American doctor describes the US government as “not helping at all” in fighting Coronavirus

Last night,  the US activist Janice Kortkamp had a harrowing call from a close friend -she has known for years- who is an infectious disease doctor practicing in three local hospitals – two smaller facilities and one major center.

 

The doctor’s frustration, anxiety and anger were extreme and she talked to her friend for a long time about the virus itself, testing, the affects it’s having on the hospitals and staff, the US government response including lock-downs, media coverage and hype, and wider range implications. 

 

Mrs. Kortkamp said in a post on her Facebook account that the doctor wanted her to share all this with people but without using her name and. So,  she agreed and she just called her “Dr.*”

 

Dr.* said: “Virginia is starting to see the number of cases rising exponentially. Only a week ago in the major center there was one case only. This week the waiting room was full of people showing symptoms of the disease of all adult ages.”

She asserted that most of those cases appear to be mild, however there are several patients with severe symptoms requiring intubation.

 

 She believes that the constant media attention might be driving more people into the hospital who during a regular flu season may have just stayed home and taken over the counter medications. “The media has been unhelpful by often promoting panic as opposed to pragmatic informing of the public.”

 

Moreover, the dorctor described the US government as “not helping at all.” 

 

She repeated that several times. “Necessary protective gear is difficult to get. I have my own N95 mask while other medical personnel often don’t and I was even told I shouldn’t wear mine in one area which I refused. 

 

She contracted Swine Flu during that epidemic and  doesn’t have any interest in getting this virus. She described what she’s seen of COVID-19 as far worse than Swine.

 

The American doctor is not confident that the virus originated from China . 

 

The telephone conversation is also dealt with how doctors in Italy had noticed an “unusual pneumonia” prior to the virus being identified in China. 

 

The doctor described how late last year she treated a woman from Nigeria who exhibited COVID-19 symptoms. The woman had gotten sick with unusual flu like symptoms but tested negative for flu. “She got on a plane and flew into Dulles Airport in Virginia and went straight to the hospital where I treated her successfully, then the woman (I call her “the stupid woman”) went immediately back to Nigeria.” 

 

Even though Dr.* was wearing an N95 mask and gloves and did not touch the patient, she became sick with the same symptoms and described it as the worst flu or cold she’d ever had. She believes it may have been COVID-19 and that she might have antibodies that should be studied. Her frequent attempts to contact the NIH regarding this have been ignored.

 

As for testing, the doctor emphasized that testing kits were unavailable at first and are still not widely available. “Any patient testing must be pre-approved by the CDC [ the Centers for Disease Control] and results can take up to seven days to get. They don’t have any of the new test kits that give results in 45 minutes yet. Currently available tests can result in false negatives if the swab is not done properly. “

She is shocked by the lack of protocol on the part of the CDC and explained that normally in this kind of situation an epidemiologist would be on site to investigate these cases, to track the patient’s exposure, etc. She has not seen any evidence that this is being done.”

 

The doctor is convinced that the virus is not just spread through droplets but also remains airborne for considerable lengths of time which makes it far more virulent than if it were only contagious as droplets. She also believes it is very possible this particular virus was manufactured and is not a naturally occurring one.

 

According to Dr.*, COVID-19 does not only attack the lungs via pneumonia but also attacks the heart making anyone with heart problems more susceptible to a serious condition.

 

While being emphatic about the seriousness of the disease itself, the doctor is at the same time equally concerned by the way governments are using this to justify extreme and sometimes bizarre ways to control people’s behavior – like some areas prohibiting people from being outside even by themselves – and the possibly catastrophic consequences on the already fragile economy.

 

 

In the same context, the Quincy Institute’s Max Abrahms was quoted by AFP as saying: “It’s almost like a bad joke. What’s worse than a pandemic appearing in a country where there is no government? That is really the last thing that you want.”

 

 He went on to say: “We need to rethink our understanding of US national security. It seems particularly absurd for the United States to invest so heavily in remaking foreign countries at a time when our own nurses in New York City are literally wearing trash bags.”

 

Indeed, in some very important ways the US government has clearly seen the coronavirus outbreak not as a dangerous humanitarian crisis, but as a strategic advantage to be weaponized against governments which refuse to bow to its empire-building agendas.

 

Weaponizing a virus is the thing that biological warfare is. The US government might not have deliberately released the virus (also not a settled question), but they are using the virus as a weapon aimed at toppling vulnerable targeted governments.

 

The use of biological warfare, or germ warfare, is prohibited by international law, though in typical fashion the US is skirting the parameters of those laws in this case by weaponizing a virus that was already spreading. Which is not to say that the US is above deliberately infecting a population using biological weaponry as well; they used them extensively during the Korean War.

 

Thousands of Iranians have already died of this virus due to the difficulties US sanctions create in obtaining medicine, equipment and resources, and it’s possible that orders of magnitude more dead may follow. This is not accidental, this is deliberate. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has gone on record to say that the objective is to make Iranian civilians so miserable and desperate that they overthrow their own government, and it is clear that this virus is being employed toward this purpose.

 

This same imperial war machine is actively attempting to inflict this same fate upon Venezuela, where tens of thousands have already died of malnutrition and inability to access medicine because of the Trump administration’s brutal economic warfare. 

 

They are dying of a virus that is being used as a weapon to topple a government which dared to disobey the dictates of Washington and its covert controllers, which means they are dying of germ warfare.

 

Here, we raise the following question: Will US citizens discover that their government might be worse than Covid-19 so that they can act before it is too late to save their democracies that are under unprecedented threat ?

 

Basma Qaddour