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. We wear masks to run to the store for groceries. We use Zoom for meetings with friends and family. We are doing education online. And we are ordering curbside take out for the occasional meal to try and support our local eating establishments.
My Medical Opinion
Professionally, I have canceled and rescheduled hundreds of non-urgent clinic appointments and have 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 patient’s needs in a safe and efficient manner. We are simultaneously trying to protect them from unnecessary exposures to others.
As a physician, a husband, a father, and a member of my community, I believe we as a state and as a country are doing the best possible with the information available.
Anything we can do to minimize the number of cases in the United States of COVID-19 will be valuable in the long run.
We, the medical community, as well as the state and federal governments, do not have all the answers to these unprecedented questions on how to handle this pandemic. So we diligently do the best we can, for the most people possible, with the resources and information available.
At the time of publication (Monday, April 13th), COVID-19 has taken the lives of 116,052 people worldwide, and 22,146 lives in the U.S. 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, it appears we will be significantly below the original predictions of a million lives or more.
Disaster Medicine
Italian health care workers have been forced to practice “disaster medicine” at times during the crisis.
Disaster medicine is when decisions are being made as to which patients receive care based on the patients’ likelihood of surviving.
It is most often used in times of war on the battlefields when resources are so rationed that the hardest of decisions have to be made, and not every person in need can receive care to try and save their life.
Not unexpectedly, the elderly patients in Italy and those who are vulnerable secondary to underlying health issues are the ones who were passed over during those bleakest moments when providers had to make the unimaginable decisions.
Our nation is attempting to flatten the curve (decrease the number of people infected at the same time) 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 personally 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 post 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 of you following my thoughts on valuing life, all life, feel free to read further.
My Personal Opinion
My continued frustration comes from the inequity in which the executive orders set in place by 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 personally have the expectation for the decisions of our country 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.
Elective Surgeries Are Prohibited, But Abortions Are OK?
Elective terminations of pregnancy, abortions, continue to be performed by Planned Parenthood and other clinics even though Surgeon General Jerome Adams, MD, suggested all hospital and healthcare systems stop elective procedures dating back to the 14th of March, in spite of the fact that many states have established law by Executive Orders of the Governors stopping elective procedures.
There are a few states that are legally doing their best to enforce these orders across the abortion industry. Most states, including my state of Colorado, are simply turning a blind eye.
This is not uniform enforcement of the law.
Radical and unprecedented, some say draconian measures are in place to try to save lives of United States citizens; to try and prevent the “disaster medicine” scenarios of other countries. In such, we are, in fact, trying to prevent 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.
Let us say these government measures, and unprecedented orders have been critical to decreasing the U.S. loss of lives to its 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 clear. I am in full support of the measures we as a country and medical establishment have enacted 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 as a society and a government 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 to wait days or weeks would increase the risk to the 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 true.
The industry also argues that waiting days could make it too late for women to access abortion, and yet they view it appropriate to end a baby’s life at any time in pregnancy and have legally won the right to abort till birth in many states. These statements are incongruent.
The abortion industry in Texas claimed they did not use PPE and thus should not be restricted from operating business as usual; while simultaneously asking for donations of gloves, masks, and hand sanitizer on their Planned Parenthood website. These do not make sense together.
The abortion industry has argued for years that they practice safe medicine and standard of care medicine. Yet, in these COVID arguments, they state they use non-sterile gloves for surgical abortions and fought all the way to Supreme Court regarding the abortion industry’s right not to be restricted even to the same level of regulation of 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 the 14th of March, 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 only 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 redirected attention away from late-term abortion by stating that very few abortions are even performed late-term, thus it is not a critical argument that pro-life people should emphasize.
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 total abortions equals 10,347 babies aborted every year after 21 weeks, or 28 per day.
According to historical averages, 793 babies aborted after 21 weeks since the Surgeon General asked for all elective procedures to stop in the name of saving vulnerable lives.
The abortion industry’s argument that late-term abortions are rare to the point of irrelevance only makes sense if you personally 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 the goal of saving as many lives as possible, especially the vulnerable (which I do fully support), does not balance with 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 of providing “safe” abortions for women cannot be reconciled with the description of sub-standard operating conditions and arguing against a standard of care surgical center regulations for abortion clinics.
Claiming abortion clinics use no PPE while simultaneously asking for PPE donations simply speaks for itself.
If human life is worth fighting for, worth protecting, then let’s get about the hard business of discussing the real issues of when does a baby becomes a life?
Our Country Has Chosen Disaster Medicine
Other countries have had to face the hard reality of practicing “disaster medicine.” Our country has chosen to do the same.
We have chosen to implement radical and unprecedented measures to protect the masses, especially the elder and the ill.
And we have simultaneously chosen to sacrifice the unborn to abortion, even going so far to giving 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
My experience in medicine cannot lead me to that conclusion, independent of my personal worldviews.
My experience in the medicine and knowledge of science and biology dictates my belief that life in the womb is, in fact, life! Wonderful, miraculous life with endless potential.
My personal worldview regarding the value of life dictates that we should be dedicated to protecting all life, especially those who cannot protect themselves.