28 y/o woman, 2nd yr MD resident treating ER patients, dies of COVID-19: People. Disaster looms if you don’t vote.

A 28 year-old second-year resident at a hospital in Houston fell ill with COVID-19 and was taken to the emergency room (ER) on July 8, 2020. She had been working in the ER as a resident physician and was exposed to acutely ill COVID-19 patients there. Her name was Adeline Fagan, and her story was told in People magazine on September 21.

She did not respond well to being put on a ventilator on August 3, and extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) was used instead. She developed a “massive brain bleed” (cerebral hemorrhage) and died the next day. Her death was announced on a GoFundMe page September 19.

According to CNN, she had suffered from asthma, upper respiratory infections, and pneumonia in the past, but was quite well and working full time when she got sick in July. I’m guessing that she had just started her rotation in the ER when she was infected, because resident rotations start on July 1.

The reason I brought up her death is that multiple news agencies have announced that there have been officially 200,000 deaths from COVID-19 as of yesterday (although there were more than that suspected based on overall excess death rates as early as a month ago.)

In addition, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died last Friday. She was 87 years old and had survived colon cancer and two other types of cancer before succumbing to pancreatic cancer. This last type of cancer has an extremely poor prognosis even when it is caught early.

It is likely that the president had advance warning of her death, because he announced a new short list for Supreme Court candidates just a week or two ago. The Senate Majority Leader announced about an hour and a half after her death came out that he would bring up a replacement to a vote as soon as the president nominated somebody.

This was promised by the president shortly after. He is only waiting until after the funeral to announce someone. There is little or no question but that a replacement Supreme Court Justice will be confirmed within the next 45 days, that is before the presidential election.

This is a sin and an abuse of power. This Justice had been sitting for 27 years and had helped to win historic improvements in civil and human rights for previously marginalized citizens. Now the extreme right wing Republicans will have an “opposite” Justice.

There is tragedy and despair everywhere in this country. The only thing that will cheer me up is if a Democratic president is elected by a landslide in November. Then we can proceed with taking back power for the people who have suffered so long under the yoke of the “conservative” power-mad Republicans.

For the last 52 years, ever since Richard Nixon was elected President, we have gone backwards as a country despite the improvements on the margins that were shepherded by Ruth Bader Ginsburg. It is time to return to going forwards as a whole country. The only way to do that is to take power, constitutionally, away from the retrogressive “conservatives.”

There is talk of doing away with the Senatorial filibuster and expanding the Supreme Court to make up for the loss of two Justices to the machinations of the current Senate Majority Leader. Both changes will be perfectly legal and justified if the Democrats win back the Senate.

It will not be easy. A landslide election victory for Joe Biden is in the cards, but the current president is almost certain to contest the results all the way to the Supreme Court. He will be in for an unpleasant surprise even if he has a new Justice in place– there is little that can be done to nullify an obvious landslide. It is quite possible that he will use other, less conventional means to contest the election– such as having states with Republicans in power certify the wrong results.

All of the disasters that have happened, just in the last nine months, not to mention the last four years, will be less than the disaster that will befall us if this election is lost to the Republicans. Please vote, and encourage all your friends who can vote to do the same. It’s probably too late to move to Nevada to vote there, if you haven’t already done so.