President Biden kicked off his term by swiftly issuing a series of executive orders and sharing an actual plan to combat the unchecked, raging coronavirus pandemic — which he warned will get worse before it gets better and may kill as many as 600,000 Americans in grim days ahead. Biden put the federal government squarely….
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Exiting Trump officials create confusion and stoke anger on vaccination plans
President Trump’s health leaders, racing toward the exits after their boss incited an end-of-term insurrection at the Capitol, acted to sow their own destructive confusion. They left the incoming Biden Administration with new fury and frustration surrounding the efforts to get hundreds of millions vaccinated against the increasingly deadly coronavirus. This wasn’t a juvenile prank….
Continue ReadingIn nursing homes, Covid-19 deaths and infections spike, as vaccinations lag
The brutal data slip in and out of the headlines. But the terrible toll of the coronavirus on the aged, injured, and sick in institutions is increasing in unceasing and unacceptable fashion. Not long ago, HIV-AIDS activists crusaded against the public’s ignoring a lethal infection with the stark saying: Silence=Death. Is it becoming necessary to….
Continue ReadingPandemic exposes how push for profits can imperil nursing home residents
Nursing home owners and operators have pleaded “poor us” through a lethal 2020. But profit-seeking players in the industry clearly still see rapacious opportunity in long-term care facilities — with residents suffering the consequences. NPR and the Washington Post both have dug into the results when investment groups or chains acquire and operate nursing homes,….
Continue ReadingAuld Lang Syne’s melancholy? This go-around it may be a tragic, viral dirge
As the nation closes out 2020 and months of a raging coronavirus pandemic, will old acquaintances be forgot and never brought to mind? Covid-19, unchecked, has killed at least 330,000 Americans and almost 19 million of us have been infected with the disease. Those numbers likely are underestimated. Based on still tallying “excess deaths” in….
Continue ReadingHow does U.S. improve its health care if the president excuses wrongdoing?
Leave it to the extreme actions of the current White House occupant to disprove Shakespeare and the adage that the quality of mercy cannot be strained. Some of the dozens of President Trump’s latest acts of clemency, with more likely to be granted, are sending bad messages of who gets ahead in a rapacious U.S…..
Continue ReadingCoronavirus vaccinations lag behind plan as experts track contagious variant
Even as medical scientists have detected a new, potentially more contagious variant of the coronavirus that also may pose greater risks to children, the high hopes for a faultless roll-out of Covid-19 vaccines are getting tempered with unhappy doses of reality. Roughly 1 million Americans have been vaccinated already, most with a product from Pfizer….
Continue ReadingFraudsters boost senior-care nightmares with ‘audacious’ hospice scams
With coronavirus infections and deaths rising anew in worrisome fashion from coast to coast, matters could not get worse with the nation’s long-term care, right? Guess again. Profit-mongering and “audacious, widespread fraud” apparently has run amok in hospice care in the Golden State. Because California, alas, too often serves as a trend-setting locale, patients, their….
Continue ReadingCovid-19 pandemic hits a grim U.S. milestone: 100,000+ nursing home deaths
While untold Americans tried to do right by older and more vulnerable friends and family members by taking extra precautions and even canceling Thanksgiving gatherings, the nation crossed a ghastly threshold for the aged, sick, and injured in late November: The coronavirus has killed at least 100,000 residents and staff in nursing homes and other….
Continue ReadingNeglect-and-abuse deaths send nursing homes’ pandemic toll from bad to worse
The coronavirus pandemic’s terrible toll on nursing homes and other long-term care facilities may be much worse than now estimated, as resident advocates, watchdog groups, and experts tally “excess deaths” in the facilities — perhaps one additional casualty beyond any two formally attributed to Covid-19. These fatalities are unacceptable, resulting from frantic and low-paid health….
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