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Before COVID-19 came around our country had abt 50,000 suicides every year and ONE MILLION ATTEMPTS. It has been reported that those numbers have increased since Feb/March of 2020 and COVID-19 started dominating the news and the country started having requests for everyone to shelter in place.

There are rumors out there that suicides among chronic pain pts that their prescriber have discharged them from the practice, reduced/cut their meds are on the increase.  Seldom do we hear about a suicide note and or because the pt has – or had – prescriptions for opiates … the “first cause of death” is “opiate related death”

We know that single digit percents of deaths that are labeled as OD’s or opiate related deaths… their toxicology shows only a single opiate for when the pt had a legal prescription(s).

On this chart of the adverse effects on the human body by the under/untreated pain the last line, last three words (Increased) thoughts of suicide.

While the “thoughts of suicide” can be a off/on on going mental issue… BUT…. the actual act of suicide can be an IMPULSIVE ACT.  Probably not the best time to start composing a suicide note.  Perhaps the note should include if the pt dies prematurely from issues listed on the included chart because their meds are dramatically reduced or cut off.

Should pts who have been discharged – for nebulous reason(s) – or had the dose dramatically reduced or just stopped.  Compose a suicide note and instruct whoever handles their estate to seek charges being filed against whatever entity or party who was the driving force behind the pt exercising the “final solution” .  And state it as clearly as possible that their death WAS NOT A ACCIDENTAL OVERDOSE.

Recently I shared this email in a post that I received Pt’s new Doc cuts long term Opiate/Benzo by 75% – cold turkey – hypertensive crisis and DEATH soon followed

That pt’s outcome from having those particular meds dramatically cut … was highly predictable.

Maybe the pt should put a copy of the above chart in a envelope along with the suicide note… seal the envelope(s) … mark the envelope as LAST WILL AND TESTAMENT… make several envelopes and store them in places where they will be found. Leave them with an attorney, accountant, bank safety storage box.  Unless the pt dies of a OD, a premature death or suspicious circumstances…  if the envelope is opened after your death… it becomes a non-issue.

Maybe it should be thought of like insurance… you don’t anticipate wrecking your car…but.. you buy car insurance… you don’t expect your house to burn down, but you buy house insurance… same thing with health insurance and life insurance.

Some healthcare entity or practitioner gets charged with assisting suicide or involuntary manslaughter, maybe they will have as much fear of cutting a pt’s meds as they are afraid of a pt ODing because they were prescribed controlled substances.

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Hi Steve, I have a question for you. I’m considering contacting a lawyer regarding filing a wrongful death suit against her general practitioner for cutting her pain meds down from 240 to just 60 in a single visit as well as reducing her benzo from 60 a month to just 15 at the same visit after being on the same meds over twenty years. Absolutely ZERO tapering. Soon after, my mom’s hypertension increased significantly with no actions taken by her doctor. She also had severe migraines with possible transischemic attacks in her history overlooked. Her death was sudden, unexpected and at home. She was only 61, aside from arthritis history of breast cancer with successful partial Mastectomy, she had no other real issues health wise. The county coroner denied an autopsy at her time of death, deeming her history enough to bypass one during “Covid-19 bodies piling up.” Mind you, Ohio is at its absolute worst right now. So I want to bring charges against the Coroner as well because the state defines an unnatural death as any death that occurs in the home unexpectedly, regardless of age/murder/suicide/etc. I have to prove medical neglect, harm, etc. How many Chronic Pain Patients have been successful in collecting damages for their devastating loss? I want justice for our family and for our community. Another significant notable insight: this doctor was only her Dr for 3 months & 10 days. Immediately after he found out she passed he immediately trashed her online records so we couldn’t pull them. So basically he came on and decided 20 year history wasn’t sufficient for him, had a fear of prescribing or personal belief in not using pain meds, etc. He barely knew my mother and was the voice that okayed the coroner to deny autopsy-destroying ALL evidence of any damage his decisions wrecked havoc on her body, heart or brain.

It is pretty well known that intentionally throwing a pt into a cold turkey withdrawal when both a opiate & benzo is involved… there is a higher probability of a hypertensive crisis… causing stroke, health attack, death.

