Pandemics and Politics Continued
Claudewell S. Thomas, MD, MPH, DLFAPA, is an established psychiatrist who is currently retired ,, He received his medical degree in 1956 at SUNY Downstate College of Medicine and specializes in social psychiatry, public health psychiatry, and forensic psychiatry. Dr. Thomas was board certified by the American Board of Psychiatry... more
The dreadful statistics continue to mount. Almost 155,000 Americans are dead with close to 4.5 million indisputably infected. We are dying from Covid-19 related conditions at a rate of one per minute. The management of the outbreak cannot be at the state, county, and city levels. There has to be an overarching and overriding Federal authority THAT IS COMMITTED TO THE PRESERVATION OF LIFE IN ACCORDANCE TO ACCEPTED PUBLIC HEALTH POLICY AND PRACTICE. The world situation with the pandemic is also bad even though the United States may be the country with the worst statistics.
Here again, the problem cannot be dealt with on a country by country basis. A regional approach is somewhat better but what is needed is a world authority management perspective with authority, dedicated to public health principles and practice. In short, an arm of world government. Clearly it is not going to happen. The world economy has been disrupted as well. It is essential that people understand that in the relationship between the illness and the economy, the economy is the dependent variable. Every stop and premature restart of business, as usual, makes the pandemic accelerate and the economic crisis worse and LONGER.
Children should be returned to school only in areas where the prevalence of the pandemic is low and where social distancing,mask-wearing, health resources, parent and teacher support, and provision for the protection of familial elderly can be made. MOM aka POTUS displayed his usual brilliance in embracing a black Texan physician, originally from Nigeria, who claims a cure, and who is probably an ambulatory psychotic as legitimate.
The use of the National Defense Act to authorize Kodak to produce anti-inflammatory drugs, of which there is no shortage (with the possible exception of Remdesivir is suspect to being directly or indirectly profitable financially to MOM and family. The assault on the postal services and voting by mail is also clearly related to reelection ambition and disdain for the rule of law).
