout the country, which means the virus’ mortality rate is likely significantly lower.
“Fear of Covid-19 is based on its high estimated case fatality rate — 2% to 4% of people with confirmed Covid-19 have died, according to the World Health Organization and others,” wrote Bendavid and Bhattacharya. “So if 100 million Americans ultimately get the disease, 2 million to 4 million could die. We believe that estimate is deeply flawed. The true fatality rate is the portion of those infected who die, not the deaths from identified positive cases.”
How did they predict this?
The two professors argue that the best evidence of the coronavirus death rate being significantly lower than what is being reported may lie in the Italian town of Vò. On March 6, the town’s 3,300 residents were tested. Of these, 90 tests came back positive, indicating a prevalence of 2.7% of the population having the virus.
If one were to apply this to the entire province where the town is located, which has a population of 955,000, it would mean there were actually 26,000 infections at the time, and not just the 198 that were officially confirmed. This would be 130 times greater than the number of reported cases. Since Italy’s case fatality rate of 8% is estimated using the confirmed cases, Bendavid and Bhattacharya write, “the real fatality rate [of the virus] could in fact be closer to 0.06%.”
A ’cause for optimism’?
The two Stanford Health Policy experts even said the virus’ mortality rate might be on par with that of the seasonal flu:
Existing evidence suggests that the virus is highly transmissible and that the number of infections doubles roughly every three days. An epidemic seed on Jan. 1 implies that by March 9 about six million people in the U.S. would have been infected. As of March 23, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, there were 499 Covid-19 deaths in the U.S. If our surmise of six million cases is accurate, that’s a mortality rate of 0.01%, assuming a two week lag between infection and death. This is one-tenth of the flu mortality rate of 0.1%. Such a low death rate would be cause for optimism.
A universal lockdown ‘may not be worth the costs’
Bendavid and Bhattacharya say that if they are right about the lower lethality of the epidemic, public policy experts should focus their measures on protecting the elderly and expanding medical capacity.
“Hospital resources will need to be reallocated to care for the critically ill patients. Triage will need to improve. And policy makers will need to focus on reducing risks for older adults and people with underlying medical conditions.”
The pair conclude that if their estimates are right, then the universal quarantine measures “may not be worth the costs it imposes on the economy, community, and individual mental and physical health.”
“We should undertake immediate steps to evaluate the empirical basis of the current lockdowns,” they added.
March 15, 2020: Bernie Sanders mentions the current “Ebola crisis” two different times. He also implies that multi-millionaires are immune from it.
Yesterday, Bernie Sanders mentioned the “Ebola crisis” twice.
Here are his exact words:
“The Ebola crisis, in my view, exposes the dysfunctionality of our health care system, and how poorly prepared we are despite how much money that we spend. And the Ebola crisis is also, I think, exposing the cruelty and the unjustness of our economy today.”
“We have more income and wealth inequality in America today than at any time in 100 years. And what that means that in the midst of this crisis, you know, if you’re a multimillionaire, no one’s happy about this crisis…”
Here’s video of Sanders saying those words. It’s the second video here, not the first one.
https://twitter.com/Julio_Rosas11/status/1239347669409173505
Here is a transcript of what Sanders says next:
“… if you’re a multimillionaire, no one is happy about this crisis, you’re going to get through it…”
Meanwhile, in the real world, there is nothing in the medical literature that says that multi-millionaires will “get through” either Ebola or the Coronavirus.
And assuming that Sanders meant to say Coronavirus and not Ebola, it is age, not wealth, that is, by far, the bigger factor that determines whether you will live or die.
Here is a chart that shows the death rate by age in China. Source of image https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus
Click here to see a bigger version of the image.
The flu kills over 8,000 people in the U.S. and nobody bats an eye. The Wuhan coronavirus kills 40 people and everybody loses their minds!
Source of image: http://regime.adidaseqtsupportadv.com/?img=https%3A%2F%2Fi.imgflip.com%2F3n5lbm.jpg
Bernie Sanders praises the government of New York for making its own hand sanitizer, which is made by prison inmates who get paid 65 cents an hour
By Daniel Alman (aka Dan from Squirrel Hill)
March 11, 2020
Bernie Sanders just said the following:
“I just learned a few moments ago that in New York State the government is doing the right thing. They are manufacturing disinfectant, for hand washing, to make sure that everybody will be able to get the Purell or whatever they need.”
