Vaccinations Category Archives — DC Medical Malpractice & Patient Safety Blog Published by Washington, D.C. Personal Injury Lawyers

July 6, 2020

With half of a terrible ’20 now done, can federal torpor on pandemic change?

The nation shudders into the second half of 2020, months deep into an unchecked Covid-19 pandemic that has infected 2.8 million Americans and killed roughly 130,000 of us.

America has become the coronavirus’s outbreak epicenter, its would-be travelers shunned by leading nations around the world as too risky to allow without quarantines or outright bans.

Five states set new infection records, and 40 of the 50 states report worrisome spikes in detected coronavirus cases (see New York Times graphic, above, of newly reported U.S. Covid-19 cases).

June 28, 2020

Some thoughts about Independence Day in the thrall of a pandemic

by Patrick A. Malone

The United States heads into a long weekend celebrating 244 years of its independence in the deepening thrall of a microscopic killer. And political partisans, with their failure to deal with the Covid-19 pandemic, will push further still in the days ahead to divide what has been a remarkable, diverse union of states. Unlike virtually every other advanced country on earth, the pandemic in the United States has become politicized and partisan, to the detriment of our nation.

The novel coronavirus has infected more than 2.5 million in this country, killing at least 127,000 — more individuals than the U.S. casualties in World War I or the combined deaths the nation tallied in prolonged campaigns, combined, in Vietnam, Korea, and Iraq. The disease also may be far more widespread than believed — an even more worrisome possibility, health officials warn.

Despite the unfounded and magical assertions by President Trump, the summer has offered no letup to the predicted sickness and dying.

June 12, 2020

As virus restrictions ease, MDs and hospitals urge patients to resume care

by Patrick A. Malone

Doctors, clinics, urgent care facilities, and hospitals are laboring to get out an important message tied to the Covid-19 pandemic: Patients should not delay seeking their needed medical services, especially urgent or emergency treatment, due to fears of getting infected with the novel coronavirus.

It made sense to postpone many types of medical services as states sought to reduce the virus’ wildfire spread and to prevent the U.S. medical system from potentially getting overwhelmed with Covid-19 cases, experts say.

But public health restrictions are easing, and medical practices and facilities have set up ways to minimize the possibility of coronavirus infection, such that patients may want to reconsider their highest anxiety.

June 10, 2020

Pillars of medical establishment wobbling under pandemic’s big stresses

by Patrick A. Malone

asclepliusrodof-70x300 As the Covid-19 pandemic has put huge stresses on medical systems around the globe, the strains have taken their toll: The credibility and authority — of federal agencies like the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), and elite professional journals like the Lancet and the New England Journal of Medicine — have taken big hits in recent weeks.

In times of huge uncertainty and high anxiety, the public should be able to turn to these respected pillars of the health care establishment for steady, trustworthy, and independent information and execution of crucial policies that benefit the public.

The agencies are not just a pile of letters. Their work, based in rigorous medical science and the best available evidence, is supposed to reject damaging and dangerous rumor, hunch, myth, mis- and dis-information. They help to set standards for care, especially in crises, and they are charged with safeguarding us from disease, dangerous drugs and vaccines, and in protecting the old, sick, and injured in institutional care.

June 2, 2020

With U.S. virus response, taxpayers may need to keep demanding: Who benefits?

by Patrick A. Malone

Cui bono? That query in Latin — Who benefits? — affirms for linguists that sketchy practices date to Ancient Rome and earlier. But who knew the phrase would be so applicable for U.S. taxpayers considering dubious aspects of many of the nation’s pricey Covid-19 pandemic responses. Herewith a sizable list of conflicts and coziness in the public funding of pandemic responses.

VP’s chief of staff dealing with health care issues but without giving up stocks

While Vice President Pence has headed the White House pandemic task force Marc Short, his chief of staff has served at his side. This has given him full access to the highest-level discussions about strategies and approaches that not only will affect Americans’ health care but also the fortunes of numerous Big Pharma, medical supply, and other major enterprises in the field dealing with the novel coronavirus.

May 26, 2020

Officials’ shiftiness in pandemic response fuels public confusion and concern

by Patrick A. Malone

Because Covid-19 is caused by a novel coronavirus, the world has much to learn about it and its effects. For the voting and taxpaying public, a critical line of inquiry in the days ahead may be this: Why does this disease also seem to cause such an outbreak of shiftiness among our leaders?

Let’s start at the already beleaguered federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, once considered among the globe’s best agencies in handling infectious diseases.

Sure, the medical science changes by the day about Covid-19. But why did the agency set itself up for deserved criticism by changing, “without formal announcement or explanation,” its guidance about the infectiousness of “contaminated” surfaces and how the coronavirus spreads? That had been an issue of key concern for experts, who had cautioned the public for weeks now about hygiene and care in coming in contact with such areas. Instead, CDC officials tweaked the language on the agency web site, diminishing the risks. Maybe, they thought, well, that should do it.

May 25, 2020

Human fault or act of nature in coronavirus’s deadly assault on nursing homes?

by Patrick A. Malone

Is the coronavirus’s staggering toll on patients in nursing homes something to be written off as a force of nature for which humans bear little fault? Or are there lessons to be learned about shortcomings that could help preserve lives the next time?

News media reports keep unearthing institutional misery and a blindness to the suffering of the aged, chronically ill, and seriously injured. Bad luck, shrug facility owners and operators, seemingly joined in by regulators and some politicians. Couldn’t be helped. Did the best we could.

In fact, investigations — by journalists and watchdogs — have shown the toll taken by nursing homes’ sloppy disregard for infection control, press for profits, and unacceptable paralysis as situations headed south.

May 8, 2020

Bookmark deep digs into what’s next with Covid-19 and its impact on medicine

by Patrick A. Malone

For those who may have more time on their hands due to the pandemic and who may be seeking deeper digs into Covid-19, excellent long-form coverage is abounding.

Consider, for example, taking time for the New Yorker article by Siddhartha Mukherjee, a cancer doctor, biologist, and best-selling nonfiction author who delves into the question of “What the coronavirus crisis reveals about American medicine.”

His premise includes in its painful illumination a quote from Warren Buffet, the Oracle of Omaha, whose quip assumes a different poignancy when applied to the post-pandemic state of medicine: “When the tide goes out, you discover who has been swimming naked.”

May 6, 2020

Hope and skepticism go hand-in-hand with vital measures in Covid-19 battle

by Patrick A. Malone

Optimism and realism should not be oppositional characteristics when looking hard at the slowly evolving measures to deal with the Covid-19 pandemic.

Experts always have said many ways will be needed to battle the novel coronavirus and much attention has focused on a few: effective treatments, a vaccination, as well as testing, testing, testing.

There are reasons to be skeptical and hopeful about what is going on in each area:

May 4, 2020

When the fringe drives pandemic response, it’s not funny. It’s dangerous.

by Patrick A. Malone

Even as the nation battles the Covid-19 pandemic, leaders at all levels need to protect our democracy by both allowing appropriate expression of different points of view while also ensuring that extremists do not shove themselves into the center of public policy-making about crucial health concerns.

Americans — to their great distaste — have gotten a dose of the serious consequences that can occur when fringe, counter-factual thinking infects leaders thinking (or what passes for thought). Private companies and medical experts had to rise up to push back against President Trump’s “musing” or “sarcasm” about somehow “getting into the body” bleach, disinfectant products, and powerful light sources to attack the novel coronavirus.

As the New York Times reported: