Posted on 05/20/2020 5:12:08 PM PDT by grundle
More than 600 doctors signed a letter saying the shutdown is killing more people than it is saving. Here’s the full text:
President Donald J. Trump
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Ave, NW
Washington, D.C. 20500
May 19, 2020
Dear Mr. President:
Thousands of physicians in all specialties and from all States would like to express our gratitude for your leadership. We write to you today to express our alarm over the exponentially growing negative health consequences of the national shutdown.
In medical terms, the shutdown was a mass casualty incident.
During a mass casualty incident, victims are immediately triaged to black, red, yellow, or green. The first group, triage level black, includes those who require too many resources to save during a mass crisis. The red group has severe injuries that are survivable with treatment, the yellow group has serious injuries that are not immediately life threatening, and the green group has minor injuries.
The red group receives highest priority. The next priority is to ensure that the other two groups do not deteriorate a level. Decades of research have shown that by strictly following this algorithm, we save the maximum number of lives.
Millions of Americans are already at triage level red. These include 150,000 Americans per month who would have had a new cancer detected through routine screening that hasn’t happened, millions who have missed routine dental care to fix problems strongly linked to heart disease/death, and preventable cases of stroke, heart attack, and child abuse. Suicide hotline phone calls have increased 600%.
Tens of millions are at triage level yellow. Liquor sales have increased 300-600%, cigarettes sales have increased, rent has gone unpaid, family relationships have become frayed, and millions of well-child check-ups have been missed.
Hundreds of millions are at triage level green. These are people who currently are solvent, but at risk should economic conditions worsen. Poverty and financial uncertainty is closely linked to poor health.
A continued shutdown means hundreds of millions of Americans will downgrade a level. The following are real examples from our practices.
Patient E.S. is a mother with two children whose office job was reduced to part-time and whose husband was furloughed. The father is drinking more, the mother is depressed and not managing her diabetes well, and the children are barely doing any schoolwork.
Patient A.F. has chronic but previously stable health conditions. Her elective hip replacement was delayed, which caused her to become nearly sedentary, resulting in a pulmonary embolism in April.
Patient R.T. is an elderly nursing home patient, who had a small stroke in early March but was expected to make a nearly complete recovery. Since the shutdown, he has had no physical or speech therapy, and no visitors. He has lost weight, and is deteriorating rather than making progress.
Patient S.O. is a college freshman who cannot return to normal life, school, and friendships. He risks depression, alcohol abuse, drug abuse, trauma, and future financial uncertainty.
We are alarmed at what appears to be the lack of consideration for the future health of our patients. The downstream health effects of deteriorating a level are being massively under-estimated and under-reported. This is an order of magnitude error.
It is impossible to overstate the short, medium, and long-term harm to people’s health with a continued shutdown. Losing a job is one of life’s most stressful events, and the effect on a person’s health is not lessened because it also has happened to 30 million other people. Keeping schools and universities closed is incalculably detrimental for children, teenagers, and young adults for decades to come.
The millions of casualties of a continued shutdown will be hiding in plain sight, but they will be called alcoholism, homelessness, suicide, heart attack, stroke, or kidney failure. In youths it will be called financial instability, unemployment, despair, drug addiction, unplanned pregnancies, poverty, and abuse.
Because the harm is diffuse, there are those who hold that it does not exist. We, the undersigned, know otherwise.
Please let us know if we may be of assistance.
Respectfully,
Gonna make a lot of Freepers mad.
If I just hastily missed it, I apologize but I clicked through three layers, got to the Scribd document and then gave up.
Doctors and other medical professionals needed to have demonstrations two weeks ago at state capitols across the nation, on the same day.
If you click on the red “Signed” by 600 Dr’s the text of the letter is there. Scroll to the bottom of the letter to see the names.
Including jobs and businesses. Drudge had reported that over 100,000 businesses won’t come back when the economy finally opens up. Pier 1 imports is shutting down permanently.
I saw the names. But there’s no representative and no contact information. Not even a city and state for not even one of them.
I and my wife own an antique shop that is free and clear. This corona virus thing has hurt us. However, she as a retired computer engineer, and myself as a retired pharmacist with both of with multiple income streams will be very much okay.
Friends of mine on Main Street Salado, Texas facing reduced sales and rent will probably go out of business.
Maybe they don’t want their licenses easily pulled????
There’s a town near us that’s totally dependent on tourists. Right now it’s a ghost town because even though the El Duce governor of WA has opened up some places the city council decided to keep the lock down. When things open up here, the town I don’t think will come back.
I forgot to add this.
I have absolutely no problem with free enterprise and having success or failure. Success and failure are both good in free enterprise. The customer wins, the entrepreneur of wisdom makes money. The other does not. The customer wins.
When government decides who wins or loses it is the first step to tyranny. Our great nation has already taken two steps.
ps
I have lived in many nations some free some moderately free and others under despots. Based on my past knowledge we are not free. We are only moderately free. Those words should scare the hell out of you. If they do not you are ignorant.
Even more oddly I did live in a nation controlled by an absolute ruler. He was a despot but a good despot. He died a few months ago. Today we do not know what the hell is the replacement. We know a name but do not know what the hell he will be. OMAN
Sultan Quaboos did love his nation. He was a benevolent despot. He was a good man and loved his nation. He was educated in England and a graduate of Sandhurst which is like our West Point. He knew full well our concepts of democracy would not work in his nation.
He should be admired.
These 600 doctors are a little melodramatic.
how would the president ever be able to get in contact with anyone on that list? hmmmm.
no resources on hand, no white page directory, no facebook... oh well... must be fake
What I did say, and mean, is that it's limited in its value as a tool. Entries like (I'm making this up):
Dr. Paul Morgan Jones
Mayo Clinic
Rochester MN
Dr. Cynthia Adams Smith
Massachusetts General Hospital
Boston MA
Dr. Irwan Irshan
Johns Hopkins Hospital
Dept. of Infectious Disease
Baltimore, MD
...would lake it impressive and complete and much more usable.
As listed, it looks like there's something missing.
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