Tag: fictional thriller
Dollar Under Siege
As our country’s financial debt grows to insurmountable levels, the devalued dollar becomes weaker by the day. As the dollar becomes more vulnerable, so does the American way of life and our prosperity and freedom.
Recently, Sergey Glaziev, Putin’s economy advisor, outlined a plan to rid the dollar from international trade and to stop using the dollar in their currency reserves. In a bid to help weaken the US economy, Russia plans to create a ruble-yuan swap deal in order to facilitate trade financing, thus eliminating the need for the use of the dollar.
Also, China has also branched out to South Korea and opened up a clearing bank in Soul for yuan transactions. With a goal to have a currency competitive with that if the dollar, South Korea is just the first of other Asian countries they plan increased use of the yuan.
Unfortunately, the timing of communist Russia and China’s financial moves are apropos with declining US economy. As confidence in the dollar decreases, inflation increases and as US currency is being printed nonstop, our financial institutions are in a vulnerable position.
No longer does the dollar hold the prestige it once had. No longer does the world use the term as sound as the dollar. We are now in the process of witnessing the world trying to make the dollar irrelevant. As the dollar becomes irrelevant, will the once great America falter in the same path.
Obama wanted to fundamentally change our country. He despised what we as a nation stand for set and out from the beginning to change our dominant position in the world and the quality of life here at home. Making the dollar obsolete will complete both of those goals, creating a mediocre United States ashamed of its past and with no means to change its future.
This is the Obama legacy.
With deadly viruses, bacteria and fungi already prevalent and mutating throughout the United States and world, the potential for a possible outbreak like the influenza pandemic of 1917 is always present. Plus, when you realize that certain diseases such as the MERS virus in the Middle East and the Ebola virus in Africa are already causing havoc in those regions, one must wonder if any of these known or potentially unknown deadly diseases could take hold in this country. Worse yet, there is something scarier to consider: could we accidentally release one of these deadly diseases into the USA?
Though it sounds like science fiction (in fact, it is the basis of my medical/political thriller The New Reality), this possibility may be closer to fact than fiction. A recent incident at the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) near Atlanta piqued my concern. It is well known that the CDC stores, evaluates and experiments upon some of the most deadly diseases in the world. One of these diseases is Anthrax—and no, not the rock band. If infected with this bacteria, a person could have gastrointestinal, skin and pulmonary symptoms, ultimately leading to death in most cases.
While working with anthrax at the CDC, scientists thought they adequately inactivated the bacteria. However, after transporting it to a few other labs within the CDC, it was discovered that the bacteria was not only not dead, but it had also aerosolized its deadly spores. 75 scientists were potentially contaminated as a result and subsequently began treatment in case they were infected.
Fortunately, no one receiving this antibiotic treatment has yet to show any signs of infection. However, the threat of potential future human errors still remains.
As a physician, I can attest to the recent article I’ve read in the Courier Journal about more people using the emergency rooms due to Obamacare. Unfortunately, under this new law, the newly insured Americans were supposed to be utilizing their primary care physicians instead of the emergency room. However, that has turned out certainly not to be the case.
With the number of visits to the ER soaring by the day, most ask why this rise is happening if more Americans are supposedly receiving coverage through Obama’s Affordable Care Act. The answer is actually simple. The health insurance that well over 50% people now covered by Obamacare received is Medicaid. Because there are too few primary care doctors actually accepting this insurance, these newly insured patients have no other place to go to see a physician other than the ER.
As stated in the Courier Journal article: “It’s a perfect storm here,” said Dr. Ryan Stanton of Lexington, president of the Kentucky chapter of the ER physician group. “We’ve given people an ATM card in a town with no ATMs.” In short, Obamacare provided millions with Medicaid, but there are no doctors accepting Medicaid.
The article went on to use Kentucky as an example. A workforce capacity study conducted for the state by Deloitte Consulting last year found that Kentucky needed 3,790 more doctors, including 183 more primary-care physicians, to meet pre-ACA demand. Under the law, it said the state may need to add an additional 284 primary-care physicians by 2017. Complicating matters, a quarter of Kentucky’s primary-care doctors could be ready to retire within five years, the report said. The report also said roughly 56 percent of the state’s primary-care physicians, and 22 percent of all physicians, accepted a Medicaid payment in 2011, which Deloitte said was its best estimate for figuring out how many physicians accept Medicaid.
While primary care may be difficult to find, emergency rooms cannot turn anyone away. Stanton said every patient who comes in must have a medical screening, and most doctors do more; “the vast majority … do treatment to decrease medical and legal risk.”
The problem gets even larger when you realize that Medicaid reimbursements are a fraction to that of Medicare. The physician reimburse is so low that a private practice doctor would go bankrupt if they only saw Medicaid patients. Between their overhead and malpractice, Medicaid reimbursements would not cover even the basic costs of doing business. In the end, there is no incentive for any private practice physician to accept Medicaid patients. Then, when you realize that reimbursements by the federal government for Medicaid are being cut, you will quickly realize that the number of physicians who accept it will also be dwindling.
So where does that leave those patients now? Worse off than they were before.
By 2013, farmers were growing genetically modified crops on more than 420 million acres of land across 28 countries. However, both the environmental and human safety of these crops still remains highly debated. Without long term, controlled human safety data available, this concern is certainly valid.
Because of this concern, politicians, particularly in Europe, have created regulations to monitor GM products. However, in the United States, labeling of these foods is not mandated by the government. In fact, it is mostly voluntary in nature.
