“Discharged Alive”

February 21, 2022- by Steven E. Greer, MD

Last December, both of my parents were admitted for almost two-weeks at the Ohio State University Medical Center for COVID. The reliable hospital genetic data showed that they contracted their Wuhan coronavirus before the Omicron version had spread. Both of them were vaccinated. The vaccines were losing efficacy long before Omicron.

To make a long story short, when they were finally sent home, I told a story to the head of the hospital. I said that I was working on an important medical paper now that uses New York State hospital data related to COVID. One of the endpoints we are using for analysis is either death or “discharged alive”. That is an abstract statistic. I said that my parents being “discharged alive” made it personal for me.

Well, I recently came to Ohio from Texas to help out with a family matter. I have spent more time with my father than I have in the last 30-years combined.

I went to the driving range today. I expected him to sit and watch. He started to pull out a club. I thought he was just going to practice swing. I gave him a ball to hit and he was excited. To my astonishment, he made great ball contact and had good balance. He had not touched a club in decades, is 84-years-old, and has Alzheimer’s. This again put more meaning to the “discharged alive” stat.

Sadly, elderly people are treated as expendable cost drains to the “system” and euthanized all the time. Long before the nursing home massacres in New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania. And Michigan, this was happening.

This entry was posted in - Policy, Geriatrics, Infectious disease, Internal Medicine, Neurology, Ohio State, Psychology Psychiatry, Rehab. Bookmark the permalink.

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