“What they’re saying is, they are telling the manufacturers today to stop the price-gouging. And they’re manufacturing it. And we are prepared to say that to the pharmaceutical industry: stop ripping off the American people.”
Slate just reported the following:
“New York Will Use Prison Labor to Make Hand Sanitizer”
“The incarcerated workers typically make 65 cents an hour”
Bernie Sanders is in favor of using prison labor that makes 65 cents an hour.
This is not the first time that Sanders has praised prison labor that makes horribly low wages. The prison known as “Cuba” makes it illegal for its 11 million inmates to move out of the country, and it pays its doctors only $40 a month. The condition that Cuba forces these doctor-inmates to live under is so horrible that their homes get running water for only one hour per day. Sanders thinks such a system should be a role model for the U.S.
Note from Daniel Alman: If you like this blog post that I wrote, you can buy my books from amazon, and/or donate to me via PayPal, using the links below:
Bernie Sanders does not want you to see these photographs of the health care that regular Cubans get
Commentary by Daniel Alman (aka Dan from Squirrel Hill)
February 28, 2020
In Cuba, if you’re a tourist with U.S. dollars, you get great health care.
And if you’re a high ranking government official, you also get great health.
But if you’re just an average Cuban citizen, you get the kind of health care that’s in these photographs.
All of these photographs are from the internet archive of the website therealcuba.com. The reason I’m using the internet archive is because the account at the original website “has been suspended.” I don’t know the reason for the suspension.
Source for all photos: https://web.archive.org/web/20100404025459/http://therealcuba.com/Page10.htm
The caption for the above photo says, “Floors full of excrements, bare mattresses, terrible food and even worse medical attention.”
Comment from Daniel Alman (aka Dan from Squirrel Hill): The above photo shows one of Cuba’s environmentally friendly green ambulances, which does not burn any fossil fuel.
The caption for the above photo says, “Gentiuno reporters counted 27 dead roaches on the floor.”
The caption for the next four photographs below states:
These photos were taken at Havana’s psychiatric hospital, known as Mazorra, in early January of this year and taken out of the island by people who risked their lives to show the world what really is happening in Castro’s Cuba.
These are several of the more than 40 patients who died of hypothermia at the hospital, when temperatures near freezing hit the area where Mazorra is located.
These patients died because of the negligence of those in charge of this hospital, and after they died, hospital officials threw them on a table, one on top of the other, like bags of garbage at the local dumpster.
This is the fantastic healthcare that Cubans receive, according to Michael Moore and other useful idiots.
Patients are treated worse than animals. It is the cruelty of that brutal regime that has been oppressing the Cuban people for more than 51 years, while the dictator murdering and oppressing Cubans is referred to as “president,” and embraced by Latin American leaders who were democratically elected.
Many show marks that indicate that patients were beaten before they died.
The caption for the above photo says, “Yes, those black marks are flies.”
In Cuba, this doctor’s home has running water for only one hour a day
Here’s a six minute video on what it’s like to be a doctor in Cuba.
At 4:53, when the doctor is at her home with her husband and their daughter, the narrator says:
“… they only have running water one hour a day…”
If that’s how Cuba treats its doctors, I wonder how they treat the average citizen.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zBC5w2O4jVI
Rebecca Watson: Facebook Deletes Science Fact Check at Ted Cruz’s Request
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8gwinZO8J0I
Here’s a bunch of horror stories from the Canadian health care system that Bernie Sanders wants the U.S. to copy
Bernie Sanders recently said the following regarding his health care plan:
“The system is going to work similarly to what exists in Canada, and what we are going to see is an expansion of Medicare where almost all doctors are now in Medicare to cover every man, woman, and child in this country.”
Since Sanders want the U.S. to copy the Canadian system of health care, here are some examples of what he is talking about:
When Robert Bourassa, the premier of Quebec, Canada, needed cancer treatment, he came to the United States and paid for his health care with his own money.
And when Canadian Liberal MP Belinda Stronach needed cancer treatment, she also came to the United States and paid for her health care with her own money.
And when Newfoundland and Labrador Premier Danny Williams needed heart surgery, he, too, came to the United States and paid for his health care with his own money.
If Sanders gets his way, and the U.S. adopts Canadian style health care, where will Canadian politicians go when they get sick?
And that’s not all.
Here are some horror stories about Canadian health care as reported in the New York Times:
Canada’s Private Clinics Surge as Public System Falters
The Cambie Surgery Center, Canada’s most prominent private hospital, may be considered a rogue enterprise.
