Geary Foertsch’s Nov. 10 Commentary, titled: “Sowers should spend time on deaths from medical mistakes,” really needed four more words in his title: “instead of my [Foertsch’s] mistakes.”
About one-third the way through his piece Foertsch complains that “...we never get a true picture [about COVID-19]...from the medical community.”
Evidently he totally missed the message in my Nov. 3 Gazette Commentary, “Don’t underestimate COVID-19; it is not a joke,” which gave an overview of COVID-19 outcomes known to date and corrected one of Foertsch’s mistakes.
Moreover, anyone who can type “COVID-19” into an internet search bar on a web browser (your own or at a public library) will be rewarded with plenty of that “picture” Foertsch says he can’t get anywhere.
The last two-thirds of his piece is a string of tiny bits of stuff that reminds me of the ancient story of the seven blind men touching an elephant in separate places and trying to figure out what the animal is.
Foertsch’s piece ends citing medical error annual deaths at 250,000-440,000 and chastises me for not “getting to the bottom of this....” instead of “...worrying about [Foertsch’s] COVID comments.”
Medical errors are part of the branch of medicine named iatrogenic medicine, and it’s a very big and old subject with many books and dedicated medical journals.
But I ask, since the subject common to Foertsch and myself is COVID-19, why is he trying to change the subject?
By the way, the Gazette has a very nice webpage, titled “COVID-19 Coverage 2020,” on the Gazette website with quite a bit of Delaware COVID-19 data, graphs, and statistics (data from there give about 600 deaths/25,000 cases which gives about 2.4 percent death rate which is a lot closer to my story than Foertsch’s).
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