Category Archives: Public Safety

Cartoon – Pandemic Stages of Grief

Posted on by • Posted in 2020 Election Issues, Angry, Cartoon, Clinical Testing, Contact Tracing, Coronavirus, Denial, Depression, Economic Crisis, Economic Recovery, False Hope, False Narrative, Infection Control, Infection Control Plan, Infectious Virus, Misinformation, Misinterpret, Mislead, Misleading, Mistake, Mistrust, Mixed Message, Mortality, National Strategy, Pandemic, Personal Protective Equipment (PPE), Public Health, Public Opinion, Public Perception, Public Safety, Public Schools, Quarantine, School Reopening, Scientists, Social Distancing • Leave a comment

Cartoon by Sally-Covid 19 Pandemic Stages of Grief |

Contact tracing stopped at the country club gates

Posted on by • Posted in Asymptomatic Transmission, Clinical Testing, Contact Tracing, Coronavirus, Pandemic, Privacy, Public Health, Public Safety, Public Schools, Quarantine, Social Distancing, Superspreader, Superspreader Event, Superspreading Events • Leave a comment

https://mailchi.mp/0e13b5a09ec5/the-weekly-gist-august-21-2020?e=d1e747d2d8

Neo Classical Country Club Estate - $8,300,000 | Entrance gates ...

From downtown New Orleans to the tony suburbs of New York, post-graduation parties and summer gatherings drawing dozens of teens have become loci of COVID infections around the country.

Taking a look inside one prep-school-party COVID cluster, an article in the New Yorker recounts the reverberations from graduation parties turned superspreader events at an exclusive Atlanta private school.

Spurred by a false sense of security (“We don’t live in New York,” one dad said) and Georgia’s early reopening orders, several families at the Lovett School held graduation parties, some with as many as 50 attendees.

The school received its first report of a student testing positive four days after attending the graduation festivities. A growing cluster of infections became evident as more cases came to light, including among students who posted TikTok videos to announce their positive test results. Lovett’s school nurse began ad-hoc contact tracing, finding 23 positive cases on her first day of searching.

But Fulton County contact tracers were met with fierce resistance from parents, with the vast majority of those contacted declining to talk. The school provided students’ contact information, but said it couldn’t cooperate with tracers further due to privacy regulations.

There are many reasons that individuals might be reticent to participate in contact tracing, such as fear of losing a job, or worries about immigration status. But the resistance of wealthy, highly educated “prep school parents” to contact tracing is shocking. Public health efforts will continue to be stymied as long as the instinct to protect individual and school reputations from the perceived stigma of infection outweighs the greater good—the health of the community.

 

 

 

 

When COVID infection becomes a chronic disease

Posted on by • Posted in Asymptomatic Transmission, Chronic Care Management, Chronic Conditions, Chronic Diseases, Chronic Fatigue, Coronavirus, Economic Crisis, Infection Control, Infection Control Plan, Infectious Virus, Mortality, Pandemic, Post-Covid Care, Post-Covid Syndrome, Public Health, Public Safety, Quarantine, School Reopening, Scientists, Social Distancing • Leave a comment

https://mailchi.mp/0e13b5a09ec5/the-weekly-gist-august-21-2020?e=d1e747d2d8

Long COVID-19' a reality; 75 per cent patients suffer from ...

The minimal evidence of serious impact of COVID infection on young healthy individuals has been one of the bright spots of this pandemic. Overall, only a small percentage of those infected, mostly the elderly or those with pre-existing conditions, get very sick, and an even smaller number die.

But a new piece in The Atlantic lays out mounting evidence that many younger patients don’t spring back to good health after a few weeks, as common wisdom suggests; instead, they experience debilitating long-term effects, months after infection. The profile of the average patient with “Long-COVID” is just 44 years old, and previously fit and healthy.

She (the condition is much more common in women) likely suffered a mild initial infection. But now, months later, she still faces a wide range of symptoms. Some patients have significant chronic pulmonary or cardiac function abnormalities (like Georgia State’s star freshman quarterback recruit, sidelined for the year with post-COVID myocarditis).

But others are dealing with a different, but just as debilitating, set of symptoms resembling chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS).

And like CFS patients, many COVID “long-haulers” find their symptoms minimized by their doctors. Early studies show that large numbers of patients may be affected: in a series of 270 non-hospitalized patients, the CDC found a full third hadn’t returned to their usual health after two weeks (as compared to just 10 percent of influenza patients).

