When government gets involved in anything, they screw it up. Maybe on purpose, maybe not.
- A gun store refuses to sell you a gun without doing the BG check. He also insists that you fill out the 4473. You are enraged and disagree with this policy.
- Another gun store takes advantage of a shortage on firearms, and charges $900 for a stripped lower.
- Still another gun store has a sign on the door that reads “No loaded weapons allowed inside. (Concealed carriers welcome, but concealed means concealed.)” but then asks you leave the store because you are carrying?
Do you run around and scream that gun stores can’t be trusted? Or do you place the blame where it lies: with that individual, or with the government that made the law that caused the policy? Do you recognize that it is unfair to ask someone to forgo their livelihood so you can circumvent a law with which you disagree?
Do you then blame the pharmacist for not giving you drugs without a prescription?
There are plenty of laws with which I disagree. Some of them even dictate my behavior at work. We all have that happen. A friend who works at the county health department recently had a guy throw used needles at her because she wouldn’t accept them for disposal unless they were in an approved Sharps container. (Even though I happen to agree with that law)
When I was a paramedic and posted on a now defunct gun board, I was accused of being a “jackbooted thug” because I disarmed a patient who had sustained a head injury in a motorcycle accident and was carrying a pistol. I transported him to the hospital with his gun in his backpack, which I put in the cab of the ambulance. Why? Because people with head injuries aren’t in their right mind, and will often get violent because of the “fight or flight” response. It was for everyone’s safety. If I had gotten the cops to take that gun, he likely wouldn’t have seen it again. Believe it or not, I did the guy a favor.
The same accusation was made against me when I said that we occasionally take people to the hospital against their will, for example people who are threatening suicide or who have had a head injury or stroke. Why? The law says that they aren’t in their right mind and don’t have the capacity to make informed decisions. I did a post on that back in 2010. I am a firm believer in patients making their own decisions after being presented with the facts. The only thing that we truly own is our bodies, and we have every right to control them. However, a person who is not able to make an informed decision still has a moral right to receive care.
So why do I bring that up? Because the job that I work in is FAR more regulated than the firearms industry. I don’t make the rules, and neither does anyone else in the hospital. We are dictated to by a lot of agencies: CMS, AHCA, the Joint Commission, state nursing board, DOH, tons of agencies. They run everything from what medications we give to how much we can charge for what we do. If you don’t follow the rules, you lose your license and can be barred from ever working in this field again.
So I disagree when people blame the medical field for what happened in 2020 with COVID. The lockdowns, the vax mandates, all of that nonsense came from the government. Don’t think I am just defending myself and my actions here, because if you will recall, I didn’t return to the health care profession until 2021.
The TikTok dance videos? They were stupid and damaging to the reputation of the medical field, but when you understand that the videos were coming from the outpatient surgery centers that were shut down as a result of COVID mandates, that makes it a bit less shocking. Then consider that surgical nurses aren’t the same as ED or ICU nurses. It takes a year at minimum to train an RN to a basic level of competency in emergency medicine, and that’s a year after licensure, on top of nursing school. It’s a complicated subject that takes years to master. So those nurses who weren’t in fields like the ED, ICU, or ECMO were left with nothing to do and made stupid videos. Still not a damning indictment of all medical professionals.
No, what the people who comment on here about how COVID was the fault of doctors and nurses don’t seem to grasp, is that the lockdowns, the mandates, all of that were the fault of government wannabe dictators getting their tyranny on.
Crying about the way COVID was treated shows a complete lack of understanding of respiratory illness and its treatment. Health professionals were doing what had always worked for respiratory illnesses in the past.
Those treatments worked until COVID came along. Scientists have found that a section of the genetic material that makes up the COVID virus genetic sequence was patented by Moderna for cancer research purposes in February of 2016. The sequence is 19 base pairs long, meaning that there is only a one in three trillion chance that the virus happened naturally. It just so happens that this engineered sequence gave the virus a special affinity for human lung tissue. That makes COVID fall firmly into the category of a biological warfare agent.
Then the shutdown and the turmoil that followed was an engineered crisis that in my opinion was designed to put Joe Biden in the Whitehouse. I have posted on that as well.
So don’t come on here and disparage what the medical professionals did for the COVID outbreak. It isn’t them that caused the problems- it was the people that YOU elected and put in charge. Government receives power with the consent of the governed. What have you done to change what is happening?
Have a problem with it? Get the law changed. You say that you can’t? What makes you think that I can?
25 Comments
D · October 21, 2023 at 10:38 am
> We are dictated to by a lot of agencies: CMS, AHCA, the Joint Commission, state nursing board, DOH, tons of agencies.
You’re forgetting a big one: Insurance companies.
I’m a small business. I tried to get “errors and omissions” insurance for my business. During the process they wanted to make sure my company policy included a clause (and posted signs) telling employees they couldn’t be armed. Without it, they wouldn’t issue the policy.
Very shortened story: When my wife was pregnant with our second child, she had an appointment at the local hospital because they were concerned about something. I don’t recall what now–it’s been ~15 years. I left work to meet her for her appointment. While we were about to walk back to the room for some sort of scan, my ear caught the sound of muffled radio traffic ~50 feet behind me “that’s him in the blue shirt”. I turned around…there were 3 rent-a-cops looking right at me.
One asked “is that a leatherman on your belt?”. “Uh…yeah…”
They then told me I had to leave the hospital because a leatherman is a “dangerous weapon”.
I looked them up and down and said “You guys don’t even have guns…what happens if a bad guy comes in and starts shooting? You gonna ask him nicely to leave? I’m not the threat here.”
Then there were 5 rent-a-cops.
Logic doesn’t work with them. I pulled a pen out of my pocket. “Do I need to leave my pen in the car too? I mean, seeing as how you aren’t armed, I could probably take out at least two of you with this pen…”
Then there were 12 rent-a-cops.
I said loudly “Honey, it’s time to leave. This hospital doesn’t care about your safety. In fact, these rent-a-cops want to make sure you are disarmed and defenseless if a bad guy comes in and starts shooting.” 12 of them “escorted” us to our car. I think we picked up a few additional rent-a-cops along the way.
We both walked out to the car and left. As we passed the booth exiting the parking garage, I had my window cracked and I heard the guy in the booth “Roger, they’ve exited the complex”. That’s when I breathed a sigh of relief and flapped my jacket open to a more comfortable position that would have revealed I was carrying. 😉
We never went back. Our second (and all future kids) were born at home with just my wife and I there.
But like your post implies, it’s not the rent-a-cops making up random rules on the spot. They aren’t the evil, stupid people deciding to disarm everyone. More than likely it’s the insurance policy for the hospital.
tfourier · October 21, 2023 at 11:08 am
Except for one slight problem.
The pathology, IFR, CFR etc of SARs CoV 2 was pretty much the same as SARs CoV 1 in 2003. As was the PSI/PORT score profile of those who developed actual cause serious infections. This was already becoming very obvious by the third week of February 2020 in Hong Kong and confirmed by the outbreak in Taiwan by the end of the second week of March 2020.
Until March 2020 the standard procedure for differential diagnosis of serious upper respiratory infections / pneumonias was to only use a lab test like RT/PCR when there were already several other very strong clinical indicators of a pneumonia like infection. Due to some very basic math problems with these type of clinical tests in low prevalence scenarios. In simple terms unless the actual probably prevalence is at least 2x/3x the actual real world test lab error rate most positives are going to be false positives. This is Stats 101 stuff. Type I / Type II Errors etc. That’s without getting into the subject of the deliberate misstatement by the FDA of the sensitivity and specificity of the reagents used. Nowhere near what they claimed it is. And so on.
So until March 2020 one set of rules for differential diagnosis of respiratory infections were followed by the medical profession. Then they were totally thrown away. Until March 2020 one set of criteria for the valid of clinical diagnostic tests were followed (True Positives 80%+ / False Negatives 5%). Then they were totally thrown away. Until March 2020 one set of rules for classifing WITH / FROM as cause of death was used. Then they were thrown away. And so on.
So pretty much ever single historical medical practice for dealing with epidemic respiratory infections was thrown away. For what was little more than the emergence of the first new endemic HCOV in over 100 years. To join the other four. Which all have the same kind of pathology, IFR, CFR etc. And are among the most common cause of childhood respiratory infections. We’ve all had dozens of HCOV infections.
And we wont even start with the tearing up of all the rules of the FDA 505 (b)(1) approval process for vaccines. Its a 5 to 7 year process for some very simple reasons. The math. Or the complete abrogation of all traditional criteria for use of public heath vaccination for disease control. Or totally ignoring the 2006 Federal Pandemic Plan. And so on.
Yes I know the Federal state of emergency was declared under (supposed) powers of the CBRN terrorism laws. And not only who paid for the Wuhan Level IV Labs but who built them (the French). But still there was a total failure by the medical profession to follow even the most basic level of professional medical ethics.
Not you guys at the bottom of the power heap. Never had much problems with nurses etc. But the doctors and especially the public health bureaucracy need to be called out on what they did. Not quite as vile as Aktion T4 but interestingly enough almost all the medical personal involved at the time with Aktion T4 went along with that too. It was the families who eventually stopped that particular medical atrocity. Not the doctors or the medical staff.
Doctors are just like lawyers. Some can be useful but most are not except for the simplest most straight forward medical situations. Anything outside the differential diagnostic charts and professional old wives tales they learned at med school / while interning and its just like the old lawyers joke, 90% of them give the other 10% a bad name.
What the last four years did was completely confirm what I had learned over the previous 50 plus years. Outside of simple patching up, following the correct differential diagnosis path and prescribing the (mostly) correct drugs most doctors can often be just as mendacious and untrustworthy as any sleazy small town lawyer. That is an opinion based on many decades of direct personal experience.
The other medical staff tend to be OK. Or rather the usual mix of the good, the bad, and the indifferent. But doctors and senior medical system administrators have a very high percentage of those with an attitude problem. Quite a few so incompetent as to be little better than charlatans. As the event of 2020 onwards so amply proved.
Once public health medical malpractice is established in law on par with traditional medical malpractice there will be a reckoning one day for what these people did to the world in 2020. They need to pay a real price for what they did. Some day. And they will.
But you guys at the bottom of the heap. Keep up the great work. Over the decades rarely had a problem with the nurses and the other junior medical staff. Quite the opposite. What you guys do is really appreciated. Its the people further up the medical totem pole who are nearly always the problem. Sometimes a deadly problem.
Divemedic · October 21, 2023 at 2:25 pm
Diagnostic criteria and thresholds are not set by doctors. The CDC, insurance companies, CMS, and other government agencies set those.
WallPhone · October 21, 2023 at 1:57 pm
There was some blogger in the early 00’s complaining that Glock voided his state pistol registration by a recall, frame coming back with an extra “1” stamped to the replacement’s serial number.
Bro, you should be complaining about the registration law and the GCA not playing nice together, not about the companies that must comply with the law. You’re lucky you’ve got at least six of seven characters sill matching the paperwork.
SmileyFtW · October 21, 2023 at 2:34 pm
And certainly a goodly portion falls on the public for accepting what they were told and doing no critical thinking on their own. I know it was difficult to swim against the tide and say “no”, but that is what should have happened after the “two weeks to flatten the curve” bit was overrun by reality. And yet still there are those driving around in their car, alone, wearing a paper mask years later.
Doctors being prevented from prescribing known medicines with a proven safe history should have stood up and said “no”, but they didn’t. Going along because some (insurance) bureaucrat says so is dangerous and wrong.
If people will not stand for their convictions they shall live under someone else’s thumb.
Divemedic · October 21, 2023 at 7:13 pm
It wasn’t just insurance companies. Doctors and pharmacists were told that giving these medications for COVID would result in your medical license being revoked.
This doctor was fined and had his license placed on probation for 5 years because he wrote prescriptions for ivermectin to treat COVID.
This doctor had her medical license revoked in the entire US for daring to write ivermectin and HCQ prescriptions.
In fact, a quick Google search shows that this was happening all over the US.
Your position is no different than blaming a gun dealer for following ATF regs when selling guns.
It’s easy to ask others to risk everything- their livelihood, house, family, everything- for you, when the rest of the public did virtually nothing to fight this.
SmileyFtW · October 22, 2023 at 7:47 am
You said what I thought I was trying to say… license revocation was a tool used to force medical professionals to abdicate their responsibility to a bureaucracy. There were those that stood on principle and suffered the consequences; there is some tipping point where enough saying “no” would have stopped the overreach. Each in our own way need to hold to our principles.
Thank you for all your efforts and thoughts.
Divemedic · October 22, 2023 at 10:07 am
So here is my question to you: Do you hold a gun dealer accountable for refusing to sell guns without a background check or a 4473? Do you expect them to take a stand for your Second Amendment rights? Even at the cost of their own livelihoods and freedom?
If you answer in the affirmative, then what are *you* personally doing to fight this? Have you gone out and broken the law and defied the government to make a stand? Are you willing to go to prison, and have you taken action?
If the answer is that you haven’t done anything, then how is it fair to demand that others take actions and risks that you yourself are not willing to take?
JimmyPx · October 21, 2023 at 4:45 pm
I also work in a hospital and DM is 100% correct. For example during Covid, many doctors would have prescribed chloroquine if it would help their patients but the FDA and government agencies forbade it and you could lose your medical license if you did.
Doctors and nurses hands are tied by the medical boards and government.
You can get mad but get mad at the politicians not the doctor or nurse trying to help you.
Bear in Indy · October 22, 2023 at 1:59 am
Can’t say as I blame the doctors (and certainly Not the nurses, tech and medical staff) as much as I do the usless politicians, at all levels, of both parties. And a huge GF yourself to the minions of the Unelected bureaucrats, and our First Amendment defenders, the ” free and unbiased press.”
The amount of hypocrisy is stunning, and yet, there is no accountability. No, blame, “let’s just move on,” Oh, well. No problem, just the residual damage left; childrens’ education, and mental health impaired for decades, businesses destroyed, critical health diagnoses delayed, and most importantly: people not allowed to be with their family during times of death.
Begs the question: What kind of people are we to let this pass? What kind of people are we, who do not ask; when do we hold “them, all of them” accountable.
Bear in Indy
Fundamental Transformation · October 21, 2023 at 7:22 pm
Fifty percent of the population is OK with communism.
The people want government to be their mommy so don’t act surprised when you get treated like children.
The fedgov money teat under every tent is the problem and that when will the government do something mindset that is way too common.
It turns out muh convenience has nothing to do with freedom, convenience or freedom, choose wisely.
TheLastOfTheAmericans · October 21, 2023 at 11:31 pm
All fair points, I suppose, and the ivermect\HCQ medical license revocation stuff is interesting.
What are your thoughts on the refusal of hospitals to provide life saving surgeries to people because they weren’t vaccinated? Was there some type of license revocation threat going on there as well? I am not being facetious, I am actual curious why the hell they went with that one, especially considering that while they were doing it the data was available that showed the vaccine didn’t stop infection\transmission. It still pisses me off to no end.
Don’t even get me started on a large health group in my AO running ads currently promoting “gender affirming care”…that puts a whole new spin on “First, do no harm.” That epically overused phrase is long dead. Anyone else remember the medical colleges getting rid of the Hippocratic oath and also pledging to BLM\leftism?….I ‘member.
Divemedic · October 22, 2023 at 10:00 am
The only time that I am aware of this happening is transplant recipients. There are 56 organizations in the US that harvest and provide organs for transplantation. Each of them has a long list of eligible recipients, and the need is higher than the supply. Each one has criteria for receiving an organ, and those criteria are supposed to make sure that the person getting the organ will make the best use of a limited resource. An example of this would be a liver recipient with cirrhosis not being eligible for a donated liver if they are still actively drinking alcohol. Another example: a 26 year old athlete and an 86 year old diabetic are both batches for a kidney. The 26 year old will get that kidney, because they are a better candidate.
So now to the case of COVID vaccines. In the case that I am aware of, the organ system in Massachusetts decided that a man in that state couldn’t get a donated heart because he wasn’t vaccinated. There aren’t many transplant centers in the US. For example, there are only two in Central Florida (Halifax medical in Daytona, and Advent Health in Orlando). A recent study found that roughly 36% of them use COVID vaccination status as a part of their screening process.
The “gender affirming” thing is a Federal law. The government is using the club of regulation to mandate that medical providers be free from discriminating on the basis of “gender identity.” In my ED, we even have one (male) employee that dresses and acts like a woman. It’s BS, but it’s like we are all being forced to play along.
TheLastOfTheAmericans · October 24, 2023 at 11:31 pm
https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/health/swedish-virginia-mason-franciscan-health-announce-new-covid-vaccination-requirements-for-health-care-workers/
https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/if-covid-vaccine-refusers-are-turned-away-hospitals-doctor-offices-ncna1277475
“For example, taking vaccination status into account is ethical when it’s intended to protect health care staff members and patients and to select patients for scarce ICU beds who have the best chances for survival.”
This crap was everywhere. You didn’t address my question because apparently you aren’t aware. The vaccination was literally a political litmus test…and now people wonder why nobody trusts the “Medical Establishment.”
Divemedic · October 25, 2023 at 8:43 am
1 My hospital also announced mandatory vaccine requirements. Every time the date for enforcing it approached, they pushed it back. Why? Because more than a third of the people who worked there didn’t get vaccinated. Can’t open a hospital with 35% of your staff out. In other states, the government was requiring all health care workers to be vaccinated. Again, it was a government issue.
2 There were isolated cases of doctors refusing to take on patients who weren’t vaccinated. Likewise, there were cases of doctors who bucked the trend and wrote scrips for Ivermectin and HCQ. However, if a patient comes into the Emergency Room, the law says they must be treated, no matter what. It’s a great litmus test. What these doctors are actually saying is that they don’t want to treat Trumpers.
TheLastOfTheAmericans · October 26, 2023 at 2:24 am
It’s refreshing to hear that a third of your hospital staff actually think for themselves and wanted the best for their patients and not their pocketbook. The other two thirds are why nobody trusts them any longer. It’s as simple as that. Get well soon.
Divemedic · October 26, 2023 at 5:21 am
Naw. I was one of the first to get the shot. I believe that everyone has the right to make that decision for themselves. I never supported mandates. Not for a second.
If I were faced with the same choices and information I had at the time, I would do it again.
Knowing what I know now, however, I wouldn’t. I was lied to by government officials. That isn’t my fault. I know better now. That’s why I haven’t gotten a booster.
TCK · October 22, 2023 at 5:19 am
Any ‘medical’ professional who decided that their paycheck was worth being a primary accomplice to torture and murder deserves to die screaming in agony after being forced to watch the grotesque filth they call family go first.
EVERY LAST FUCKING ONE OF THEM
Divemedic · October 22, 2023 at 10:05 am
So here is my question to you: Do you hold a gun dealer accountable for refusing to sell guns without a background check or a 4473? Do you expect them to take a stand for your Second Amendment rights? Even at the cost of their own livelihoods and freedom?
If you answer in the affirmative, then what are *you* personally doing to fight this? Have you gone out and broken the law and defied the government to make a stand? Are you willing to go to prison, and have you taken action?
TCK · October 23, 2023 at 1:48 am
So asking someone to fill out a form is equivalent to being a willing accomplice to torture and mass murder? Is that seriously the way you want to argue this?
Divemedic · October 23, 2023 at 7:52 am
OK, so tell me what doctors and nurses are doing that makes them an accomplice to murder? If you are going to argue that not writing an Rx for Ivermectin makes on an accomplice, then so does not allowing someone to purchase a firearm for self defense.
Anonymous · October 23, 2023 at 1:25 am
I’ve heard it said before that since the government has fighter jet planes and nukes, there is no civilian control of government. Furthermore, you are the single only person who wants freedom, and the only way you can work for it is to become the Unibomber, and that won’t work. So you should get used to the idea of being a serf tied to a village and eating bugs. All of these pretend a lot of alternative approaches don’t exist. Did government teach you MLK kept the freedom riders from being killed by the KKK by stalemating them with guns? No, government is only going to tell you about ways to reject it which don’t work.
If 3% of Americans (ten million) organized to stop obeying bad laws, there would be freedom in a week. That’s too big a number to digest if they haven’t already decided to get on boxcars when commanded to.
Divemedic · October 23, 2023 at 7:59 am
That’s kind of how all governments work. All governments take something from everyone, but the idea is that the rights taken are outweighed by the benefits received. There will always be one person who feels like the rules shouldn’t apply to him. The idea is that the net good outweighs the bad when we have limited government. The alternative is not anarchy, because a state of anarchy is impossible to maintain. What replaces a lack of government is despots who come in and fill the power vacuum, and what you get is warlords as in Somalia or Afghanistan.
The Constitution granting minimal powers to the large Federal government, a few more to the state, and the people retaining most of the power is what keeps government in check. The government which is closest to the people is the one that is most responsive to them. The problem with the US is that, especially post civil war, the Federal government has invented more and more powers for themselves, while the states and the people have done nothing to oppose them.
Anonymous · October 24, 2023 at 9:30 am
That last sentence in the second paragraph is how reality actually works; the previous seven sentences are not how reality works. I’m sure glad we don’t have warlords who fly to an island of horror. I’m sure glad we don’t have warlords who lock the entire country in their houses over a bad flu which they developed.
Divemedic · October 24, 2023 at 9:37 am
We failed in our duty in exercising the franchise. We allowed them to pass laws which granted them too many powers. This government is made of poor decisions from the voting public.
Are there evil people in government? Of course there are. They have always been there. The Founders knew this, which is why they endeavored to keep the government small and limited in its powers.
Comments are closed.