Free Republic

The things a mother will go through for her child. A woman named Melissa Sotomayor was shocked at how United Airlines treated her disabled son on a recent flight home from Tampa, Florida to New Jersey. Sotomayor took to TikTok — in a now viral video with over 1 million views — to share her very sad experience. She began the video explaining her son’s condition: “My son is dependent upon a trach, short for tracheostomy, and ventilator. He has vision and hearing problems.” The mother went on to explain that in order to fly safely, she made sure to...

Ailing Pope Francis’ health deteriorates as he has suffered a worrying breathing crisis, Vatican sources reveal. In his 13th day in the hospital, the pontiff suffered a bout of bronchospasm, with caused him to breath vomit, among other complications. The Sun reported: “Vatican insiders detailed the alarming episode, stating: ‘This afternoon, after a morning spent alternating respiratory physiotherapy with prayer in the chapel, the Holy Father presented an isolated attack of bronchospasm which, however, led to an episode of vomiting with inhalation and a sudden worsening of his respiratory condition’.

Rep. Donald Payne Jr. (D-N.J.) has passed away from complications after suffering a heart attack on April 6. Payne never regained consciousness after the cardiac arrest and was kept alive on a ventilator in the intensive care unit at Newark Beth Israel Medical Center. He was 65 years old. "Tammy and I are deeply saddened by the tragic passing of our friend, and a steadfast champion for the people of New Jersey, Congressman Donald Payne, Jr.," wrote New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy in a statement released just after noon ET on Wednesday. Payne's office originally attempted to depict the heart...

Less is also better—that is what researchers have found while conducting a tri-nation clinical trial to see if shorter courses of antibiotics are as effective as longer prescriptions of the drug to treat ventilator-associated pneumonia. The four-year long study involved 460 patients. While personalized short-course treatment duration for patients with ventilator-associated pneumonia (VAP) was just as effective in comparison to the standard treatment duration, the short-course treatment strategy also successfully reduced antibiotic side effects from 38% to 8%. VAP is a common lung infection among critically ill patients who are dependent on ventilators to breathe. The infection risk of death...

At the height of the COVID-19 fear porn propaganda campaign in 2021, we were bombarded with “news” of several prominent anti-mask and anti-COVID-19 vaccine conservative media personalities who died after contracting COVID-19. The “experts” assured us that these deaths were absolutely caused by COVID-19. Any other theory or narrative from qualified medical professionals was heresy, and anyone who advanced such a position risked banishment from social media, firing, and possible loss of his or her medical license. Then, last May, a study was published that indicated that many, if not the majority, of COVID-19 patients who were hospitalized, placed on...

Republished with permission from Michael P Senger attorney and author of Snake Oil: How Xi Jinping Shut Down the World. To date, we still don’t have especially good studies on the actual causes of excess deaths by state and country when the world first went into lockdown in spring 2020. For political reasons, these deaths were all generally been lumped together as “Covid deaths,” but this coding was appallingly sloppy. According to the World Health Organization’s initial coding guidance, if a decedent had either tested positive—using a PCR test later confirmed by the New York Times to have a false...

A nurse who spent 28 days in a Covid coma fighting for her life has been saved after medics gave her Viagra. Mother-of-two Monica Almeida, 37, from Gainsborough, Lincolnshire, was just three days away from having her ventilator turned off. Mrs Almeida was given the erectile dysfunction drug by her colleagues at Lincoln County Hospital. The ‘miracle’ drug caused her condition to improve in just a week and the level of oxygen she needed to drop by half as it opened up her airwaves. 'I had a little joke with the consultant after I came round because I knew him....

Attorney Lin Wood announced on Friday that podcaster Doug Kuzma, a supporter of former President Donald Trump known for his anti-vaccine stance, is in the hospital due to COVID after attending a QAnon-friendly conference in Texas earlier this month. Wood wrote in a Telegram post that he received a call for help from Kuzma's administrator, who said the Frog News Network host had been suffering from the disease and his lungs were not responding to treatment. According to Telegram posts by Frog News Network on Saturday, Kuzma was placed on a ventilator early Christmas morning and was unconscious and unable...

When news hit that former Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain died of COVID-19 a month after he attended then-President Donald Trump's rally in Tulsa last summer, many of the president's campaign staffers blamed themselves for his death, according to a new book. "We killed Herman Cain," one senior Trump staffer reportedly told ABC News reporter Will Steakin, who also attended the Tulsa event on June 20, 2020. That's according to an excerpt of ABC News' chief Washington correspondent Jonathan Karl's forthcoming book, "Betrayal: The Final Act of the Trump Show," published in Vanity Fair on Thursday. The book is slated...