I am not an attorney, but if a prescriber is an employee of a large healthcare corporation and the prescriber is just complying with some corporate edict on reducing all pts to a certain level predetermined level and ignoring a pt’s long term therapy.   If the corporation may end up with some liability for attempting to practice medicine without a license.

Would the estate of this pt have a better legal case if they had done something like I suggested in this post call their bluff with a letter from attorney ?

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BIDEN: “If I reach something where there’s a fundamental disagreement we have based on a moral principle, I’ll develop some disease and say I have to resign.”

https://www.toddstarnes.com/politics/biden-if-i-reach-something-where-theres-a-fundamental-disagreement-we-have-based-on-a-moral-principle-ill-develop-some-disease-and-say-i-have-to-resign/

Joe Biden is asked about his disagreements with Kamala Harris on certain issues:

“Like I told Barack, if I reach something where there’s a fundamental disagreement we have based on a moral principle, I’ll develop some disease and say I have to resign.” pic.twitter.com/SLcvrwaPCA

— Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) December 4, 2020

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The prescription drug monitoring systems PDMPs are expanding into medical privacy issues with more add ons.. Doctors are being rated as dangerous, patients are labeled as likely to overdose and die, all based on phony assumptions and very bad data. This is a good time to look into what each state is doing with your, and your doctors information and with wizardy and a crystal ball – “you will die of an overdose and it will be caused by your doctor

I know that the two states that I am licensed in … it is legal to provide the pt with a copy of their PDMP report. What Dr Kline did not address with the physician report is that the DEA likes to use the civil asset forfeiture act against prescribers.  Of the 12,000 odd employees that work for the DEA at the federal level… at least 50%… ONLY WORK AT A DESK…  with all the databases out there… one should not be surprised if there isn’t a database estimating the NET WORTH of any of us… Most/all of investigation of prescribers would seem to start with a “desk audit “

What if the DEA decided to merge the doctor prescribing data from the 49 states that has a PDMP with the net worth of licensed prescribers…. into a spreadsheet and then sort those two columns to show the net worth of the larger prescribers of controlled meds and/or sort by the prescriber’s net worth to see who has the largest net worth to find those prescribers who are SUSPICIOUS PRESCRIBERS.

I have noticed that over the last year + that the DEA has also charging prescribers with healthcare billing fraud of Medicare/Medicaid/Tricare.  With the Civil Asset Confiscate Law … they can seize assets without a person being convicted of any charges.  Some bureaucrats seems to  becoming uncomfortable of seizing a citizen’s assets based on a suspicion or opinion of what the prescriber is doing wrong.

So the raid on the office is done on the opinion that the prescriber is violating the Controlled Substance Act and prescribing controlled meds to people/pts that the DEA has determined had no valid medical necessity.  When someone is taken to our Federal Court system… averages suggests that ONLY 5% are found INNOCENT.

There are so many databases out there, no one really knows how the DEA is slicing/dicing databases to allow them to amass data to support their suspicion/opinion what a prescriber is doing or not doing.

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Dear Steve, I live in south Florida and my mom and pop pharmacy just closed and now CVS has purchased my prescriptions but won’t fill them. It is a large amount by today’s standards but I was on quite a bit more in 1999. I broke my back with a spinal cord injury and was paralyzed from the waist down. I am walking today because of some wonderful people along the way and I only want to live out the rest of my life without a wheelchair. I will file the proper complaints but should I tell them I am doing so? Leverage? I hope to here from you. I am so afraid of having to go through this again as in 2012 and end up in the hospital and then bound to a wheelchair because I can’t move or stand for any length of time without all my medications onboard. I have titanium holding my spine together from 21 years ago and it’s all arthritic today. I’m literally afraid of the pain I’m about to experience. I feel I should get a lawyer but I don’t drive anymore and I’m quite poor. Please help.

