The COVID-19 restrictions are affecting all Americans. Here are my medical and personal opinions amid COVID-19.
On a personal note, my family, like yours, is doing our best to take social distancing very seriously.
We are hunkered down in our home, wearing masks to run to the store for groceries. Using Zoom for meetings with friends and family. And are doing education online. Occasionally, we order curbside takeout for our meals to try and support our local eating establishments.
My Medical Opinion
Professionally, I have canceled and rescheduled hundreds of non-urgent clinic appointments. I have also delayed and rescheduled dozens of surgeries that can wait a few weeks without harming my patients.
Our clinic is trying to keep all employees working with enough hours to pay their bills.
Most importantly, we are trying to care for all of our patients’ needs safely and efficiently. We are simultaneously trying to protect them from unnecessary exposure to others.
As a physician, and a member of my community, I believe we are doing the best with the information available as a state and country.
Anything we can do to minimize the number of cases of COVID-19 will be valuable in the long run.
We, the medical community, and the state and federal governments do not have all the answers to these unprecedented questions. So, with the resources and information available, we diligently do the best we can for the most people possible.
At the time of publication on Monday, April 13th, COVID-19 had claimed the lives of 116,052 people worldwide. In the U.S., the virus had resulted in 22,146 fatalities. Our hearts and prayers go out to all families affected by this disease, especially those who have lost loved ones.
It is impossible to accurately predict how many lives will be lost here in our country. Gratefully, we will be significantly below the original predictions of a million lives or more.
Disaster Medicine
Italian healthcare workers have been forced to practice “disaster medicine” during the crisis.
Disaster medicine is when decisions are being made as to which patients receive care based on the patient’s likelihood of surviving.
It is most often used in times of war on the battlefields when resources are rationed. The hardest of decisions have to be made, and not every person in need can receive care to try and save their life.
As expected, during those bleakest moments when providers had to make unimaginable decisions, they passed over the elderly patients in Italy and those vulnerable due to underlying health issues.
Our nation is attempting to flatten the curve and do our best to avoid an overwhelming number of critically ill patients. We are doing so by implementing the unprecedented measures of social distancing and executive orders closing non-essential businesses. We do not want to join Italy and other worldwide locations in making the awful decisions required in “disaster medicine.”
I applaud the hard decisions our government, our business owners, and the medical establishment are making. I professionally believe these measures have been critically important in keeping the numbers lower in the United States than predicted.
Hopefully, relief will come soon, and we can move on to the next stage of figuring out community life after this acute phase of the COVID-19 pandemic.
If you are interested in only my medical opinion on how, as a country, we have handled this crisis thus far, you can stop reading now.
For those following my thoughts on valuing life, all life, please read further.
My Personal Opinion
My continued frustration comes from the inequity in which the executive orders set in place by the Governors of many states are being followed and enforced.
I believe it is a very reasonable expectation for decisions that affect our entire nation to be uniformly enforced across business lines and service lines.
I expect our country’s decisions to be logical and should “make sense.”
Executive orders in our state and our nation are not being uniformly enforced across all business and service lines, and many of the arguments for these inequities are not logical and do not make sense.
Prohibiting Elective Surgeries but allowing abortions?
Planned Parenthood and other clinics continue to perform elective terminations of pregnancy and abortions, despite Surgeon General Jerome Adams, MD, suggesting that all hospital and healthcare systems stop elective procedures dating back to March 14th. This is happening even as many states have established laws through Executive Orders issued by the Governors to eliminate elective procedures.
A few states are legally doing their best to enforce these orders across the abortion industry. Most states, including my state of Colorado, look the other way.
This is not uniform enforcement of the law.
Radical and unprecedented, some say draconian measures are in place to try to save the lives of United States citizens and to try and prevent other countries’ “disaster medicine” scenarios. As such, we are trying to avoid the death of the most vulnerable, the elderly and the ill.
The financial cost to our country of COVID-19 cannot yet be counted, but we know the price tags exceed 2 trillion dollars at an extremely low estimate.
Assuming these government measures and unprecedented orders significantly reduced U.S. casualties to their current level. As opposed to some of the original projections of 1 million lives lost. This means we as a country have decided it appropriate to spend over 2 million dollars per life saved.
Let me be clear. I fully support the measures we have enacted as a country and medical establishment thus far. We needed and continue to need to do everything reasonably possible to save as many lives as possible.
