Magazine Posts

A cry, forlorn, into the night,
Created when observing a bad sight.
Where goes this Nation's moral soul,
When all we hear is more hyperbole.

"Trump says he wants to protect law-abiding citizens. In 1933, Hitler issued his ‘Decree of the Reich President for the Protection of People and State’ "............Read More

For a generation, Republicans have tried to unravel the activist government under which Americans have lived since the 1930s, when Democrat Franklin Delano Roosevelt created a government that regulated business, provided a basic social safety net, and invested in infrastructure. From the beginning, that government was enormously popular. Both Republicans and Democrats believed that the principle behind it—that the country worked best when government protected and defended ordinary Americans—was permanent..........Read More

Some kind of stupid,
if you still say,
things are better now
in the U S of A.
So many lives lost.
So much to do.
Now you say,
your working on
a strategy too.
It's been almost
one half a year
and the only thing
is you, I fear.
What kind of person?
What kind of man?
Are you saying now,
you have a plan?

Viewed in isolation or presented without context, coronavirus numbers don’t always give an accurate picture of how the pandemic is being handled..........Read More

The question of whether these arrests are appropriate has a clear answer—at least in a nation that purports to live under the rule of law.......Read More 

Just as the number of people hospitalized for COVID-19 approaches new highs in some parts of the country, hospital data in Kansas and Missouri is suddenly incomplete or missing.

The Missouri Hospital Association reports that it no longer has access to the data it uses to guide state coronavirus mitigation efforts, and Kansas officials say their hospital data may be delayed.

The Trump administration this week directed hospitals to change how they report data to the federal government and how that data will be made available.

In an email, Missouri Hospital Association spokesperson Dave Dillon called the move “a major disruption.”

“All evidence suggests that Missouri’s numbers are headed in the wrong direction,” Dillon said. “And, for now, we will have very limited situational awareness. That’s all very bad news.”

The absence of the data will make it harder for health and public officials, as well as the general public, to understand how the virus is spreading.

“It’s hugely problematic,” said Dr. Karen Maddox, a public health researcher at Washington University in St. Louis. “The only way that we know where things are going up and where things are going down and where we need to be putting resources and where we need to be planning is because of those data.”

The White House instructed hospitals to report data to the Department of Health and Human Services through a new system created by a Pennsylvania-based company, TeleTracking, instead of to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The directive came as a surprise to hospitals, according to Kansas Hospital Association spokesperson Cindy Samuelson.

“From our perspective, these changes are big,” Samuelson said. “We only found out Tuesday, and we had to update the data by Wednesday night — so, less than 48 hours.”

The Missouri Hospital Association currently does not have access to the new HHS system, according to Dillon. He said the new system is also significantly different from the CDC system.

“The new datasets for reporting are not identical and in several cases are ill-defined,” Dillon said. “That has complicated hospitals’ efforts.”

In the wake of the announcement, the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services posted a notice on its website this week that the daily and weekly updates on hospitals, including the numbers of people hospitalized and the availability of standard hospital beds, ICU beds and ventilators, would be temporarily halted.

“Missouri Hospital Association (MHA) and the State of Missouri will be unable to access critical hospitalization data during the transition. While we are working to collect interim data, situational awareness will be limited,” the notice on the department’s website says.

Dillon said the hospital association hopes to have “within a few days or weeks” hospital and coronavirus data that had been available through the CDC.

“However, in the short term, we’ll be very much in the dark,” Dillon said.

The hospital association will create an alternative reporting system for hospitals, according to Dillon, and plans to continue producing weekly reports, despite the uncertainty about data.

The Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services did not respond to inquiries regarding the data.

Kansas health officials are still able to access hospital and coronavirus data through the CDC and TeleTracking, according to Kansas Department of Health and Environment spokesperson Kristi Zears.

However, Kansas Hospital Association spokesperson Samuelson said the Kansas hospital data may be delayed if it is incomplete.

“If we’re not able to get a bulk of our members converted and uploading, I’m not sure we want to show it because then it will look like things have gotten a lot better,” Samuelson said.

The most recent data shows that as of July 12, 875 Missourians were hospitalized with COVID-19, among the highest reported numbers since an early May peak of 984. Kansas’ most recent data shows 1,393 people have been hospitalized with the disease.

The Trump administration said the reporting change was needed due to reporting delays and other problems with the CDC.

But the move has been widely criticized for being disruptive, especially as COVID-19 infection numbers reach new highs and hospitals in some areas of the country are reaching capacity.

“By now, we should have a foolproof, streamlined reporting system for COVID,” Maddox said. “And this change — midstream — is not going to do anything to help our ability to fight the disease.”

This story is part of a partnership that includes KCUR, NPR and Kaiser Health News.

Kaiser Health News (KHN) is a national health policy news service. It is an editorially independent program of the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation which is not affiliated with Kaiser Permanente.

Remembering a rare hero who enlarged the human heart for epochs to come...............  Read More

The secretive titan behind one of America’s largest poultry companies, who is also one of the President’s top donors, is ruthlessly leveraging the coronavirus crisis—and his vast fortune—to strip workers of protections......Click to reade Mayer

Go away from here,
go away now.
Who do you think your are?
Will we have to bow?
You "pocket sized" ruler,
with your red tie too long.
Try being truthful
just once in your life.

The good old days are now gone.
The lives lost in this virus run,
Be they daughter, husband, wife or son.
A much too early return to work
Or the open a business, to crowds,
Was poor judgement, if it was used.
It now appears the citizens were confused,
As our leader, said it will be gone
In mid April, when it is warm.
Wrong again, with your guessing game,
As you violate any sense of reason.
Not wearing a mask. It is your claim
The petulant child you; are to blame.
May Karma grab you by your shirt
And plant your face into the dirt.

I pray to the heavens.
I utter no sound,
For my prayer in
Words, cannot be found.
I pray for the souls
Of those struck down,
By the virus, Pro-vid 19;
One of the words pandemic
The World has ever seen.
What do we do?
Where do we stand
When it has been months
And there still is no Plan.
No plan from the current regime,
Who doesn't care one little ounce,
But looks only at the Stock market bounce.
A terrible choice, at least to me
As the decisions made, lives in infamy.