Len Zwelling

On the morning after the election, we awake to find—confusion. It’s three days later and we haven’t gotten to clarity yet.

In this op-ed in The New York Times, dated September 15 by Aaron E. Carroll sent to me by a blog reader, the author claims that the United States (maybe the world?) won’t get back to normal after the covid-19 crisis even after the advent of an effective, safe vaccine. Carroll claims that masks will still be the fashion statement of the year through 2021 and he backs his statements up with warnings from Tony Fauci. I think he’s wrong, not in his science, but in the outcome.

This is the last blog before Election Day. This year, 2020, has been monumental in so many ways, but only in one that counts. No, it is not that it is a presidential election year or that it’s an Olympic year that got cancelled. It’s all about the virus.

In a particularly cogent op-ed in The Wall Street Journal on October 19, Jason De Sena Trennart, the chairman of Strategas an investment-strategy, economic and policy research firm, reminds us all why Mr. Trump won the 2016 election and why forgetting why may have consequences this time.

What the two editorials indicate is that women, particularly white women—those a plurality of whom voted for Trump in 2016—will need to vote for Biden if the former vice president is to win this election. Furthermore, it is also clear that this is a tipping point election in that the country will go one way if Trump is re-elected and another if Biden wins.

This piece by John M. Barry of the Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine in The New York Times on October 20 is hands down the best summary of the coronavirus crisis and our response to it that I have read. Allow me to summarize.

Is the 2020 presidential race mirroring the selection process for a new MD Anderson president of a few years ago? I think so.

In this Peggy Noonan column from The Wall Street Journal on October 17, there is but one conclusion to be drawn. The country has gone nuts, or at least its elected representatives have.

It does not state anywhere in the Constitution that the Senate has to hold hearings on presidential nominees to the federal judiciary. Rather it is with the Senate’s “advice and consent” that these presidential appointments take effect. It is the Senate that has decided to hold hearings on nominees to the executive and judicial branches and take a vote on confirmation.

When I was young, I was sure about a lot of things. As I grew older, I became less sure about many things. Usually though, as I matured, I would think a problem through, sift through the available evidence, and come to a conclusion. After all, it was how I was taught to be a doctor.