But how does anyone make sense of these extreme measures? When we let the abortion industry carry out business as usual while the rest of us sacrifice for the betterment of all?
Significant Contradictions In The Abortion Industry’s Statements
As we place life as we know it on hold and spend 2 million dollars per life saved, the abortion industry continues to operate as if nothing is happening.
The abortion industry argues that waiting days or weeks would increase the risk of women having abortions. While simultaneously arguing for decades that abortions are safe for women up until the moment of a baby’s full-term birth. Both sides of their argument cannot be accurate.
The industry also argues that waiting days could make it too late for women to access abortion. Yet, in many states, they view it as appropriate to end a baby’s life at any time in pregnancy and have legally won the right to abort till birth. These statements are incongruent.
The abortion industry in Texas claimed they did not use PPE. It thus should not be restricted from operating business as usual; while simultaneously asking for donations of gloves, masks, and hand sanitizer on the Planned Parenthood website. These do not make sense together.
The abortion industry has argued for years that they practice safe and standard-of-care medicine. Yet, in these COVID arguments, they state they use non-sterile gloves for surgical abortions and fought the Supreme Court regarding the abortion industry’s right not to be restricted even to the same level of regulation as all other surgical centers.
3X More Abortions Than Corona Deaths So Far
According to the CDC and Guttmacher, 862,320 abortions were performed in the U.S. in 2017. This equals 2,362 abortions per day for 365 days per year.
Since the Surgeon General asked all health care systems to stop elective procedures on March 14th, 66,150 babies have been aborted in our country according to the historical average.
This number is three times as many lives we have lost to COVID-19.
This fact only makes sense to those who do not consider life in the womb to be life at all.
The Abortion Industry Acts Like They Are Above The Law
The abortion industry has repeatedly shifted attention away from late-term abortion by claiming that they perform very few late-term abortions. Therefore, pro-life advocates should not emphasize it as a critical argument.
They make this claim because, according to the CDC, 1.2% of abortions are performed after 21 weeks (this 1.2 % includes all abortions from 21 weeks till full term).
Remember, the age of viability, when a baby can survive outside the womb, is 23.5-24 weeks.
The mathematical fact is that 1.2% of 862,320 abortions equals 10,347 babies aborted yearly after 21 weeks or 28 per day.
Since the Surgeon General asked for all elective procedures to stop to save vulnerable lives, historical averages show that 793 babies have undergone abortions after 21 weeks.
The abortion industry’s argument that late-term abortions are rare to the point of irrelevance only makes sense if you believe that 10,347 babies per year after 21 weeks of pregnancy are unimportant and irrelevant.
Perhaps it is too much to ask, but I want the arguments of my opponents to make sense.
In the area of continuing surgical abortions during COVID-19 restrictions, the arguments of the abortion industry make no sense, are not consistent, and they clearly believe they are above the law.
The notion of spending trillions of dollars and upheaving life as we know it towards saving as many lives as possible, especially the vulnerable (which I do fully support), does not balance the simultaneous act of ignoring 66,150 abortions.
…unless you somehow fully believe that a baby in the womb is not life at all.
Sub-Standard Care Means Abortions Are Not Safe
The argument for “safe” abortions for women cannot reconcile with the description of sub-standard operating conditions. Arguing against a standard of care surgical center regulations for abortion clinics.
Claiming abortion clinics use no PPE while simultaneously asking for PPE donations speaks for itself.
If human life is worth fighting for and protecting, then let’s discuss the real issues of when a baby becomes a life.
Our Country Has Chosen Disaster Medicine
Other countries have faced the complex reality of practicing “disaster medicine.” Our country has chosen to do the same.
We have implemented radical and unprecedented measures to protect the masses, especially the elderly and the ill.
And we have simultaneously chosen to sacrifice the unborn to abortion, even going so far as to give preferential privilege to the abortion industry to ignore the laws of our land during this time of crisis.
This only makes sense if, for some reason, you see no life in a baby still carried in the womb.
My Experience Confirms My Worldview
From my years of experience cannot lead me to that conclusion, independent of my personal worldview.
My experience in medicine and knowledge of science/biology inform my belief that life in the womb is, indeed, life. It is a wonderful and miraculous form of life with endless potential.
My personal worldview centers around the value of life. It dictates our dedication to protecting all life, especially those who cannot defend themselves.
