Tsunami of Death and Disability to Follow Pandemic?
Betteridge's Law of Headlines says "Any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no." According to Wikipedia's article on the Law, "Phrasing headlines as questions is a tactic employed by newspapers that do not 'have the facts required to buttress the nut graph'." So let's see if Medscape's report can support this shocking implication.
The article itself has a different header: "Post-COVID Wave Ahead of Death, Disability From Chronic Disease". But the first paragraph tells the tale:
As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, the United States will likely face a tsunami of death and disability from common chronic diseases that will affect society for decades, Robert Califf, MD, former commissioner of the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), writes in an article published today in Circulation.
Oh, bother. What chronic diseases?
Califf says the impending tsunami of chronic health conditions — with cardiometabolic diseases, including heart disease, obesity, hypertension, and type 2 diabetes at the crest — demands swift and comprehensive action.
Califf thinks an "Operation Warp Evidence" (cute, huh?) will be needed for "more real-time, in-depth tracking of chronic health conditions, akin to the rapid data dashboards that were quickly implemented and hugely successful in the tracking of COVID-19 cases, hospitalizations, and deaths." In other words, what will save us is the tracking of our fat, monitoring of our fat, and knowing who is fat. Because all the conditions in the "tsunami" come from sitting around the house and eating, adding to our personal spread while we were trying to stop the spread.
Here's my favorite part:
The authors of an accompanying commentary note that the healthcare system has risen to the challenge of three simultaneous pandemics — COVID-19, economic disruption, and social injustice — even as many inherent fragilities have been exposed.
The "social injustice" pandemic is a self-serving lie that attempts to cover up the public health profession's complicity in encouraging morons to riot and burn last year. What else did they do for that "challenge" but make excuses for the damage in human suffering and property damage? Are we all social justiced up now, thanks to the healthcare system rising to the challenge?
Clowns like these authors are as packed full of self-regard as a jar is of jam.
From a New York standpoint I can say they failed on every count, including "rapid data dashboards that were quickly implemented and hugely successful in the tracking of COVID-19 cases," because the information apparently wasn't used. If it had been, Chinese Death Virus patients would have been put on the hospital ship sent by Trump, and the field hospitals set up in Central Park and in the Javits Center, rather than stuffed into nursing homes to infect others.
All we can gather from this is that nice sinecures will be procured with our money to track how fat and sick we're all getting, so our doctors (if we bother to go) can tell us to eat "veggies" and go for walks, like they always have, while many of us will nod and go back to our freaking Carl's Jr. Super Star with Cheese. Everything becomes kabuki theater after a while, doesn't it?
To their credit, a number of doctors in the comments section took issue with various parts of the report. It makes me think that there is a growing divide between the professional yappers in government medical services and the doctors who actually work with patients. If so, that's good -- because the only thing that will bring these useless tax suckers to heel is if their fellows reject and shame them.
Bravo.
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