Schedule Labs, Procedures NOW

Our health care heroes who worked through the pandemic are now getting fired if they won't take one of the experimental COVID vaccines. It started with a few major hospitals, but others are now following the institutional imperative.

Hospitals are already short-staffed and this policy can only make it worse. Just last week, ten hospitals in Indianapolis were on diversion, meaning they were too full to accept new patients. One ambulance driver had to take a patient eighty miles away. The article linked to says it's not because of COVID or a lack of beds, but a shortage of nurses.

Indy hospitals aren't alone. Lots of nurses nationwide retired during the pandemic, there's a backlog of patients who put off care, and now some nurses are leaving over vaccine mandates. Even companies that have nothing to do with health care and whose jobs don't put employees at any elevated risk for catching COVID have jumped on the bandwagon.

So far, I haven't seen any labs issue mandates, but scheduling an appointment now for any needed lab work might prevent a long delay. Likewise, any medical procedures.

Photo from Pexels.

What can you do if you're already waiting for a procedure--or if you're a medical professional looking for a job without a jab? You can look at independent surgery centers here at the Free Market Medical Association. I don't know for certain that members of this organization don't require employee vaccination, but their libertarian spirit suggests they don't. (I don't have any connection to them or any of their members.) Their procedures are a fraction of what hospitals charge since they don't deal with Medicare or insurance companies. If you're uninsured or have a high deductible, they might save you a lot of money. If you're waiting on medical care in Canada, they might save your life.

Will hospitals reinstate employees if patients start piling up and employees are even more overworked? I'm not so sure. Hospitals are businesses, even the so-called nonprofit ones. Having enough medical professionals available seems like more of a life-saving strategy than a marginally helpful vaccine. So does having more and cheaper medical care available, even if it's through a competitor. Yet competing hospitals tried repeatedly to get their government cronies to shut down the Oklahoma Surgery Center, then changed their fee structure to try to put them out of business. Hospitals prevent other medical centers from opening through CON (certificate of need) laws. Hospitals perform a lot of unnecessary heart procedures by scaring people (sound familiar?), according to Dr. Davis, who used to be a cardiologist at a hospital. Did these hospitals get a check from Pfizer for these mandates? Do they just need to save money due to a lack of revenue last year, and don't want to pay unemployment or look like the bad guy? These reasons seem more likely.

Comments

An Objective Book about Other Childhood Vaccines

Today's decision by the CDC to add COVID shots to the schedule of childhood vaccines has some people concerned about the rest of the vaccines on the schedule. Contrary to fact-checker claims, adding COVID shots to the schedule means children will be required in about a dozen states to get a COVID shot to attend public school. Indiana isn't one of them--our childhood vaccination law doesn't mention the CDC and such a requirement could run afoul of our ban on COVID vaccine passports. But even freewheeling Indiana has some vaccine requirements and this kerfuffle has people wondering how safe those vaccines are. There's a book called Vaccines: Truth, Lies and Controversy by Peter C. Gotzsche, DrMedSci and co-founder of the Cochrane Collaboration, about the safety and efficacy of all those vaccines, including COVID and others. Cochrane was founded to "to organise medical research findings to facilitate evidence-based choices about health interventions involving healt

Battered Cod and my Eclipse Pictures of my Colander

If you miss battered cod on a low-carb, grain-free diet, here's a recipe that'll satisfy your craving. It's based on a Dr. Davis recipe. Battered cod and cole slaw Ingredients 1 pound cod fillets 2 eggs 2 tablespoons butter, melted 1/2 cup ground golden flaxseeds 1/2 cup grated cheddar cheese 1/2 teaspoon onion powder 1/2 teaspoon salt 1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper 1 teaspoon garlic powder Instructions Preheat the oven to 375°F. Line a rimmed baking sheet with parchment paper. Slice the cod into 1-1/2 to 2 inch pieces. In a small bowl, whisk the eggs and butter. Beat continuously--don't let the butter cook the eggs. In a shallow bowl, combine the flaxseeds, cheese, onion powder, garlic powder, salt, and pepper. Coat each piece of cod in the egg mixture and then roll in the in the flaxseed mixture. Place on the baking pan. Bake for 20 minutes, turning once. Eclipse Crescent Shadows Today was the total solar eclipse, and my house was in the "path of totality."

Eclipse Glasses, Probiotics for Heart, Muscle Recovery

Are your eclipse glasses fake? The total solar eclipse over North America is almost here, and Indianapolis is in the "path of totality," meaning the moon will completely block the sun here. A lot of people have gotten special glasses to safely look at the eclipse. But the American Astronomical Society says , "counterfeit and fake eclipse glasses are polluting the marketplace." Some of the counterfeit glasses appear to be safe, the society says, but others are fakes that are no more effective than sunglasses. One of the counterfeits they describe matches the glasses someone gave me. I don't know where she got them, and she's not someone I'd trust to perform adequate due diligence. I just got over an eye injury and I don't need another one--I'll try the pinhole method instead to see crescents during the eclipse if it's not too cloudy. Picture from Pexels . Heart Centered Probiotic I started getting scary heart palpitations several years ago

Diabetes Down, COVID Curiosities, New Glasses after Accident

Diabetes Down Despite Dietitians' Directions Last Sunday when I wrote about the grifters over at EatThis.com, which calls itself "Eat This, Not That," I was worked up enough to tweet to their medical expert board members if they stood by the site's article flogging sugary drinks and fast food for St. Patrick's Day. The site has over 1,300 articles, mostly puff pieces, on McDonald's and a news feed full of "the most important breaking news" on Doritos, burger joints and Chips Ahoy! I asked a dietitian who responded to me what exactly the "not that" part was in "Eat This, Not That." Important news about what you should eat! I was worked up until I remembered the saying, "You can't cheat an honest man." Meaning that this con, like a lot of others, requires some dishonesty on the part of the mark. Every Joe Six-Pack knows that cookies, chips and coffee-flavored milkshakes from Starbucks aren't health food. It takes s

Blog Lineup Change

Bye-bye, Fathead. I've enjoyed the blog, but can't endorse the high-fat, high-carb Perfect Health Diet that somehow makes so much sense to some otherwise bright people. An astrophysicist makes some rookie mistakes on a LC diet, misdiagnoses them, makes up "glucose deficiency," and creates a diet that's been shown in intervention studies to increase small LDL, which can lead to heart disease. A computer programmer believes in the diet and doesn't seem eager to refute it because, perhaps, scientists are freakin' liars and while he's good at spotting logical inconsistencies, lacks some intermediate knowledge of human biology. To Tom's credit, he says it's not the right diet for everyone, but given the truckload of food that has to be prepared and eaten, impracticality of following it while traveling (or even not traveling), and unsuitability for FODMAPs sufferers, diabetics and anyone prone to heart disease (i.e., much of the population), I'm

Pain, Pain, Go Away!

Search This Blog