A friend of mine died suddenly a few days ago. I had played golf with him just two weeks earlier and he seemed fine. A couple days after we played, he went into the hospital and needed some serious surgery. A couple of days after the surgery, he died from complications. The unexpected suddenness of his death shocked his friends. He was in his early 70s. Life expectancy studies of men show we can expect to make it to between 75-78. Once we break the 70 mark, the countdown clock starts. Sudden deaths run in my family. My father died at 74 from what was likely a thoracic aortic aneurysm. He went to bed feeling fine. Less than two hours later he was dead. His father died at 50. His two brothers and a sister died in their 60s. I believe from the same condition. I know genetics and lifestyle have a much to do with how long we live. It’s when it blindsides us, that makes us stop and think about our own life.

(more…)

In the last few days, we all started hearing about Juneteenth and the Tulsa, Oklahoma massacre and burning of a prosperous black section of the city 99 years ago. They are two unrelated historical events brought together by a president who doesn’t understand history or the racial tension and reckoning that has been boiling over in the last few weeks. He only cares about himself and how he can get a crowd to cheer for him. The biggest concern and regret Trump seems to have over the pandemic and what it’s done to the world is that the lockdown was preventing him from having a political rally where thousands of white people in red hats cheer his bragging and laugh at his lame jokes and insults aimed at opponents. So as parts of the country were starting to re-open, it was his chance to get back out on the road and bask in the love and roar of the approving crowd. But leave it to Trump to plan his roadshow comeback without thinking.

(more…)

How did we get here? It seems every day we are suffering another convulsion. Many think it started at the beginning of the year from hell with the coronavirus. China’s deception. Our country’s leaders’ incompetence. Let’s not deal with it and it will go away. Suddenly we were locked in our homes, millions out of work. We were hiding behind masks to protect ourselves from a killer we couldn’t see, but feared it could be hidden in a friends’ or strangers’ breath. We were floundering and afraid. How could this happen? We thought we were the greatest country in the world. We have the best health care system in the world. But years of bad decisions about what’s important caught up with us. It was like going to war and realizing we didn’t have enough guns, ammunition, and helmets. Then it got worse. The disease we’ve been trying to fight for 400 years and couldn’t cure exploded from below the surface of society where it has always haunted us.

(more…)

The unofficial start of summer in the age of coronavirus is upon us with the Memorial Day weekend coming up. The old Gershwin song told us, “Summertime, And the livin’ is easy”. Well, not so fast. Yes, all 50 states are starting to re-open, some quicker than others. The Jersey shore beaches and boardwalks will be open with social distancing, of course. But no amusement rides yet. Good news in Pennsylvania, you can now order a cocktail with your curbside pick up order from your favorite restaurant. You can enjoy your Cosmo is a Styraform cup. There are still demonstrations and even arrests at small businesses like gyms whose owners are desperate to survive and are defying orders to stay closed. Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer thought she had her hands full with armed protestors showing at the capital demanding she open the state back up. Now she’s dealing with catastrophic flooding in Midland after two dams broke sending nine feet of water into a small city of just over 40,000.

(more…)

We thought Trump had set the bar for how not to handle a national and global crisis. The mistakes, the lies, the blaming, the self congratulations, the dangerous cures, the denial of reality have all been very obvious. We have seen responsible leadership from governors like Cuomo of New York, Wolf of Pennsylvania, Murphy of New Jersey, Hogan of Maryland and Newsom of California who have been guided by health professions and facts on the ground in dealing with the coronavirus pandemic. They all realize the economic crisis has to be weighed against people dying and hospitals collapsing under the pressure of relentless death coming through the doors. But if you look out around the country, the leadership in some states will scare you almost as much as the virus.

(more…)

Just when we thought it couldn’t get worse. I know we are all trying to be hopeful and positive and pull together to get through the coronavirus pandemic. We have seen the bravery of our health care workers and first responders and the leadership of some of our governors. But the colossal failure of presidential and federal leadership will change the country and our place in the world for years. The greatest country in history has been brought to its knees and is struggling to get back up and fight. We can’t figure out how to get people tested because we don’t have enough things like cotton swabs. We can’t get unemployment checks to the millions of people forced out of work. We are sending millions of dollars to businesses that shouldn’t be getting that money that should be going to small businesses that are desperate to survive. We have politicians overruling public health officials warning about the dangers of opening up the economy too soon and causing more sickness and death.

(more…)

Many of us know of Anne Frank. The Jewish teenager who wrote the famous diary while hiding with her family from the Nazis in secret attic rooms in the Netherlands for two years. The Frank family had fled Germany to get away from the Nazis when Anne was young. When the Nazis overran the Netherlands in 1940, they started rounding up and departing Jews to concentration camps. In 1942, Otto Frank, Anne’s father, decided to hide the family in some attic rooms of a building he owned where some of his employees lived. With their help, the family lived for two years before being discovered and deported to concentration camps. Anne and her sisters ended up in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp where it’s believed she probably died of typhus in February or March of 1945. Otto Frank was the only member of his family to survive. He returned to Netherlands and found that his secretary Miep Gies had saved Anne’s diary. He had it published in 1947 as “The Diary of a Young Girl.” It’s been translated into 70 languages.

(more…)

We all got through our virtual Passover and Easter celebrations to wake up today to a miserable day of rain, wind and tornado watches. We’re about halfway through April and have a couple of more weeks until Trump hopes we can start opening parts of the country and the get the economy moving again. He’s even appointed a new task force to work on this, in addition to the task force headed by Vice President Pence, and whatever  operation his son-in-law Jared is running. Trump is getting pushback from the medical community to be very careful about rushing back to normal when the wrong move could crush the health care system even more, mean thousands more deaths and inflict more damage to the economy. Trump says it will be the biggest decision of his life. That should make us all feel confident.

(more…)

The incident involving the USS Theodore Roosevelt one of the navy’s 11 aircraft carriers can be seen as a microcosm of the mishandling of the coronavirus by the federal government.  According to the Washington Post, the well respected  Captain Brett Crozier wrote a blast email to 20 or 30 naval aviators warning them about an outbreak of coronavirus on his ship. The report says Crozier may have even worried that his supervisor Read Admiral Stuart Baker would not have allowed him to send a warning letter to Navy leaders. Baker confirmed to Acting Navy Secretary Thomas Modly that he would not have allowed Crozier to send such a letter to naval officials. Of course, the letter got leaked to the San Francisco Chronicle. Now, it gets worse.

(more…)

A new day means new rules. Today the White House announced that CDC is recommending that people living in areas hard hit by the community spread of the coronavirus wear masks or some kind of face covering when interacting with people. Previously, the CDC recommended only the sick and people with other health issues wear masks in public. Now some new information suggests you don’t have to cough or sneeze to spread the virus, just speaking to someone within six feet can spread the virus. So, either shut up or get that mask on, and not the real good ones that medical workers so desperately need. You can use a bandanna, scarf, Halloween mask, ski mask, home made medical type mask, or turtleneck pulled up over your nose. Until recently, walking into a business with a mask on meant you wanted to take things and you didn’t want to pay for them. Now, if you walk into a business without a mask, you may be chased out.

(more…)