Here’s one of those stories you can’t help but hope turns out to be a parody or hoax:

The Indiana University School of Medicine apologized to students for a question on a cardiovascular exam that included the phrase “I can’t breath[e],” according to screenshots of the question (above) and message to seniors in “All Sections” (below) that were forwarded to The College Fix. The question reads:

A patient who missed dialysis suddenly becomes pale, diaphoretic, and screams, “I can’t breath!” [sic] You glance at the monitor and notice the following rhythm. You are unable to palpate a pulse and initiate immediate CPR. The most appropriate next step in therapy is: [the options for answers are not visible]

The apology message, which is undated, was written by Daniel Corson-Knowles, assistant professor of clinical emergency medicine.

Readers might want to make a note of this medical school and keep it in mind while evaluating potential doctors in the future.  A doctor who was trained to see the phrase, “I can’t breathe,” in political terms could be dangerous to one’s health, especially a doctor who might be triggered by the phrase.  Presumably a “triggered” response is involuntary, so what happens if a white patient uses this phrase because he or she, you know, can’t breathe, and the doctor loses crucial moments battling to overcome his or her emotional response?  Frankly, a medical school should be testing students for such triggered responses and withholding their credentials until they no longer exhibit them.  (There’s an important lesson about government-run healthcare, here, too.)

But these are the times in which we’re living.  Public health “experts” just spent months warning that failing to follow their rules scrupulously would kill people only to turn around and justify massive nationwide protests when they support the cause. Democrat Governor Gina Raimondo has returned to lecturing Rhode Islanders about “following the rules” shortly after violating them all, herself, at those protests.

Meanwhile, Raimondo and partisans in the news media are using trends in other, hand-picked states to keep Rhode Islanders fearful while also casting shade on red states.  Apparently, there is some invisible line between blue states, where reopening is a sign of fantastic management, and red states, where reopening is a mismanaged invitation to mass graves.

If the data from Rhode Island’s daily COVID-19 reports have any relevance, there is no sign that we’re headed toward a calamity.  Newly discovered daily cases fell to 25 in today’s report.  Patients in intensive care with COVID-19 dropped below 20.  And daily deaths associated with COVID-19 have been tending toward fewer than five.  Moreover, RI hospitalizations are poised to fall below 100, after a weekend coming in below my projections.

(See here for my original methodology and here for a subsequent modification I made.)

Projections versus actuals (date of report).

• Cases:
  • Projection for 6/22: 16,450
  • Actual for 6/22: 16,459
  • Projection for 6/23: 16,496
• Hospitalizations:
  • Projection for 6/22: 114
  • Actual for 6/22: 106
  • Projection for 6/23: 107
• Deaths:
  • Projection for 6/22: 900
  • Actual for 6/22: 903
  • Projection for 6/23: 905