Accepting money from patients for operations they would otherwise receive free of charge in a public hospital is technically prohibited in this country, even in cases where patients would wait months or even years before receiving treatment.
Dr. Day, 59, says. “This is a country in which dogs can get a hip replacement in under a week and in which humans can wait two to three years.”
Canada remains the only industrialized country that outlaws privately financed purchases of core medical services.
Canada has a national doctor shortage already, with 1.4 million people in the province of Ontario alone without the services of a family doctor.
The median wait time between a referral by a family doctor and an appointment with a specialist has increased to 8.3 weeks… Meanwhile the median wait between an appointment with a specialist and treatment has increased to 9.4 weeks
Average wait times between referral by a family doctor and treatment range from 5.5 weeks for oncology to 40 weeks for orthopedic surgery
And Sanders is proud of this?
And there’s still more. This is from the Toronto Sun:
Wait times for knee- and hip-replacement surgery at Southwestern Ontario hospitals are among the longest in the province
People who go under the knife to get their knees replaced in Strathroy have waited an average of 671 days for surgery
Stratford is running the second-highest wait in the province for those needing a hip replacement: the average wait there was 364 days.
In London, the region’s largest medical centre, patients waited an average of 307 days to replace a knee and 299 days to replace a hip
Caption from above photo: Judy Congdon shows how difficult standing is with her bad left hip. Congdon will wait two years for a hip replacement in London, Ont.
Londoner Judy Congdon waited more than a year to have her right knee replaced when her Strathroy surgeon told her he’d have to replace her left hip next. Told last year to expect surgery in September 2017, her date in the operating room was cancelled, and the surgery delayed a second year
I really don’t understand why Sanders thinks this is a good role model for the U.S.
And there’s still even more.
KOMO TV, a Seattle, Washington affiliate of ABC News, reported:
Some Canadian mothers forced to give birth in U.S.
SEATTLE – A problem in Canada’s hospitals is sending scores of pregnant women south of the border to have their babies.
Carri Ash of Chilliwack, B.C. was sent to the U.S. to have her baby after her water broke on Sunday, ten weeks ahead of schedule.
“And they came in and said ‘you’re going to Seattle,'” she said.
Ash’s hospital couldn’t handle the high-risk pregnancy. Doctors searched for another hospital bed, but even hospitals in Vancouver, B.C. didn’t have a neo-natal bed.
“So two provinces didn’t have enough room, so I have to go to another country,” said Ash.
Ash was sent to Swedish Medical Center where, nurses told KOMO 4 News, five Canadian women have come to have their babies in the past six weeks. Some were even airlifted at up to $5,000 per flight.
And a woman from Calgary, one of the wealthiest cities in Canada, had to travel to Montana to give birth to her identical quadruplets.
“We always regret when we have to transfer a baby or mother to another jurisdiction for care,” said Canada’s Health Minister George Abbott.
Aidan Nassey was born premature in Canada and developed breathing problems before his mother could even hold him.
“It was terrifying. And he was taken away and that was it,” said Courtney Nassey, his mother.
There wasn’t a hospital in western Canada that could take in Aidan, and a helicopter had to rush them to Seattle.
Vicki Irvine crossed the border to see her daughter, Carri Ash, give birth.
“You can’t even have a baby near home. It’s horrible,” she said.
Irvine and Ash are questioning Canada’s priorities when it comes to health care spending.
“I think it’s ridiculous that we can have the Olympics but not enough beds so I can have a baby,” said Ash.
The family says there is one benefit to their neo-natal nightmare — the newborn will have dual citizenship and, so far, they like what they see on this side of the border.
If Sanders’s health care plan gets adopted, where will those Canadian women go to give birth in the future?
The above article mentions a Canadian woman who had to go to the U.S. to give birth to quadruplets. Here is more info on her situation from canada.com
A rare set of identical quadruplets, born this week to a Calgary woman at a Montana hospital, are in good health and two of them were strong enough to be transported back here Thursday.
The naturally conceived baby girls — Autumn, Brooke, Calissa and Dahlia — were delivered by caesarean section Sunday in Great Falls, their weights ranging between two pounds, six ounces and two pounds, 15 ounces.
Their mother, Calgarian Karen Jepp, was transferred to Benefis Hospital in Montana last week when she began showing signs of going into labour, and no Canadian hospital had enough neonatal intensive-care beds for all four babies.