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The Biggest Spreader of Coronavirus is Shopping Centers, Not Churches

https://www.toddstarnes.com/coronavirus/tony-perkins-the-biggest-spreader-of-coronavirus-is-shopping-centers-not-churches

Family Research Council president Tony Perkins is calling out lawmakers who are cracking down on church attendance during the global pandemic.

He pointed to a recent interview on CBS’s Face The Nation where the mayor of El Paso admitted that contact tracing had revealed most positive cases of the China Virus came from shopping centers.

“We did a deep dive in our contact tracing for the week of November the 10th through the 16th and found out that 55% of the positives were coming from shopping at large retailers, what we’d term as the big box stores,” Mayor Dee Margo said on the program.

“And those are considered essential under CISA guidelines under homeland security,” the mayor continued. “And we don’t really have – I don’t have any control over any limitations there. We’ve asked for voluntary limitations and Wal-Mart and several others are starting to meter, meaning they’re going to limit the occupancy of their – of their stores.”

And yet, as Perkins pointed out on The Todd Starnes Show, big box stores are untouched while churches have been shut down.

“It wasn’t the people in the pews that posed the greatest problem with the Coronavirus, it was the people in the produce aisles,” Perkins told Starnes. “Where are the real problems — in the shopping centers, not the pews.”

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CDC shortens coronavirus exposure quarantine period

https://www.foxnews.com/health/coronavirus-quarantine-duration-shortened-cdc

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on Wednesday announced shorter coronavirus-related quarantine periods ahead of anticipated holiday travel. 

The CDC announced two acceptable quarantine periods, though noted that the previously-established 14 days of quarantine is the best way to reduce risk of virus spread.

Officials said quarantine can now end after 10 days without a COVID-19 test, if the person reports no symptoms, or after seven days with a negative test result if the person reports no symptoms.

The agency advised people should still watch for symptoms for COVID-19 14 days after exposure. The announcement arises from analysis of new research and modeling data. The shorter length of quarantine is hoped to reduce economic hardship and lessen the stress on the public health system amid a rising number of infections.

The CDC plans to update its webpage with the new guidance on Wednesday.

The announcement follows news from just a day prior, when Fox News obtained exclusive documents on the expected release of guidance.

Fox News obtained an internal CDC document on Tuesday which outlined the proposed changes. A source told Fox News that the changes have been discussed with and approved by the White House Coronavirus Task Force.

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How Many Might Die Even With a COVID Vaccine?

https://www.medpagetoday.com/infectiousdisease/covid19/89918

On July 16, 1945, the U.S. performed the first atomic bomb test in New Mexico. As the blast wave reached Enrico Fermi, the noted physicist and inventor of the world’s first nuclear reactor, who was among those watching the explosion some 10 miles away, he dropped bits of paper in order to see how far they would be blown. Fermi reasoned that the distance traveled by the paper could be used to make a quick calculation of the bomb energy yield.

His estimation was 10 kilotons of TNT. The actual energy of the blast was 18.6 kilotons of TNT.

Fermi’s quick calculation was within an order of magnitude and therefore within the mathematics of such things. His estimate was impressive. Fermi was famous for many things, but his bits-of-paper trick cemented his fame in what is now referred to as a back-of-the-envelope calculation: the use of estimated or rounded numbers to make rapid ballpark calculations, usually done on a scrap of paper like the back of an envelope.

Americans consistently score low on tests for mathematics. Most Americans consider themselves bad at math and nearly one in five adults suffer from high levels of math anxiety. This is a particularly bad time to be bad at math as we try to make sense of numbers about infection and death by COVID-19.

What Fermi understood is that the real test of math aptitude is the ability to logically estimate. The trick is to break down a seemingly complex equation into smaller parts where the number becomes manageable and relatable.

This is particularly important when the number is really big or really small. What Fermi was actually contemplating with falling bits of paper was the number of people that the bomb would kill.

Recently, Pfizer announced it had a vaccine that is looking like it will be 95% effective against COVID-19. Pfizer, like Fermi, is also thinking about death.

Sometimes an estimation needs a little more background and an understanding of what is at stake. Census data from 2019 estimated the U.S. population at 328.2 million people. We know that about 10 million people in the U.S. have so far contracted COVID and we will assume that prior infections confer immunity and those individuals will not be vaccinated. We can now work with the total population uninfected and unvaccinated to be 318.2 million people.

