A true Trump disciple – Our dwindling number of health-care workers – Evening statistics
The past few days have not been without some personal adventures, but I must defer the description of these until I have more leisure. However, there are a few news items of interest:
Paul Gosar is one of the few elected officials – possibly the only one – whose own siblings have urged that he be ejected from political office. Gosar has ten siblings in all; of these, six actively campaigned against him when he ran for re-election, and two of them called for him to be removed from office, stating that he is “unhinged.” His recent behavior provides some basis for their repudiation of him. He posted an animated video on Twitter that depicted him and fellow Republican Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert gunning down a character with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s face edited onto it. As a result, he has been officially censured by Congress – the 24th person to undergo this process in Congress’s entire history, a timespan of well over 200 years – and has been removed from all committees.
It is scarcely necessary to add that the vote on the censure went along strictly party lines. Gosar certainly is an inspiration to those who feel that making death threats against one’s colleagues on public media is a pleasant and interesting activity for enlivening one’s leisure. So of course his fellow-Republicans all dutifully voted in his favor and declared his behavior to be unexceptionable, while Kevin McCarthy has vowed to reinstate Gosar on his committee assignments if the Republicans regain control of the House in the 2022 elections. As a crowning triumph, Gosar has received an accolade from his idol, Donald Trump himself, who has “sniffed the exhalation of his own herd” and is rejoicing to discover an acolyte who shares his own predilection for cold-blooded thuggery.
From “The Man Who Came to Dinner,” when the nurse of Sheridan Whiteside, the play’s flamboyantly obnoxious and unmannerly title character, walks out on her role as his caretaker –
WHITESIDE: You realize, Miss Preen, that this is completely unprofessional.
MISS PREEN: I do indeed. I am not only walking out on this case, Mr. Whiteside – I am leaving the nursing profession. I became a nurse because all my life, ever since I was a little girl, I was filled with the idea of serving a suffering humanity. After one month with you, Mr. Whiteside, I am going to work in a munitions factory. From now on anything that I can do to help exterminate the human race will fill me with the greatest of pleasure. If Florence Nightingale had ever nursed you, Mr. Whiteside, she would have married Jack the Ripper instead of founding the Red Cross. Good day.
Unfortunately, the COVID pandemic has transformed many hospital patients into temperamental, capricious, loud-mouthed, and abusive Sheridan Whitesides and many professional medical workers into resentful Miss Preens, and the walkout of the latter is anything but laughable. Nearly one in five American health care workers have left the profession. Who can blame them? They have been assaulted at their work and vilified for refusing to distribute quack COVID remedies such as hydroxychloroquine. Those who swell the ranks of the departing professionals are among the most experienced and with the greatest repository of knowledge. It will take a long time to rebuild our medical system, even after the pandemic has receded.
Statistics as of 9:00 PM for 11/16/2021 – # of cases worldwide: 255,059,156; # of deaths worldwide: 5,129,267; # of cases U.S.: 48,161,377; # of deaths; U.S.: 786,268.
Statistics as of 7:00 PM for 11/17/2021 – # of cases worldwide: 255,642,388; # of deaths worldwide: 5,137,461; # of cases U.S.: 48,262,913; # of deaths; U.S.: 787,726.
Today’s statistics as of 8:00 PM – # of cases worldwide: 256,307,769; # of deaths worldwide: 5,146,198; # of cases U.S.: 48,398,455; # of deaths; U.S.: 789,155.