There was no room at any other Canadian neonatal intensive care unit, forcing CHR officials to look south of the border.
Let’s take a look at some population statistics to put that into perspective.
Canada has a population of 37 million people.
And yet according to the last paragraph in that article, there was not a single hospital in all of Canada that could accommodate that woman giving birth to four babies at the same time.
Meanwhile, Great Falls, Montana, which is right across the Canadian border, only has 59,000 people, and yet somehow, it was able to accommodate this same woman when she gave birth to four babies at once.
So a relatively small U.S. city is able to provide health care that cannot be obtained anywhere within the entire country of Canada.
And Sanders wants the U.S. to copy Canada’s system?
In January 2008, the Globe and Mail reported:
More than 150 critically ill Canadians – many with life-threatening cerebral hemorrhages – have been rushed to the United States since the spring of 2006 because they could not obtain intensive-care beds here.
Before patients with bleeding in or outside the brain have been whisked through U.S. operating-room doors, some have languished for as long as eight hours in Canadian emergency wards while health-care workers scrambled to locate care.
If the U.S. adopts Sanders’s plan, where will Canadians such as those go when they need that type of health care?
Below is a video of John Stossel’s TV special “Sick in America.” In the video, he talks about some of the problems in U.S. health care. But then he goes on to show why the U.S. should not switch to the Canadian system. Here are some examples:
19:41 A Toronto man who had a hearth attack waits and waits in an emergency room because there are not enough ICU beds to give him the treatment that he needs.
20:15 A young girl who has seizures does not have a regular pediatrician, and cannot get a bed at a hospital.
20:23 “More than a million Canadians say they can’t find a regular family doctor. Some towns, like this one, hold a lottery. Once a week, the town clerk gets this box out of the closet. Inside are the names of everyone in town who wants a family doctor. She pulls out one slip, and then calls the lucky winner.”
Stossel then goes on to explain that in order to avoid such long waiting times, some patients have gone to private clinics where they spend their own money on health care, which is illegal in Canada. Even though it’s illegal, it’s actually quite common.
21:36 A businessman makes money by helping Canadians travel to the U.S. to get the health care that they can’t get in Canada. One such example was a woman who had a blocked artery that prevented her from being able to digest her food. She was starving to death. She’d lost 50 pounds. Then she hired the businessman to help her, and she traveled to Washington state and got the health care that she needed. The American doctor said that she would have died within a few weeks if she hadn’t gotten treatment. However, the Canadian government considered her care to be “elective.”
22:11 Stossel shows that at veterinary clinics in Canada, which are privately run and privately funded, animals can get medical treatment immediately, without having to wait. All of the latest high tech equipment is available and ready.
Here’s the video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Liz2tXypFAY
So the next time that Sanders or anyone else tells you how supposedly wonderful the Canadian health care system is, and that the U.S. should copy it, you can show them these examples.
Supporters of free universal health care can’t explain why U.K. citizen Mick Jagger had his life saving heart surgery in the U.S.
Supporters of free universal health care can’t explain why U.K. citizen Mick Jagger had his life saving heart surgery in the U.S.
I’ll explain it.
There is a tradeoff between time and money.
When something is “free,” it often comes with the “cost” of having to wait in line.
Mick Jagger knew that he could either get “free” heart surgery in the U.K. (where he is a citizen), at the cost of having to wait on a waiting list, or, he could get the surgery immediately by paying out of his own pocket to have his surgery in the U.S.
And he’s not the only one to understand this tradeoff between time and money.
When Robert Bourassa, the premier of Quebec, Canada, needed cancer treatment, he came to the United States and paid for his health care with his own money.
And when Canadian Liberal MP Belinda Stronach needed cancer treatment, she also came to the United States and paid for her health care with her own money.
And when Newfoundland and Labrador Premier Danny Williams needed heart surgery, he, too, came to the United States and paid for his health care with his own money.
Many liberals in the U.S. want the U.S. to adopt the same kind of universal health care that exists in Canada and the U.K. So here’s my question to those liberals: If the U.S. does adopt such a system, then where are the celebrities and politicians from other countries going to go when they need life saving health care?
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez doesn’t seem to know that there is actually an INVERSE correlation between billionaires and dangerous intestinal parasites
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez recently said that it was immoral to allow billionaires to exist when there are people who have ringworm.
She later said that she had meant hookworm, not ringworm.