Durst, 78, was sentenced to life in prison without parole Thursday for murdering his close friend, Susan Berman, inside her Benedict Canyon home in 2000. Durst has been held in a wing of USC Medical Center under the watch of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department throughout the trial, but it was not immediately clear if he was still in that facility or when or where he became infected with the coronavirus. The 78-year-old spent the majority of the trial seated in a wheelchair. In court filings, Durst’s attorneys repeatedly sought a mistrial, claiming Durst was too sick to testify...

A fully vaccinated Florida father has died from COVID-19 despite having no underlying conditions, according to his family. Vincent Konidare, 58, of Palm Beach, Florida, passed way on September 19 after spending a month in the hospital battling the disease. This in spite of the fact that Konidare had received the one-dose Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine in March.

I've been curious about this for a long time so I thought I would ask the smartest people I know. Last year my sister passed away from Cardiac Arrest due to pneumonia caused by being on the ventilator. I never had any experience with anything like this before and aside from the grief and Trauma I gained a lot of awareness I was ignorant to previously. Since covid started I have noticed a pattern that it really seems like a death sentence once you get on the ventilator for this disease. It occurred to me that a tracheostomy would be...

On April 27, 2020, the Portland Press-Herald reported, "Rye [New Hampshire] police are advising surfers to catch a wave elsewhere or face the prospective of a fine. "Rye Police Chief Kevin Walsh said his officers are weary of chasing off surfers in groups as large as 10 who are ignoring beach closures. "Many are parking in church lots and on private property, so Walsh is seeking permission from these property owners to ticket and tow the vehicles. Police may also start issuing tickets to surfers for trespassing on the beach." Chief Walsh's efforts were in vain. Guarding 19 miles of...

A Texas man who had organized a “Freedom Rally” in protest of COVID-19 restrictions is now on a ventilator after becoming infected with COVID, according to his pregnant wife. ...The San Angelo Standard-Times had reported that Caleb had been hospitalized with COVID for more than a month, with Wallace telling the paper that her husband initially refused to get tested for the virus and tried his own vitamin regimen to treat himself rather than seeing a doctor. Most days his wife said that she and her three daughters FaceTime him in the hospital with the help of a nurse, though...

A 28-year-old man in Alabama who believed COVID-19 was a “hoax” has died from the virus — and now his family is urging people to get the vaccine. Curt Carpenter lost his battle with the bug after spending 51 days in the intensive care unit at Grandview Medical Center in Birmingham, the Montgomery Advertiser reported. “I know that if Curt had survived, he would have made sure everyone knew how serious this disease is, and how important the vaccine is,” his mom, Christy Carpenter, told the newspaper. Christy said her son did not take the threat of the pandemic seriously...

A California man who mocked COVID-19 vaccines has died after becoming infected with the virus. Stephen Harmon, 34, died on Wednesday at Corona Regional Medical Center, about an hour east of Los Angeles. Prior to his hospitalization, Harmon shared a series of jokes on social media about vaccines. “I got 99 problems but a vax ain’t one,” he wrote in June on Twitter.

A man who joked about not getting vaccinated died of the coronavirus a little more than a month later. Stephen Harmon's death was announced by the Hillsong Church founder Brian Houston on Twitter on Thursday. Houston wrote on Instagram that Harmon was in his early 30s, a graduate of Hillsong College, and a "vital part of our church in California." "He was one of the most generous people I know and he had so much in front of him," Houston wrote.

I took my nephew, Devon, to the hospital Sunday night, and we found that he has a serious case of Covid lung (Dr's words). He had been resting as comfortably as can be expected. Alert, responsive and aware of what was happening. He was using a BIPAP machine with a full face mask, and doing better. Until this morning. He apparently was struggling to breath more, so the Dr intubated him, and he is now has a ventilator breathing for him. I am praying that this will oxygenate his body sufficiently while it fights off the infection. Does anyone know...

A Missouri hospital ran out of ventilators over the Fourth of July weekend amid a surge in COVID-19 hospitalizations potentially caused by the spreading Delta variant. Coronavirus hospital patients in Springfield — a city of over 160,000 people — jumped about 27 percent over the holiday weekend as the area grapples with low immunization rates. The city’s two hospitals — CoxHealth and Mercy Springfield — were treating 213 COVID-19 patients as of Monday, up from 168 on Friday. Back on May 24, the two hospitals were treating just 31 coronavirus patients.

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Moscow has begun investigating the safety of a Russian-made medical ventilator, some of which have been sent to the United States, after six people died in hospital fires reported to involve two such machines.