A new test called “MACRO,” which stands for: multiplex amplification on a chip with readout on an oligo microarray is now available to identify these crops. The sensitivity of this new genetic test is the best on the market and can identify about 97 percent of the known commercialized modifications.
As the Europeans take the lead in using such tests, the United States lags behind with the transparency of these foods. While the FDA goes after soaps and e-cigarettes, real and potential harmful foods/chemicals can be poisoning our country with little being done to stop it. Where are our priorities? Better yet, who is paying off the FDA and politicians?
A new study from the Brooklyn Institution states that more US businesses are being destroyed than are being created. This trend has been most striking over the Obama administration, culminating with the worst numbers since the beginning of 2009.
There is no states or regional localization for these numbers. The poor business growth and the destruction of businesses are seen throughout the entire 50 state union. The only valid conclusion when looking at these statistics is that the problem arises from a central source and not on the local level. When I write of a central source, I am, of course, referring to Washington DC.
Since Obama has taken office, there has been an attack on the middle class. Despite Obama’s rhetoric and the media’s confirmation of his lies, the wealth gap between the rich and poor is widening by the day, while squeezing out the middle class in the process.
Remember, small business is the spine which makes America’s economy and creates most of the jobs in this country. However, as any small business owner will tell you, it has become more difficult by the year to maintain that business. Higher taxes, no incentives, new laws and an unfriendly central government has made business ownership increasingly more difficult. Also, it deters the entrepreneurial spirit and discourages anyone from wanting to create their own business.
Despite the lower unemployment rate, it clearly explains why the nation’s workforce shrank by more than 800,000 workers in April, sending the labor force participation rate plummeting 0.4 percentage points to 62.8 percent.
Despite what you hear on the news, America’s economy remains in a downwards spiral. Many have given up looking for work and are now on the government doll, or they just decided to retire due to the bad economy. As this trend continues, America’s competitive edge will soon be lost.
Don’t let this happen.
Recently, Chris Stigall spoke with comedian Rob Schneider. The comedian’s responses were both candid and honest. He was open about his feelings of the Obama administration and of the liberal press.
He stated, “Democracies don’t end well. We are sliding very fast towards fascism. It’s an ugly kind of thing. There’s this kind of mob mentality that we have to be careful of.”
He also admitted that he was pressured by the media and the Hollywood establishment to have a more liberal or progressive stance on political issues. He said, “There’s a polarization that’s happening…I do think you look can look at government and go, ‘Wow, it is out of control now,’ and if you do criticize or tend to be not directly along a liberal stand, you can get murdered.” He went on to comment that the biggest government watchdog, the media has taken sides and no longer accurately reports the news. He stated, “We don’t really have freedom of the press. It’s owned by about eight different companies, and it doesn’t really express or help the average American.”
Schneider was critical of the President’s handling of the economy and he feels certain policies are negatively impacting businesses. He noted, “There’s not one segment of business under the Obama administration that hasn’t been hurt…he attacks for-profit schools, which is totally an elitist thing from a guy that went to Harvard. I think for free, by the way.”
Some say the more conservative segment of the population is paranoid that the media is a leftist propaganda machine or that the government is out to get them. However, with honest comedians like Rob Schneider and the blatant IRS scandal, there is substance to their argument.
People ask me as a physician if a new, incurable virus or bacteria could spread across the world, causing a massive pandemic. Unfortunately, I tell them the answer to this question is “When, not if.”
The truth is that bacterial and viral pathogens have been around for millions, if not billions of years. While modern antibiotics, on the other hand, have only been around for around for less than a measly hundred years. Plus, with worldwide travel, people not taking their full prescription of antibiotics, and the rapid mutation rate of diseases, it is just a matter of time before one of these bugs causes real problems.
In my book The New Reality, I write of such a scenario. Unfortunately, this situation may be more plausible than fictional in nature. With the recent disassembly of the American healthcare system, rising national debt, and deteriorating research grant funds, we may be financially unable to handle a massive pandemic—making this scenario more likely by the day.
I’m not a fear monger, but a recent article caught my attention about a deadly virus that was brought back from Saudi Arabia. It is called the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) and carries a 25-30% mortality. The virus comes from the same family as the severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS, coronavirus, which killed almost 800 people worldwide in 2003. The incubation period of the virus — the time between exposure and development of symptoms — is about five days, similar to SARS.
The patient who contracted MERS was returning home to Indiana. Upon arrival, he began to have shortness of breath, coughing and fever. Officials do not know the origin of the virus or how it spreads. The MERS virus has been found in camels, but officials don’t know how it is spreading to humans. There is no vaccine or treatment available. In some countries, the virus has spread from person to person through close contact, such as caring for or living with an infected person. However, it is unknown how the patient became infected.
“MERS is now in our heartland,” said Anne Schuchat, assistant surgeon general and director of the CDC’s National Center for Immunizations and Respiratory Diseases, during a briefing Friday.
The scary thing is what happens if this MERS virus mutates into something more deadly. By nature, virus routinely mutate—making treatment of such illnesses as the common cold and HIV very difficult to treat. So what happens if it mutates into something more deadly or possibly something more easily spread?
It is certainly a reasonable question to ask. And the only true answer is to be prepared. But as our ability to prepare is under serious jeopardy as a direct result of Obama’s new domestic policies and the Affordable Care Act, we may all be caught someday off-guard for such an event.
For more information please refer to: http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/cdc-confirms-first-case-of-deadly-mers-virus-in-indiana-man-who-traveled-to-saudi-arabia/2014/05/02/b27673b4-d233-11e3-a6b1-45c4dffb85a6_story.html