Hookworm is transmitted to people when they walk barefoot in the feces of other people who are infected with hookworm.
And in the real world, there is actually an inverse correlation between the existence of billionaires, and the rate of hookworm infection.
According to wikipedia, this is how to prevent hookworm:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hookworm_infection
Hookworm infection
Prevention
The main lines of precaution are those dictated by good hygiene behaviors:
Do not defecate in the open, but rather in toilets.
Do not use untreated human excreta or raw sewage as fertilizer in agriculture.
Do not walk barefoot in known infected areas.
The places with the highest concentrations of billionaires, such as Manhattan, Silicon Valley, and Singapore, have very few or even zero cases of hookworm. (Although I will admit that San Francisco may be an exception to this trend, as an expert on global public health recently stated that the city’s high rate and tolerance of open defecation actually makes the city dirtier than third world countries. San Francisco is run so badly that the government spends $37,000 on each homeless person per year, and yet they still somehow manage to remain homeless. Can you imagine how much housing any city that wasn’t run by idiots could rent or buy for that much money?)
A long time ago, when there were no billionaires anywhere in the world, hookworm was very common all over the world.
Anyone who is truly against hookworm would be in favor of the existence of billionaires, not against it.
And that’s not even taking into account the charitable work of billionaires such as Bill Gates, which has saved huge numbers of lives.
And that also doesn’t take into account all the jobs that these billionaires provide, as well as the goods and services that these billionaires provide. For example, think of LEGO billionaire Kjeld Kirk Kristiansen and IKEA billionaire Ingvar Kamprad. Does anyone seriously want to argue that the world would be better off if the countries of western Europe had not allowed these two people to become billionaires?
Massachusetts government forces health insurance companies to pay for drug that costs $24,000 a year so gay men won’t have to wear condoms
I’m a libertarian. I don’t care what consenting gay adults do in the privacy of their own home.
But I do care about spiraling health care costs that, for decades, have been growing substantially faster than the rate of inflation.
There’s already a very low cost way for sexually active gay men to substantially reduce their risk of contracting HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. The Centers for Disease Control states:
When used the right way every time, condoms are highly effective in preventing HIV
But there’s a problem – at least to the people who work in the Medical Industrial Complex and make their living off of overinflated health care costs: condoms are very inexpensive. And low cost health care is the enemy of the Medical Industrial Complex.
To deal with this “problem” of low cost health care, the Massachusetts government has ordered insurance companies to pay for a drug called Truvada.
Truvada is a drug that sexually active gay men who don’t have HIV can take, which substantially reduces their risk of contracting HIV, even if they don’t wear a condom. It costs $24,000 a year.
So now, the very same Centers for Disease Control that says inexpensive condoms “are highly effective in preventing HIV,” is also saying that healthy, sexually active gay men who do not have HIV should switch to Truvada, which costs $24,000 a year.
The New York Times reports:
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention urges men and women at risk for H.I.V. infection to take Truvada daily. Studies have shown the drug to be extremely effective at blocking the virus…
… 80 percent of people who take Truvada are gay men
Given that the CDC already says inexpensive condoms are “highly effective in preventing HIV,” it’s absurd that the very same CDC is now urging people to switch to a drug that costs $24,000 a year.
Clearly, the CDC, as well as the government of Massachusetts, are both aligned with the Medical Industrial Complex, whose goal is to make health care more expensive, not less expensive.
Pittsburgh synagogue shooter tended to by Jewish doctors and nurses, officials say
Pittsburgh synagogue shooter tended to by Jewish doctors and nurses, officials say
October 29, 2018
PITTSBURGH — Jewish doctors and nurses at Allegheny General Hospital in Pittsburgh put their personal feelings aside to help save the life of the man who allegedly claimed he wanted to “kill all the Jews” as he opened fire at a synagogue and murdered 11 worshipers.
Robert Bowers, 46, was shot multiple times himself and taken to AGH. In addition to killing eight men and three women, he wounded six other people, including four police officers, before surrendering Saturday.
“He was taken to my hospital and he’s shouting, ‘I want to kill all the Jews’,” Dr. Jeffrey Cohen, president of Allegheny General Hospital and a member of the Tree of Life Synagogue, told ABC. “The first three people who took care of him were Jewish.”
Another nurse, whose father is a rabbi, “came in from a mass casualty drill and took care of this gentleman.”
Cohen was one of the first people on the scene. He lives in the neighborhood and heard gunfire from his house.
