Welcome once again to Fandango’s Provocative Question. Each week I will pose what I think is a provocative question for your consideration.
By provocative, I don’t mean a question that will cause annoyance or anger. Nor do I mean a question intended to arouse sexual desire or interest.
What I do mean is a question that is likely to get you to think, to be creative, and to provoke a response. Hopefully a positive response.
This past Monday, my FOWC with Fandango one-word prompt was “myth.” A myth is “a traditional story, especially one concerning the early history of a people or explaining some natural or social phenomenon, and typically involving supernatural beings or events.” Myths are often widely held but false beliefs. So my question this week is simply this:
What is something you’ve long believed to be true, but you now realize is not true?
If you choose to participate, write a post with your response to the question. Once you are done, tag your post with #FPQ and create a pingback to this post if you are on WordPress. Or you can simply include a link to your post in the comments. But remember to check to confirm that your pingback or your link shows up in the comments.
This, That, and the Other 
I wasn’t bored witless, Stroke Survivor.
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That is because I edited the original post 😆. It used to say something elsee. But thank you for reading.
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I see. 🙃
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I have wondered about the availability of focused personnel… anywhere.
Now I’m going to go on a relative tangent.
I just heard an expert who was a leader in the response to Ebola (Jeremy Konyndyk ) say the U.S. isn’t prepared for a surge, “We have a healthcare system in this country that doesn’t have a lot of surge capacity and that tends to be stretched to its limit just by a bad flu season.”
“We need a plan that… the federal government needs to fill that vacuum and put something coherent on the table. …. [Coronavirus is] going to pose a much bigger burden to our health systems than what we’re used to handling. And there may be a plan for that — but if there is, they’re not really talking about it publicly yet.”
”What I see right now is a … leadership vacuum and a planning vacuum.”
Then I heard another expert who has been working with a different leader known from during the Ebola scare. She (Dr. Syra Madad) co-wrote, with him, an article titled, “A program protecting us from deadly pandemic is about to expire“ — in which she explained we have across the United States a regional and tiered infrastructure in place, because of grant funding from 2014, for developing a response to handle Coronavirus.
Meanwhile, Trump’s new budget calls for cuts to science and health-related aspects of our federal government on top of firing leadership years ago and not replacing them. But the administration has separately requested money in regard to the outbreak. Do they (the administration/not the experts) have any kind of idea what they would do with the money — or are they taking a shot in the dark to look like they care a little or might have some smarts.
The Secretary of HHS is asking for “a start” (a characterization according to yet another expert, the Director, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases) higher than what the administration asked for and higher even than that for which Leader Schiff has asked.
I know this is a different area from what you encountered, SS, but there have to be regular doctors to continue handling the needs that occur every day even while there are more health demands in a population from time to time. I do wonder if we would have enough trained professionals, on a constant basis, if we implemented national health care (such as Medicare for All). An argument against seeing health care as a right is the “lines” that will be created. An counter-argument against that is the insight that lines would be due to the realization people who couldn’t get care before could now get it. But do we, in fact, have the people to actually provide the services at a high level of care for everyone?
How do we get them? Can we?
Former Secretary of HHS says we’ve been defunding positions and teams over time.
What will ”they” will do, anyway, about infections, besides* taking steps toward quarantine… which, I presume, would be a great help — so people going to doctors for heart attacks and strokes, appendicitis, and broken legs don’t have to be exposed to Coronavirus too.
* [particularly before a vaccine is discovered]
So, that was a little bit all over the place. But these are questions to address.
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Whether we have the personnel or not, do we have the right to make the choice about who gets medical help and who doesn’t? I live in a very under-served medical (rural) area. We can get the doctors we need. We can reopen a lot of closed facilities Doctors will come from other countries. Harder to come by will be the support personnel — nurses and nurses aids and other support people needed in hospitals. But we OWE treatment to all. We don’t decide we’re not going to serve those who are the most needy because we don’t have enough doctors. Do YOU feel you should be making that choice for anyone? That’s unconscionable.
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I agree.
I also have a story to add later.
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More on healthcare or healthcare coverage today… as promised.
A mom in a family with a little boy who got hit (by a car I think) and fatally hurt shared what she had been through. On top of experiencing the trauma of waiting upon multiple surgeries and various treatments, then losing her son, the mom had to wonder if she would be able to “stop working” or even take any more time off in order to take care of her son (or grieve after the time at the hospital either). Then she realized that if she didn’t have the job, there wouldn’t be the insurance to cover any of that with which they were contending [on top of not having the pay for herself and the rest of the family]. Her conclusion was that having health coverage through work doesn’t make sense or isn’t the best way to do things. But wait, there’s more. Her insurance covered 175,000 dollars. There was a difference of 5,000. The family thought their lawsuit against the man who killed their son would help them cover their part of the bills. Then it turned out, having been unbeknownst to the family, half the states in this country allow the insurance companies to call themselves the injured party, a victim, and be first in line for any monies gained as mental anguish. So, the company took that from the family when the family won their lawsuit against the reckless man. The family still had to pay in full, the 5,000. But wait, there’s yet more. The insurance company had put a lien on the family’s house right after the boy died. To be sure of payment. (Of course, this is what it is like to pay [as not only the employer but also the employee -ay] for good insurance, year after year, thousands of dollars, with little claim on it until you might need it.
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Yep, that’s the way insurance works. They love you when you pay your share of the premiums and as long as you’re healthy. But get sick and need the insurance company to pay the claim, and suddenly they don’t love you anymore.
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When the insurance company took the settlement or money from the court case the family won — however court cases along those lines happen I don’t know — that didn’t count towards or cover paying their part. It just got sucked in. I think that’s so evil. Who would see that coming?
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People can change.
Sent from my iPad
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Oh snap!
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that’s a good one!
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My contribution today: http://sparksfromacombustiblemind.com/2020/02/26/fpq-58/
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You’re really leaving us hanging, Melanie. Do tell!
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Doing the right thing. I’ve learned that it doesn’t always have the outcome you expect.
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Unfortunately you’re right.
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I nominated you:
https://realitydecoded.blog/2020/02/26/ive-been-nominated-for-the-mystery-blogger-award/
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You Asked — “What is something you’ve long believed to be true, but you now realize is not true?”
My Answer — Facts
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You don’t believe in facts? Alternative facts, then?
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“Everything we hear is an opinion, not a fact.Everything we see is a perspective, not the truth.”Marcus Aurelius”
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I hate to disagree with Marcus Aurelius and you, but there are facts that are neither opinions nor perspectives, although these days, the current POTUS and his supporters are clearly blurring the lines.
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Share one and we will test it. It’ll be fun.
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Okay. Fact — Earth, and all of the other planets in our solar system, revolve around the sun.
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