A handful of centers have taken the first step toward better understanding “Long-COVID”, establishing dedicated clinics to study and treat the growing number of patients for whom COVID-19 is turning out to be a chronic disease, leaving a wave of people with long-term disabilities in its wake.

 

 

 

The kids are not all right

Posted on by • Posted in 2020 Election Issues, Asymptomatic Transmission, Childcare, Children's Health, Clinical Testing, Contact Tracing, Coronavirus, Crisis, Crisis Management, Deferred Healthcare, Economic Crisis, Infection Control, Infection Control Plan, Infectious Virus, Mortality, National Strategy, Pandemic, Primary Care, Public Health, Public Opinion, Public Perception, Public Safety, Public Schools, Public Trust, Quarantine, School Reopening, Scientists, Social Distancing, Vaccination • Leave a comment

https://mailchi.mp/0e13b5a09ec5/the-weekly-gist-august-21-2020?e=d1e747d2d8

Many children heading back to school—in whichever form that that may take this fall—have skipped their annual visit to the pediatrician. The graphic above highlights the sluggish rebound in pediatric ambulatory volume. While adult primary care visits have mostly bounced back, pediatric visits are still 26 percent below pre-COVID levels.

The drop in visits early in the pandemic also impacted immunizations, with 2.5M regular childhood vaccinations missed in the US during the first quarter of 2020—and early data suggests those seem to be rebounding at a similarly anemic rate.

This lack of pediatric routine care is particularly worrisome as COVID-19 cases in children are climbing, with a 90 percent increase from July to August. Though most of the nation’s largest public school districts have opted to begin the school year with online learning, some districts have already returned to in-person classes, and, unsurprisingly, new cases are already being reported.

While COVID-19 is normally neither severe nor fatal in children, infections among school-age kids put others at risk. According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, nearly a quarter of teachers (1.5M) are considered high-risk and almost six percent of seniors (3.3M) live with school-aged children.

Without the traditional back-to-school push for well-child visits, sports physicals, and immunization updates, healthcare providers must think creatively about how to give children with the care they need, whether through personalized communication from pediatricians that assuages parental concerns about office safety, or through more innovative means such as drive-thru vaccination services.

 

 

 

It looks like what happens in Vegas isn’t staying in Vegas.

Posted on by • Posted in Asymptomatic Transmission, Clinical Testing, Contact Tracing, Coronavirus, Economic Crisis, Economic Recovery, Economy Reopening, Infection Control, Infection Control Plan, Infectious Virus, Mortality, National Strategy, Pandemic, Public Health, Public Safety, Quarantine, School Reopening, Scientists, Social Distancing • Leave a comment

https://www.forbes.com/sites/suzannerowankelleher/2020/08/21/las-vegas-may-be-a-superspreader-hot-spot-new-study-suggests/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=coronavirus&cdlcid=5d2c97df953109375e4d8b68#506ae817484d

Travelers returning from the Covid-19 hot spot are potentially spreading the virus to virtually every state in the nation, according to a new mobility data study conducted on behalf of the non-profit investigative news organization ProPublica.

The findings highlight the connection between travelers and the spread of the virus during the pandemic.

The ProPublica study looked at a total of 12 days of cellphone data in three batches: four days in May, when Nevada was still shut down; four days in June, just after Las Vegas reopened to tourism; and four days in mid-July. In May, travel from Las Vegas was mainly regional. But since Las Vegas reopened in early June, the mobility of smartphones leaving Las Vegas has become progressively more widespread and nationalized.

Over the final four-day period, in July, the study identified 26,000 smartphones on the Las Vegas Strip, many of which later appeared in 47 states within the same four-day period — every state in the continental United States except Maine.

“About 3,700 of the devices were spotted in Southern California in the same four days; about 2,700 in Arizona, with 740 in Phoenix; around 1,000 in Texas; more than 800 in Milwaukee, Detroit, Chicago and Cleveland; and more than 100 in the New York area,” reported ProPublica.

While the study did not determine how many of these travelers were infected with Covid-19 when they returned to their home states, it is reasonable to assume that many were. For the past several months, Las Vegas has been a hot spot for the disease.

Las Vegas is located in Clark County, Nevada, which is currently struggling with one of the highest rates of new COVID-19 infections in the country, with 26.9 new daily cases per 100,000 people tested over a rolling seven-day average, according to the Harvard Global Health Institute’s Covid-19 tracker. Any community with over 25 new daily cases is deemed to be at a tipping point where stay-at-home orders are necessary, according to Harvard researchers.