“I was standing there…and you could start hearing very quickly what was going on,” he said.
Just like the first responders who rushed into danger, Cohen credits his doctors, nurses and staff for stepping up.
“We are here to take care of sick people. We’re not here to judge you. We’re not here to ask ‘Do you have insurance or do you not have insurance?’ We’re here to take care of people who need our help,” he said.
Cohen says he and Bowers had a brief conversation at the hospital.
“When I stopped in, I asked him how he was doing. Was he in pain? And he said, ‘No. He was fine,’” Cohen said.
Cohen says Bowers then asked him who he was.
“I said I’m Dr. Cohen, president of the hospital. Then I turned around and left,” he said. “The FBI agent who was guarding him said, ‘I don’t know if I could have done that.’ And I said, ‘If you were in my shoes, I’m sure you could.’”
Bowers was discharged from the hospital Monday morning and arrived at the federal courthouse in downtown Pittsburgh around noon.
He faces 11 counts of criminal homicide, six counts of aggravated assault and 13 counts of ethnic intimidation in addition to federal counts that include weapons offenses and hate crime charges. Federal prosecutors are expected to seek the death penalty against him.
Medical school cancels honor society because whites and Asians were earning better grades than blacks and Latinos
According to this article from NPR, at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City, in order to get into the Alpha Omega Alpha honor society, you have to be in the top 25% of your graduating class.
The school is eliminating the honor society because not enough blacks and Latinos were graduating in the top 25%.
I’m not sure how getting rid of this honor society makes anyone better off.
On the contrary – I see this as just one more example of the dumbing down of America’s educational system.
As to the issue of why blacks and Latinos are underrepresented in the top 25%, my guess is that the school has lower admissions standards for blacks and Latinos than for everyone else. I could be wrong. And I’d be curious to hear anyone else explain a different reason in the comment section.
A Medical School Tradition Comes Under Fire For Racism
September 5, 2018
Senior medical student Giselle Lynch has plenty of accomplishments to list when she applies for a coveted spot in an ophthalmology residency program this fall.
But one box she won’t be able to check when she submits her application is one of the highest academic awards medical students can receive, election to the honor society Alpha Omega Alpha.
It’s not because she didn’t excel. It’s because her medical school, the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City, put a moratorium on student nominations because it determined the selection process discriminates against students of color.
The award is open to the top 25 percent of a medical school’s graduating class and can be a valuable career boost, making students more competitive for desirable residencies and jobs.
Icahn administrators say the disparities in the selection process reflect deeper issues of racial inequality in medical education.
“AOA perpetuates systems that are deeply flawed,” says Dr. David Muller, the dean for medical education at Icahn. “We can’t justify putting people who are historically at a disadvantage at an even greater disadvantage. It just doesn’t seem fair to dangle in front of our students an honorific that we know people are not equally eligible for.”
Over the past five years, around 3 percent of students chosen for the distinction at Icahn were from a racial background that is underrepresented in medicine, which includes blacks and Latinos. In that same period, about 18 percent to 20 percent of each graduating class at Icahn came from those groups.
The school made the change after Lynch led a group of fellow students in an effort to fight inequality at Icahn. The students collected data on how many students from underrepresented minorities were nominated to the honor society at Icahn and presented it in a series of meetings with school leadership last year.
Lynch, who is black, recalls one particularly moving meeting when they showed photographs of Icahn’s past AOA students — and black and Latino faces were conspicuously sparse.
“Where are we? We’re nowhere here,” says Lynch, remembering her reaction. “AOA is an award of student excellence. What was the argument that was being perpetuated about us if we’re not being included?”
Announced in May of this year, the decision at Icahn was a controversial one, because many students and faculty fear that not participating in the award puts Icahn students at a disadvantage when competing for slots in residency programs.
The honor society has existed since 1902 and is a sought-after line on the résumés of medical students across the country. Membership can help students secure training in competitive specialties and is a predictor of success in academic medicine.
Membership is generally open to the top 25 percent of medical students in a graduating class, as determined by their grades and scores on standardized tests, but only about 16 percent makes it in. Each medical school has its own criteria for making final selections including qualities like leadership or professionalism.
Icahn is not alone in selecting a disproportionately low number of minority students for the honor society. A 2017 study in JAMA Internal Medicine showed that nationwide, black and Asian students were less likely than their white counterparts to be selected for the honor.
