COVID-19 has turned the world on its head. A major problem we have faced since the beginning is that it had already been spreading like wildfire for a few months since the end of 2019 — before most of the world realized that it was time to take action against this respiratory virus. We’ve therefore been on the back foot from the very start.
Some researchers suspect chronic cases allow the virus to replicate over long periods of time and that certain new therapies may encourage it to mutate.
As cases exploded across the country, I watched with horror as I saw people go on with their daily lives as if hundreds of thousands of people were not dying, as if millions were not infected, as if our health care system was not collapsing. I watched our country – a country I once believed in – fail miserably in taking care of its own people.
Though most people who protect themselves with a coronavirus vaccine will never develop serious side effects, such rare cases are barred from federal court and instead steered to an obscure program with a record of seldom paying claims.
The plane had begun its descent into Boston. Inside the cockpit, the captain was slumped in his seat. Sitting beside him, copilot Eric Tellmann was starting to pass out.
The most common question I am asked when someone finds out I managed my own real estate while I was a full-time general surgeon is: “How could you possibly have time to manage your rental real estate while being a full-time general surgeon? General surgery is a full-time job. It’s not possible to fit a second full-time job into your schedule.”
While over 300,000 Americans and counting have died from COVID-19 since the beginning of the pandemic, another public-health disaster is taking more lives than ever before: drug overdoses.
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