Biscuit is Faster Than Ever!

We suffered one of the risks of working from home this week as our wireless router literally melted down (true story). After some negotiations and a triangulation between Best Buy and Comcast, we were up running again at much faster speed. Biscuit took advantage of this to stream his favorite show Schitts Creek (he loves the veterinarian). He also was very fast when in came to submitting the dumb ideas he saw as he surfed the channels.

1) The hospital ship Comfort leaves New York Harbor. After caring for only 182 non-COVID patients the Comfort hospital ship left New York harbor. This entire deployment cost $7.5 million. Given that cost, every patient’s could have been cared for in a suite at the Plaza Hotel in New York for less.

2) COVID lawsuits. Lawsuits are springing up across the country with 250 surrounding COVID in New York City alone. In one, the nurses union is suing hospitals and the public health department over working conditions. This doesn’t seem like the best way to resolve these concerns.

3) Doctor’s intuition. Physicians first impressions on treatment of COVID were that hydroxychloroquine was a great drug and remdesivir didn’t work. NOT.

I guess that’s why we need blinded clinical trials with a control group to really determine whether a drug is effective.

4) A day at the beach! Come on Californians. You could at least try to appear to be social distancing!

5) Doctors pontificating on the value of COVID immunity. Many of these folks don’t have any background in understanding viral immunity. They tend to quote poorly controlled studies out of China, and the relevance of these findings for the US certainly aren’t clear. By the way, no immunologist ever wears scrubs, so that should be a dead give away not to listen!

6) COVID Illness modeling. Despite the aid of supercomputers, the COVID modeling we’ve seen has been all over the map. It has inaccurately predicted everything from viral spread to patient deaths. The most recent one suggests the pandemic will go on for 2 years (well, it actually it doesn’t say that but that is what was reported). This has undermined public confidence in the entire approach to managing this disease. All modeling is based on assumptions, and as they told me in the Army “when you make assumptions, you make an a** out of you and me.”

7) Large companies taking bailout money intended for small businesses and then giving it back. This continues to be an insane scenario. This week we saw the Los Angeles Lakers take a bailout and then decide to give it back due to a backlash. As I suggested last week maybe we should just not allow these companies to obtain the fund. We can help them from themselves!

8) The saddest idea this week is to keeping non-COVID patients from getting medical care. Many patients have had their medical care delayed to free up medical facilities for COVID. That need is long gone, at least here, but the governor has refused to allow non-emergent care for 2 more weeks. Even then, non “high risk” patients won’t be allowed in person visits.

My personal concern is the 4,000 patients in our practice unable to get allergy shots for 8 weeks in the middle of allergy season. They won’t die, but they are going to be incredibly uncomfortable. If doctors can’t figure out how do social distancing, who can.

A personal request! Anyone know a good online barber school. It’s been about 2 1/2 months since my last haircut….