Dr. Dowin Boatright, the study’s lead author and an assistant professor of emergency medicine at Yale, hypothesizes that the disparities may be related to racial inequalities in grading and standardized tests, a phenomenon well-documented in medical education literature. Grading based on clinical performance is subjective, he notes, since it often reflects a global assessment of a student rather than technical skills or performance on a test.
“You’re graded on things that are completely vulnerable to bias, like, ‘How good is this medical student?’ ” Boatright says.
Other medical schools are also considering how their AOA chapters can accurately reflect the racial makeup of their student bodies, according to Dr. Eve Higginbotham, the president of AOA board. And at the University of California, San Francisco, faculty and students are debating whether the honor society has a future there.
“Systems we use [for student evaluation] fail to take into account the extra work minorities are doing,” says Dr. Catherine Lucey, vice dean for education at UCSF. “[Minority] students have more stressors they have to deal with, low levels of racism that exist in our patients and our clinical environments.”
Lucey says that UCSF changed its selection criteria for AOA in 2016 to focus less on grades. The number of minority students selected for the honor society that year increased to match the percentage of minorities in each graduating class.
Dr. Jonathan Giftos, an internist in New York who was president of the Icahn chapter when he graduated in 2012, says disparities in the honor society are important to address because when medical education favors white students that can mean fewer minorities in leadership roles.
“It feels like a layering on of accolades that makes people who are doing well do better, have more access and power and opportunity,” Giftos says.
National AOA leadership says that diversity is a priority for the organization, but since every medical school is different, they leave the specifics of how students are chosen up to the school.
“We know that improving diversity will hopefully result in inclusion of talented individuals from different backgrounds, and that will help benefit our patient care,” says Dr. Richard Byyny, executive director of AOA. “But the schools themselves need to tackle this.”
Muller notes that Icahn has not officially closed its AOA chapter and will still nominate faculty and residents.
And student activists at Icahn aren’t celebrating yet. Lynch says she now wants to focus on discrimination in grading and medical school admissions. This, she says, can help address the dearth of minority physicians in different specialities — a problem with negative consequences for the health of minority patients.
“Many of us are still wary,” Lynch says. “It is a symbolic gesture, actually. We are interested in the deeper work.”
Government spends nearly $1 million of taxpayers’ money on cancer treatment for illegal alien who had repeatedly raped an 8-year-old child
In my opinion, this is a waste of the taxpayers’ money.
Also, there’s something very unfair about this. If this guy was a law abiding U.S. citizen, instead of an illegal alien who had repeatedly raped a child, I’m wondering if he would be getting this much health care for free.
https://www.sltrib.com/news/politics/2018/07/26/utah-county-inmate-was/
A Utah County inmate was headed to trial and possible deportation. Then came his cancer diagnosis and medical bills nearing $1M.
July 27, 2018
Gerardo Valerio-Romero was in Utah County custody, accused of repeatedly sexually abusing an 8-year-old relative, when he was diagnosed with cancer.
The day after the medical determination, the 49-year-old Mexican citizen was in LDS Hospital receiving cancer treatment, marking the start of an ongoing saga that exposed a rift between the county’s sheriff and its commission as well as medical bills that threaten to top $1 million.
Even at a discount, Valerio-Romero’s cancer treatments have drained the county jail’s medical budget. His case is set for trial early next month, and he’s caught the interest of federal immigration officials who will look at possibly deporting him if he’s acquitted. Until then, he’s in Utah’s court system, where his case is stalled and costs from his treatment continue to climb.
Spoiler:
“It’s a Catch-22,” Sheriff Jim Tracy said.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement placed a detainer on Valerio-Romero when he was arrested in March 2017, meaning ICE asked to be notified when he was convicted or acquitted on six counts of felony aggravated sexual abuse of a child. (He also faces eight felony charges related to forgery and one count of unlawful possession of another person’s identification.)
“A detainer is basically saying, ‘Hey, listen, when you’re going to be releasing him, let us know so that we can pick this guy up,’” ICE spokesman Carl Rusnok said Wednesday.
Valerio-Romero’s trial has twice been delayed, once last August at the request of prosecutors and again in December, when he asked for a new attorney and rejected a plea deal offered by the state (the details of which haven’t been disclosed).
The defendant has waived his right to a speedy trial, the court docket shows.
His next three-day trial is scheduled to begin Aug. 8. It’s unclear whether he’ll be ready to stand trial. If not, Tracy said, his medical treatment will continue to ring up costs for the county.
