Goebel Speaking & Pseudoscience
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
I am continuing to speak simultaneously to the readers of FindaTopDoc and The Octogenarians hoping thereby to save lives by reaching as many as possible. Yesterday, I sent the following comment to The Octogenarians as a reply 'One doesn't have to be discursive or philosophical to know that the relationship between the virus and the economy is that of independent vs dependent variable. The virus kills and affects the economy directly. Mitigation in all forms affects the economy secondarily....'
Yesterday afternoon, we were presented with an 18-page plan for controlling the virus in such a way as to return the economy to full bore condition. The medical experts explained how immunization and testing will be used, flashing charts while the President talked about more testing than anywhere in the world, probably not knowing or caring that a mass number reflected population at risk while a meaningful number is a per capita number putting us near the bottom of a world list. The medical types flashed charts pulling them down quickly and muttering sotto voce that these projections would be trashed by an upsurge in infectivity which in turn could be the mutation of the virus but certainly would be the result of premature cancellation of mitigation.
The press asked questions which seemed designed to have the truthful medical researchers fired, and seemed not to notice their discomfiture and the reality that the President and his myrmidons were exposing Americans to uncomfortable death. In the meantime in Michigan, South Dakota, Minnesota and Florida, Trump supporters in campaign mode were streaming into public places, defying stay at home injunctions burning masks and restrictive placards interfering with ambulances and fire engines and generally courting death for themselves and the rest of us.
A real plan would assert federal leadership and assure cooperation with regional planning and would be hundreds of pages long. Presidential diversion of 15 million dollars of allocated support for WHO is not only a constitutional violation but also an excuse for Presidential delay in timely response to facts known even as late as February. It also is the abandonment of a key but not infallible informational and procedural supplier at the worst possible time.
