Thoughts of a retired physician

Protest and Pandemics As the world continues to struggle with COVID-19 with its health and economic impacts, a white police officer in Minneapolis chose to kill an unarmed black man who was thought to be passing a counterfeit bill. The video of the death of George Floyd will remain indelibly etched into the minds of all for years to come. Protests against this act of overt police brutality swiftly followed, first in the Twin Cities and then across the United States and now the world. It appears that elements, either outside groups or among the protestors, have decided to make the protests bloody and fiery. At this time it is unclear who the instigators of violence are. There are signs on social media and in photos and videos of the protests that outside elements from the right-wing have decided this is an opportune time to seed further chaos in our society. It will require time and a full set of investigations, including forensic investigations of social media posts, to ascertain whe

Pacing and Podcasts As we passed Memorial Day this year, a vast unplanned experiment was unfolding in the United States and many other nations. After months of lockdown to slow the spread of COVID-19, the push to reopen society and the economy is gaining steam. Here in California, we are seeing a cautious set of strategies to do this. In some other places in the U.S., it seems a lot less cautious. Where are we going and what will happen? As part of my exercise program under lockdown, I have taken to pacing around our apartment to get my 10,000 steps daily done. I understand there is nothing magic about that number but it represents to me that I have made a reasonable effort on that day. A sort of psychological feel-good. To keep boredom at bay, and at the suggestion of several of my children, I find that listening to podcasts helps pass the time and allows me to understand more of what is happening in the world in the era of coronavirus. Two podcasts today were truly interesting. Bio

Memorial Day Today we honor those who gave their lives in service to the United States. We also honor the 100,000 Americans who have fallen to COVID-19 in the past several months. Decoration Day By Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Sleep, comrades, sleep and rest On this Field of Grounded Arms, Where foes no more molest, Nor sentry’s shot alarms! *** Ye have slept on the ground before, And started to your feet At the cannon’s sudden roar, Or the drum’s redoubling beat. *** But in this camp of Death No sound your slumber breaks; Here is no fevered breath, No wound that bleeds and aches. *** All is repose and peace, Untrampled lies the sod; The shouts of battle cease, It is the Truce of God! *** Rest, comrades, rest and sleep! The thoughts of men shall be As sentinels to keep Your rest from danger free. *** Your silent tents of green We deck with fragrant flowers Yours has the suffering been, The memory shall be ours.

Leadership One of my favorite authors is historian Jon Meacham. His essay in the New York Times Book Review of March 24th 2020 bears reading and contemplating. I was just beginning the 9th grade when the Cuban Missile Crisis occurred. It was very scary when the news presented the fact that Reading, Pennsylvania was within the range of Soviet missiles topped with nuclear warheads. I recognize now that, as Meacham writes, “President Kennedy was cool, rational, careful and willing to compromise.” And it was that approach that constituted real leadership in what many believe was a moment when the world could have easily suffered destruction from nuclear warfare. Meacham points out that Robert F. Kennedy’s memoir Thirteen Days: A Memoir of the Cuban Missile Crisis “shows us, the key point is that a president should be driven by facts, not preconceptions; by the larger good, not by pride. For pride, as the Bible taught us long ago, goeth before a fall.” While I am not a religious person

Squid Cephalopods such as the squid are often acknowledged as the most intelligent of the invertebrates. When threatened, squids have an interesting behavior: they release clouds of ink that baffle their predators and allow them to escape, much as warships have used smoke screens to escape when outnumbered or outclassed. This behavior is often used by politicians as well when they feel threatened. The release of disinformation by Donald Trump is a classic example of squid ink, meant to confuse and seed discord. With almost daily tweetstorms from his infamous Twitter account to bizarre statements in front of television cameras, he just piles disinformation atop misinformation atop gaslighting to create what Kellyanne Conway called “alternative facts”. While this is irresponsible and immoral in the best of times, it is a clear and present danger in the presence of a global pandemic that has sickened and killed and caused economic chaos worldwide. In reading his thoughts (if they may

Vaccines, Hydroxychloroquine, and Walls As have many days during this pandemic, strange things abound. A few days ago, Donald Trump announced that Moncef Slaoui would head Operation Warp Speed , the federal project to rapidly develop a vaccine for COVID-19. Slaoui, who has been the chairman of pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline’s global vaccines division and on the board of Moderna, a small biotech whose vaccine candidate was already in a Phase I trial in Washington state, made a cryptic statement regarding hopeful news on this front. Today the results of a preliminary report from that trial revealed some hopeful news ; there was no overt safety problem in trial participants and the vaccine appeared to generate antibodies to SARS-CoV-2 in the participants. On that news, Wall Street did one of its usual gyrations upward. The Dow rose today more than 900 points and the other major indices were also significantly boosted. We all like and really want good news in the midst of this pande

When You Post Disinformation I have had some interesting interactions with others on Facebook about the COVID-19 pandemic. One example was a post shared by someone from a right-wing website that alleged that wearing masks was dangerous and did not afford any protection from COVID-19. I read the post (after taking an antiemetic). It drew heavily from the work of a retired neurosurgeon who now makes a living writing books about alternative medicine and nutrition (no idea what his credentials are in those subjects), writing for conservative websites, and serving as a visiting professor at Belhaven University in Mississippi. In the post he alleges that wearing a mask makes healthy people sick because they have headaches and that masks allow SARS-CoV-2 to back up in the nasal passages and make their way to the brain via the olfactory nerves. Headaches are one of the commonest subjective complaints humans have. The scientific data implicating masks as the genesis of headaches are slim to