Valerio-Romero has pleaded not guilty to all charges against him. Court filings indicate he may have used the name Jesus Melgoza for work and cashing checks. His attorney, Clayton Simms, didn’t respond to a request for comment Wednesday.
The case was catapulted to the public spotlight early this month, when Tracy took the microphone during public comment at a County Commission meeting and announced he is quitting, partially over the inmate’s medical bills. His last day is Aug. 3.
Commissioners said at the time they were caught off guard by Tracy’s abrupt resignation. They said they believed the office could shift money around to cover immediate costs before the commission can meet next month and adjust its budget.
Commissioner Nathan Ivie was also critical of Valerio-Romero, saying he “shouldn’t even be in this country” because of a prior conviction.
Tracy said Valerio-Romero’s previous conviction wasn’t an offense for which he could be deported.
The sheriff said he was frustrated with the county’s funding of his department over the past 10 years. While he said Valerio-Romero’s case isn’t the only reason he’s quitting, he said Wednesday that things came to a head when he asked for emergency budget help from the commission.
He said commissioners will vote early next month — just after his exit — on emergency funding through year’s end.
“The solution to this problem … was adding additional money,” Tracy said. “This guy pops up with a million-dollar [problem], which we don’t even have. That’s why there was the crisis. The solution has always been from Day One you’re going to have to transfer money” to cover medical costs.
“It’s a mess,” he added. “That’s the final straw that broke the back.”
Study: E-cigarettes might help smokers quit
http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/wireStory/blowing-smoke-cigarettes-smokers-quit-48872459
Blowing smoke? E-cigarettes might help smokers quit
July 26, 2017
People who used e-cigarettes were more likely to kick the habit than those who didn’t, a new study found.
Nicotine patches, gums and medications are known to aid smoking cessation, but there’s no consensus on whether vaping devices can help anti-smoking efforts. The U.S. research is the largest look yet at electronic cigarette users and it found e-cigarettes played a role in helping people quit.
“It’s absolutely clear that e-cigarettes help smokers replace cigarettes,” said Peter Hajek, director of the health and lifestyle research unit at Queen Mary University in London, who wasn’t part of the study.
Smoking rates have been generally declining for decades. Health experts have credited taxes on tobacco products and anti-smoking ads for the drop.
E-cigarettes have been sold in the U.S. since 2007. Most devices heat a liquid nicotine solution into vapor and were promoted to smokers as a less dangerous alternative since they don’t contain all the chemicals, tar or odor of regular cigarettes.
Researchers analyzed and compared data collected by the U.S. Census from 2001 to 2015, including the number of adult e-cigarette users from the most recent survey.
About two-thirds of e-cigarette users tried to quit smoking compared to 40 percent of non-users, the study found. E-cigarette users were more likely to succeed in quitting for at least three months than non-users — 8 percent versus 5 percent.
The research was published online Wednesday in the journal, BMJ. It was funded by the National Institutes of Health.
The rate of people quitting smoking in the U.S. has remained steady at about 4.5 percent for years. It jumped to 5.6 percent in 2014-2015, representing about 350,000 fewer smokers. It was the first recorded rise in the smoking cessation rate in 15 years.
While national anti-smoking campaigns likely helped, the results show e-cigarette use also played an important role, said lead author Shu-Hong Zhu of the University of California, San Diego.
Hajek, who wasn’t part of the research, said vaping devices shouldn’t be strictly regulated, but instead be allowed to compete directly with cigarettes. “That way, smokers can get what they want without killing themselves,” he said.
Earlier this month, a House panel renewed its efforts to prevent the Food and Drug Administration from requiring retroactive safety reviews of e-cigarettes already on the market.
Others warned that the long-term side effects of e-cigarettes are unknown.
“We just don’t know if moving to e-cigarettes is good enough to reduce the harm,” said Aruni Bhatnagar, director of the American Heart Association’s Tobacco Research and Addiction Center.
Chris Bullen, who authored an accompanying editorial , said although the long-term safety of e-cigarettes is unclear, any ill effects are “likely to be rare compared with the harms of continuing to smoke.”
The latest results strongly suggest that more lenient control of e-cigarettes could improve population health, said Bullen, a professor of public health at the University of Auckland.
“If every smoker was to change over to e-cigarettes completely, there would be a dramatic and almost immediate public health benefit,” he said in an email.
