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I get all the anger. But please understand. With my age and underlying conditions, I have a CoVid 19 bullseye on my back. I retired from the medical profession, from a medical center. My wife is still in it and she and my granddaughter and many, many good friends are up to their eyeballs in CoVid. It is beyond frightening to me. And it is infuriating how this crisis continues to be mishandled and electioneered by this administration. The disgraceful stories are all true. Shortages everywhere are taking lives. Neither I nor still working colleagues have been tested and don’t expect to be.

Meanwhile, Chris Sale, as affirmed by three docs, NEEDED this surgery. It was not a face lift or tummy tuck. The surgery did NOT interfere with hospital care, or the preparations for the COMING surge in LA. It was performed in one of LA’s many small, private, specialty clinics which won’t be tapped for CoVid use except as a last resort. Certainly not now. Surgical masks, not N95 were worn. No ventilators used. Hospitals and medical centers, meanwhile, are not doing non-essentials, and that’s the way it should be.

California, thanks to our proximity to Governor Inslee’s response and Governor Cuomo’s war, was able to prepare and coordinate a max response on the fly. Governor Newsom, Mayor Garcetti and health departments throughout the state have worked together to slow this thing. Most Californians have actually been staying home for weeks. A massive push to get the vulnerable homeless off the streets for treatment and distancing includes buying and commandeering and outfitting hotels, motels, community centers. Nursing homes were put on notice. Yet, while Deven Nunes was urging his NorCal constituents ignore CoVid and ‘take your family out to dinner’, and some senior communities and resorts in SoCal were convinced it was a hoax ... and account for large clusters of reported cases and deaths. But all that has stopped.

Closed hospitals have been re-opened and staffed. Some 25,000 retired docs and nursing staff have enlisted in the governor’s volunteer medical core to support the current medical community. Every SoCal hospital seems to have CoVid treatment and isolation areas in their parking lots, though test kits are still few and far between. Places like the LA Convention Center and Fairgrounds are by now fully operational medical facilities. And finally, the thousand bed medical ship Mercy finally arrived in LA Harbor and will take care of non virus patients. That’s just the broad strokes. We expect to be hammered. We have too many without insurance, ICE has driven thousands of Green Card neighbors underground, we have lots of seniors. But our politicians, health care systems, volunteers and even bureaucrats have worked together and well and we are as prepared as we can be. So please cut Chris Sale and his doctor and his clinic and the Red Sox a break. If you want to worry about the rich getting richer check out what the EPA is covertly doing with private lands, or track who 25% of that 2 trillion relief package goes to. Pardon the rant.

Interesting dilemma brought up with Noah Syndergaard's announcement of Tommy John surgery. Several states including New York and Alabama, where Dr. Andrews lives, have banned elective surgery.