bcl05

https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/11/third-surge-breaking-healthcare-workers/617091/ I'm getting redeployed from my regular subspecialty clinic to the COVID front line care team. This winter is going to be rough.

Don't feel too bad for me. As bad as things are here, I work at one of (if not the) largest and finest and most well-resourced hospital in the country. We have the best experts, the best equipment, the best organization, and still we are nearing a breaking point. I can only begin to imagine what it is like at a small, under-resourced, community hospital in some of the hot-zone areas of the Dakotas and Wisconsin. It must be truly hellish.

As a doc at Mayo, and sitting on these committees, I can confirm that things are dire here. We'll get through it, but this winter is going to be brutal.

https://kroc.com/the-trump-rally-has-been-moved-from-rochester/ I'm very happy. Our local officials wouldn't back down on the mask mandate, and Trump is relocating his stupid super-spreader rally to another town. Good riddance. Still going to be a mess for our region. Local projections of case burden over the next two months jumped when they announced the rally. He's killing people.

Damnit. The idiot-in-chief just announced a super-spreader rally in my town for Friday. I expect our case numbers to go up (even more - they've been rising too fast) in the next few weeks.

It is a core feature of the modern Republican to have the ability to lie and deny obvious provable facts without shame. In fact, they often do it with indignant righteousness. She fits right in.

Because she is a lying partisan hack.

There is a proliferation of places offering the "quick" test - usually just a saliva or anterior nasal swab, with results in minutes to hours. This test is not reliable enough to use as a diagnostic approach - only 50-60% of people with active infection will have a positive result. Now, if we were using this kind of test in every person every day, that kind of sensitivity might be fine, but as a diagnostic test, it isn't good enough. The deep nasal swab (posterior nasopharynx) with PCR has a far higher sensitivity. People like it a lot less because its quite unpleasant (I've done it a few times - not painful, per se, but kind of like nails on a chalkboard at the base of your brain). The wide variability in the tests available and lack of clear guidance in when to use what test is one of many pathetic failures of the public health response to this pandemic.

Anyone who really thinks that this outcome is the best the US could have done.... I'm sorry, I just don't get it. Every other comparable country has handled this vastly better than the US. I urge everyone to read the recent editorial in the New England Journal of Medicine. It is succinct and damning. nejme2029812.pdf

This virus is still spreading and killing. We are seeing more locally than ever. It is the fault of the morons out there socializing and acting like normal without masking. I'm too tired from seeing patients die of this to argue about whether it is real or not. The stupidity of too many Americans is tragic. The anti-science anti-expert crowd has blood on their hands.

This would have saved thousands and thousands of lives. To block the simple act of saving lives is unforgivable and incomprehensible. The evil of the Trump administration never ceases to amaze me.

Lordy, there are tapes.

That's a red salamander (pseudotriton ruber). Cool.

Some of my favorite pics from this weekend. Fall migration is well underway here. Sunday was particularly good for photos - strong winds here kept the birds low at or near eye level.

I think it is likely true that all NFL owners (probably all billionaires) are dirty in some way and have some shady or immoral/ruthless business practices. I can live with that. I can't abide the kind of sexual exploitation, harassment, misogyny, and predatory behavior that Dan has obviously cultivated in his organization. I hope that this kind of garbage behavior is rare in other organizations, at least to this degree. Perhaps I'm wrong, but this feels like a real outlier for truly gross behavior. The final straw for me was Snyder's pathetic and tone-deaf response where he took responsibility, denied responsibility, attacked the reporting, and attacked the victims. I can't wait for him to be gone.

I've been a fan since the 1970's. I've missed three games over the last 20 years. I've given this team a ton. I get that there are bad actors and bad sides of nearly every company and large organization. But this team's culture is egregious and awful, and I'm just disgusted. I want be able to tell my daughter that I won't support a team that treats women that way. Some of you can separate the owner and the team, and that's super. I won't judge you. But for me, this team is currently unsupportable.

For years, I thought Snyder was an inept, incompetent, bumbling owner. I thought he wanted to win but just kept getting in his own way. Now, it is clear that he is not only incompetent, he is malevolent. The culture in this franchise is despicable, and indefensible, and his fault. I feel dirty and complicit for having cheered for his team. I love the memories I have of the good times, and I value the friendships that have grown through shared fandom, but I cannot, in good conscience, continue to support this team. I will not be cheering for them until he's gone. I can't wait for the time when I can come back to Washington Football with a clean conscience. In the meantime, I'm adopting the vikings. I live in MN and they seem likable enough. A lot of my local friends here are hard core vikes fans, so it will be fun partying with them. And I get to root for that goofball Cousins some more.

That loss would hurt so much more if we weren’t World Series champs.

Soto remains ridiculous. That pitcher's reaction the HR should live on in GIF form forever.

Excited to see Romero's stuff. EDIT, 5 minutes later: It's an inauspicious start.

This Soto kid is pretty good

That HR was so, so ridiculous. That was cartoonish.