DÉJÀ VU I: REFLECTIONS ON THE WAR 40 YEARS LATER
(Primum Non Nocere)
I remember spring of 67 – four years into the war.
The bus ride down a pristine coast a thrill
Past San Onofre’s perfect surf
To the side of a Pendleton hill
MEND Medical Education for National Defense.
Earnest warriors faking war –a recruiting tool
Remember?…For you and me– a jewel–…
A pearl: Don’t just do something
Stand there …and think: but what’s the thought?
Primum non nocere—patient or not:
We can’t fight this war without you Doc!
Which is why I just said no.
Do what you will, but Hippocrates was right;
Primum non nocere and I won’t fight!
And now 40 years later nothing has changed
Four years in … no end insight.
This despite our country’s overwhelming might.
Squandering the best of our nations soil
On reckless killing for the control of oil.
An entire country destroyed with 650,000 dead
For what? For us to slumber safe in bed?
These tyrants know the power of fear
Which they help grow year after year.
And as our politicians egregiously lie
Innocent people continue to die.
Howard P. Charman, MD 4-1-2007
PHYSICIANS FOR A SANE COVID POLICY
The Trump administrations has by all metrics abjectly failed to control the corona virus. Enumerating these specifics has been done by many observers. One of the major failures has been the negation of science, and the failure to promote well recognized mitigation methods which have been effective in other countries such as New Zealand, South Korea, Italy and China. Mark Meadows, his chief of staff to engineer a “state authority handoff” where he could use his office to badger the states to start up early and push schools to start without proper precautions. The results have been insufficient testing, insufficient PPE and about 140,000 death and close to 4,000,000 infections. Physicians, nurses, and hundreds of health care workers have sickened and too many have died.
Since we physicians have the responsibility to care for our patients without the resources which in light of the massive increase in parts of the country putting us in the impossible position of having to decide who to murder due to the lack of resources including ICU and hospital bed space.
While as physicians we would never strike, we demand the administration take the following steps to ameliorate this catastrophic situation.
- Mandatory masking, distancing.
- Massive increase in Covid testing. Including utilization of the Defense Procurement Act to massively increase the production of Covid virus (molecular) testing analyzers such as those manufactured by BD, Roche (COBAS 8800), GenMark, and Abbot analyzers so these be placed in community hospitals so that patients may be identified in the ED, and tested prior to admission and prior to surgeries so as to protect hospital staff. There should be testing such that every person admitted to a hospital is tested. In the past this was mandated for the VDRL syphilis test.
- Initiate massive contact testing. (The Chinese tested every one of the 11 million occupants of Wuhan.
- Control of the virus will be the key to a functioning economy.
- The government should actually assume authority for the infection and make certain Dr. Fauci and the world famous CDC are central to planning implementation. The response should be based on the science, not political
Consideration.
Etc:
Joe Hill said don’t mourn…organize.
Could organized physicians have an impact.
“They can’t fight this battle without physicians. We should have the ability to criticize and influence what happens….
Some thoughts for consideration.
Howard P. Charman, MD