Our Healthcare System in Maryland is in Code Red

Last night, Dan Cox posted a comment on social media revealing just how little he cares about our healthcare workers and our healthcare system.   He said:  “They say we must submit.  I say to hell with that lie.  We are Americans. We will be free.  I have three days to raise a war chest for our campaign for governor before I return to Session.”  

I guess we see where Dan Cox’s priorities are. 

Let’s give him some insight to what is going on in Maryland. 

The article:  Are Maryland hospitals overflowing? Official data and ground reports seem to differ: https://t.co/RHGGKEDwQr

Daniel Thomas, MD:  “I’m at Bayview. We’re in crisis mode and overflowing and have been for at least a week now. “ (I can attest to that as my grandkids’ paternal grandfather is 4 days in the ED, being treated for Covid pneumonia, and they have no inpatient beds for him.)

Dr. Tatiana Prowell (Baltimore):  “Another one of our own lost to Covid.  Please call someone you know who is age 5+ and not vaxed or age 12+ and not boosted, and ask them to go get vaxed, boosted.  WEAR A MASK.  We take care of all of you. HELP US protect healthcare workers.” 

Dr. Tatiana Prowell (Baltimore):  “This cannot possibly end well. As a doctor, especially one to people whose treatments are rarely optional, I hate to say this, but honesty compels me to: your goal of the next month is to do all you can to avoid health care settings. This is just not safe.”

Dr. Tatiana Prowell (Baltimore):  “If you think a shot is dangerous or a mask is confining, you’re not going to like the ICU. Needles, tubes in noses, throats, penises, blood vessels. You “live” attached to a roomful of machines. Until you don’t. You deserve to know. Prevent it.”

ICU nurse from Maryland (Twitter):   “I hope no one you know or love gets COVID or needs an emergency room right now, because there’s no room,”  

And before you say it, Dan, very few of our healthcare workforce left because of the vaccine mandates.  They are sick and tired of people not getting vaccinated and wearing masks:

“The health-care workforce, which was short-staffed before the pandemic, has been decimated over the past two years. As I reported in November, waves of health-care workers have quit their jobs (or their entire profession) because of moral distress, exhaustion, poor treatment by their hospitals or patients, or some combination of those. These losses leave the remaining health-care workers with fewer trusted colleagues who speak in the same shorthand, less expertise to draw from, and more work.” 

“Before, the sickest ICU patient would get two nurses, and now there’s four patients for every nurse,” Megan Brunson, an ICU nurse in Texas, told me. “It makes it impossible to do everything you need to do.”

Read this article in The Atlantic:  “Hospitals Are In Serious Trouble” 

The attitude like that of Dan Cox truly angers me.  As someone who spent 27 years in oncology and being a colon cancer survivor myself, I damn well know that timing is everything once a cancer is discovered – from the time the surgery is performed to remove that cancer, to the initiation of therapy (RT and/or chemo, targeted therapy, etc.).  I know that our cancer patients currently are NOT getting their timely surgeries.  A surgical oncologist just told a patient that her surgery to remove the cancer from her pancreas is postponed until further notice (because of all the Covid patients).  This patient will be dead in three months without this surgery.  

Dan Cox,  is this really the platform you are running on?  Freedom for you, but not for others?   It makes me sick that there is a group of people who put their “freedom” before “willingly wearing the mask” so as to give ALL of us a chance at living.  

Dan Cox, I’m talking for every cancer patient out there today.  We are damn well tired of people not masking, not taking the vaccine, and playing with our lives. 

Read the damn articles!

Wear the damn mask!

Get the damn vaccine!

I’ve dedicated this article to every single cancer survivor out there trying to survive this pandemic in spite of the people who will not help us out.