Many people have said they would refuse a COVID vaccine, and this position, known as vaccine hesitancy, makes it difficult to predict how many people would actually accept a COVID vaccine. For DTP (diphtheria, tetanus, pertussis), a required vaccine, the vaccine rate was 83% of the target population. Polio vaccine uptake was 92.7%. These are long-standing and generally well-accepted vaccines, but for other equally effective vaccines, the vaccine acceptance rate is actually falling.

Let’s assume a relatively high rate of 80% uptake for a new COVID vaccine. This means 20% of 318 million people won’t get vaccinated — about 64 million people. Recall that the Pfizer vaccine is claimed to be 95% effective, so 5% of the vaccinated population will get no benefit and will still be at risk for catching COVID-19. The number of the original vaccinated population that will get no benefit is 13 million and when we add this to 64 million unvaccinated people, we get 77 million people.

COVID-19 does not kill everyone who becomes infected. The amount of killing is called the infection fatality rate and for COVID-19, that number has been estimated to be 0.65%, but may be as high as 2%. If every unvaccinated or ineffectively vaccinated person still got COVID-19, the number of Americans that would still die would range from 500,000 to two million — and that’s with a vaccine that is 95% effective.

To put that into perspective, that means COVID-19 would kill the equivalent of every single person in a city the size of Tampa, Miami, Long Beach, or Minneapolis — or even in a city as large as Phoenix, San Diego, or Philadelphia.

We have left off important information from our back-of-the-envelope equation: How long will it take to vaccinate 254 million people? How long will it take to make enough vaccine doses for 254 million people?

In 1972, smallpox was considered eradicated in Europe. In March of that year, the former country of Yugoslavia suffered an outbreak. The government sprang into action and reacted swiftly. On March 16, 1972, martial law was declared, population movement was severely restricted, and in effect, the entire country was placed under quarantine. The army was used to enforce the quarantine and over a period of approximately 3 months, the entire population of 18 million was vaccinated and the outbreak ended.

Of course, 18 million is a much smaller number than 254 million and I doubt Americans would look kindly on the imposition of martial law for months and months while we carry out vaccinations. As a result, we can expect that our back-of-the-envelope calculation, which assumes mass, instantaneous vaccination, actually underestimates the number of people still vulnerable to COVID-19.

There are other complications: Moderna’s and Pfizer’s vaccines use mRNA technology, which requires very cold storage with dry ice. We now learn that although the toilet paper shortage is under control, the dry ice shortage is getting worse. Moderna claims its mRNA vaccine only needs more conventional freezer and refrigeration temperatures.

To produce the needed quantity of vaccines is no small feat and might require a level of commitment that up until now we have failed to achieve.

We must also consider who will benefit from this vaccine aside from those whose lives are saved. It was recently reported that Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla sold 62% of his stock in the company on the same day the company announced the results of its COVID-19 vaccine trial. The value of his stock sell-off was about $5.6 million earned in a single day. Others in the company also sold stock and earned millions of dollars.

In 2018, the median individual income in the U.S. was $33,706 per year. It would take that person with that income about 169 years to earn $5.6 million dollars.

The lived reality of COVID-19 is that it has become a new cause of premature death. To get a sense of how many Americans have died so far from COVID-19, you would need to add up all the American deaths in the Korean War, the Vietnam War, and the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars, as well as the number of people killed annually in car accidents and by firearms, as well as the number of people killed annually by the flu.

A 95% effective vaccine will likely reduce the number of people killed by COVID-19, but that will not be nearly enough to bring death by COVID-19 to a halt. In order to do that, we will likely need a plan of action far beyond what to this point we have been willing to do.

The announcement of the development of 95% effective vaccines is good news, but it is no cause for celebration. Even with a perfect, instantaneous rollout, hundreds of thousands of people would continue to die.

At the end of the day, the real tragedy might be how little we did for so long and how we can abide 260,000 deaths in this country so far and not really feel it.

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