My take on DOs is like people who did their veterinary degree out of country.
Some are super Drs that would have qualified for school here in the states were it not for some social problem they encountered while in undergrad (I know one that fell hard for the wrong guy, and another who was raised in a repressive traditional Chinese family, and then got into a frat). Others are simply mediocre intellects that didn’t qualify for the more rigorous (and esteemed program) because they really are not as bright/capable as one would want a Dr to be. Your mileage may vary.
It struck me as odd that anyone should debate taking the test. You’d think a president would be monitored and tested all the time, regardless.
The only reasonable explanation I could think of as to why the debate on whether to test or not was that he definitely has it and they don’t want to panic the nation/seem weak to his enemies.
Is this the same doctor who tells us that our fat 73-year-old president who lives off cheeseburgers and fries, does not exercise, and regularly loses his train of thought when speaking was in perfect health last physical? LOL
So… When you’re lungs are ripped to shreds by this virus, i will still be there to intubate you, set up lung protective ventilation, run your sedation, antibiotics, and pressors whether or not you believe me to be a “real” physician or not.
From my own perspective, the top of my class could hang with the top of the class in any medical school, plain and simple. I took USMLE step 1 and step 2, along with the osteopathic boards. And, gosh darn it, wouldn’t you know, I scored better than 91% of the cohort of MD students who took it my year. Seats are limited and the medical school selection process is pretty flawed.
Its marginally easier to make it into a DO school than an allopathic school. True. But it isn’t a cake walk, by any stretch of the imagination. And the curriculum is not “parroting”. It’s medical school. Anatomy, Physiology, Pathology, Pharmacology. The Osteopathic manipulative medicine course is one amongst many. There is a good chunk of OMM that I will not stand by (don’t get me started on craniosacral therapy). Now, my profession has its (small) share of woo and charlatans, but, not much more than the percentage of woo/charlatans that come out of MD schools. How many MD schools have a department of “alternative” medicine? And teach classes in " alternative" therapies. Let’s name off some well respected, totally non quack allopaths, shall we! Andrew Weill, MD. Mehmet Oz, MD. Andrew Wakefield MBBS, Christopher Duntsch MD PhD (aka Dr. Death).
I did my residency (in anesthesiology)at a well respected Midwestern University, I took and passed the same specialty boards as my MD colleagues did. Do you really think it matters that there is a DO behind my name rather than MD. Or the vast majority of my colleagues?
It was a term coined by the quack Samuel Hahnemann, who invented homeopathy. It has since its inception been a pejorative, though in the early 1800s conventional medicine probably deserved the sneer. Anyone who uses the term today to describe evidence-based medicine should be automatically suspect.
I doubt every announcement from the White House, particularly re: COVID-19, but I don’t think the copied signature means much. “Sign it for me,” or “You can e-sign it for me,” are common on official documents. “In B4 template” notwithstanding , I suspect the doctor’s assistant (or someone similar) literally used the previous day’s memo (with sig) as a template.
I might buy that if there’s other evidence of this having been done before. Until then, circumstantial though it may be, it reads a lot like a tell. When you add it to the lack of specificity and apparent weasel-wording in the body of the text, it does not yield confidence in the factual content of the letter.
He probably doesn’t have it. If he did we would see symptoms that you can’t really hide and he would feel like shit and be in bed.
I hate the fact that this president is the first one in my life time where I would really question a statement so simple. I mean every president tells lies, half truths, and exaggerations. But his chronic lying is so prolific I can’t trust anything he says.
That said, his cavalier attitude might get him exposed at some point.
, I suspect the doctor’s assistant (or someone similar) literally used the previous day’s memo (with sig) as a template.