Pratt’s post for 10/15/2020

Comments

1. Sandy says

   October 16, 2020 at 6:33 pm

   This is inexcusable. Scaremongering about alarming numbers of Covid-19 hospitalizations and that Lubbock is running out of hospital beds and nurses – and coming from supposed doctors and health professionals makes it even worse. Frightening innocent people is never ethical or professional. A Covenant Health CMO told the public yesterday that this new emergency will require shutting down Lubbock and Texas again…unless people wear their masks and social distance. Now, today Abbott is sending reinforcements for Lubbock hospitals. Really?

   Not buying it and neither should Lubbock citizens. Notice that yesterday − on the very same day − suddenly 17 States were reporting the very same hospital emergencies and threatening to lock down their cities and States again.

   Anyone who knows the facts about this virus – knows that this reeks of politics not medicine. And this isn’t the first time this very same scare tactic has been tried.

   It’s awfully convenient. Just in time for an election where record numbers of people are voting in person (mostly Republicans) while record numbers of mail-in absentee ballots (mostly Democrats) are filling mailboxes.

   If they can’t scare people away from the voting booths, maybe they’ll shut down the city and the State to prevent them from voting?

   Doctors and medical professionals know that the Infection Fatality Rate of SARS-Co-V-2, according to the latest CDC data and the medical literature, is 0.015 to 0.2% across all ages, and only 0.03 to 0.04% among those under 70 years of age. That means, nearly all of us have a 99.997% to 99.5% chance of surviving. Plus, the vast majority (well over 80%) of people have very mild to no symptoms at all.

   Medical professionals also know, and all of us should too, that deaths rates have plummeted according to the CDC and the pandemic crisis ended months ago. Just last week, hospitals were still admitting that the patients they were seeing were less sick.

   Medical professionals know, and everyone else deserves to know, too, that masks and social distancing have never been shown to do diddly to prevent the spread of a virus.

   Medical professionals also know, and all of us deserve to know, too, that Lubbock and Texas rank top in the country for hospital and ICU capacity. Lubbock, with over 1,021 hospital beds, also ranks 8th in the entire nation for cities with the most ICU beds, nearly twice the national average.

   Yet, they are suddenly trying to scare us that they can’t handle the 119 patients currently in Lubbock hospitals who test positive for a virus?

   (Remember, a “case” in Texas refers to the number of lab specimens with positive tests – tests which may include huge numbers of false positives. Cases are not PEOPLE. And “patients” testing positive for Covid-19 does not mean the patients are actually sick from Covid-19.)

   I pray people wake up before it’s too late. The bigger the scare does NOT give it more credibility. Remember, our Aesop’s nursery story, “The Boy Who Cried Wolf.”

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2. Sandy says

   October 16, 2020 at 8:42 pm

   P.S. 110 hospitalized patients may sound like a lot, but it may help if we put this number into perspective. There were 110 reported in July and 117 in September, without calls of a crisis or emergency supplies being sent in from Austin.

   It is never right to scare people. Fear is not healthful or helpful. It is heartbreaking to see people, especially elderly, walking around frightened.

   Today, I saw people at the voting booths who, despite their fears, donned masks and even surgical gloves to come. They understood the importance of their vote. They weren’t letting a virus stop them. 🙂

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