This isn’t the first data-driven study to show how travelers are spreading Covid-19 across the United States. In early July, the PolicyLab at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) released research indicating that the novel coronavirus was spreading along the nation’s interstate highways.

“Travel is certainly a huge driving factor,” the researchers wrote at the time. “We see spread along I-80 between central Illinois and Iowa, as well as along the I-90 corridor across upstate New York.” They pointed to a rise in cases along the I-95 corridor and concluded that interstate travel was creating renewed risk to regions like the Northeast that had successfully flattened the curve of the novel coronavirus.

Yesterday, Clark County’s Twitter account announced a grim milestone: The number of deaths attributed to Covid-19 in the community has now topped 1,000.

 

 

 

 

Why Most Voters Oppose Schools Reopening

Posted on by • Posted in 2020 Election Issues, Asymptomatic Transmission, Clinical Testing, Contact Tracing, Coronavirus, Crisis, Crisis Management, Economic Crisis, Economic Stimulus, Infection Control, Infection Control Plan, Infectious Virus, Leadership Decentralized, Mortality, National Strategy, Pandemic, Public Health, Public Opinion, Public Perception, Public Safety, Public Schools, Public Trust, Quarantine, School Reopening, Scientists, Social Distancing • Leave a comment

https://www.forbes.com/sites/williamhaseltine/2020/08/21/why-most-voters-oppose-schools-reopening/#2df43b5b1822

Why Most Voters Oppose Schools Reopening

Even as test rates hover around six to seven percent and tens of thousands of new Covid-19 cases are being reported daily, school districts across the country will continue with plans to resume operations in the coming weeks. The latest survey data shows, however, that most Americans oppose reopening K-12 education in their states.

Parents have reason to be concerned that sending their children to school could bring the virus into their homes, as well as spike positivity rates in their communities. From July 30th to August 13th, over 75,000 new child Covid-19 cases were reported, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics. The outcome would be disastrous were even one asymptomatic carrier to attend classes in the coming weeks.

A recent survey conducted by the Financial Times-Peterson Foundation US Economic Monitor revealed that six in ten voters oppose reopening K-12 schools in their states, while as many as 81 percent urge the prioritization of health among students and faculty over the economy. Were children to get sick at school, not only would their health be endangered, but so would the health of their families. There would be no economy without healthy parents, which is why the vast majority of Americans urge the safety of American students over the state of the economy.

One of the more prudent concerns about the resumption of K-12 education is the social nature of a student’s daily life. School districts are assuring parents that they have put preventative measures in place, such as social distancing and classroom hybridization. But to assume students will have no interaction at all seems ludicrous. Children and teens have been out of the traditional school setting for over five months and they will be ready to interact with others. 

Despite the urge shared by parents and children alike to return to normal, the average voter realizes that the pandemic in the United States is far from over. Parents want their children to stay healthy for many reasons—to ensure the physical health and wellbeing of the family, to ensure the economic livelihood of the family, and to avoid the unknown long term health risks associated with Covid-19. Around 65 percent of voters believe social distancing requirements and non essential business restrictions should be in place for at least another three months—a sacrifice many are willing to make for the sake of their families and children.

Such statistics also show that people recognize there will be several more months of abnormality and want decision makers to take action accordingly, even if it means deprioritizing the economy. Families and individuals have been economically crippled by the pandemic and the US government’s lack of public assistance. The official unemployment rate still hovers around ten percent according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Low income families are struggling and eviction rates are sure to spike as rent moratoriums expire. These families have enough to worry about without the added pressure of sending their children back to school at this time.

The reopening of K-12 school districts in the coming weeks presents medical and economic challenges for families in the pandemic era, especially those already disadvantaged or experiencing hardship. Societal immunity is a long way off; as thirty five percent of voters said they would not be likely to get a COVID-19 vaccine were one approved and available by the end of the year, meaning children of those thirty five percent would also be unlikely to get vaccinated. With the inability to ensure the health and safety of students and the unknown economic future to come, schools are better off staying online for the time being.

 

 

 

 

The Science Behind Campus Coronavirus Outbreaks

Posted on by • Posted in 2020 Election Issues, Asymptomatic Transmission, Clinical Testing, Contact Tracing, Coronavirus, Crisis, Crisis Management, Economic Crisis, Infection Control, Infection Control Plan, Infectious Virus, Leadership Decentralized, Mortality, National Strategy, Pandemic, Public Health, Public Opinion, Public Perception, Public Safety, Public Schools, Public Trust, Quarantine, Respect, Responsibility, School Reopening, Scientists, Social Distancing, Virtual Work, Virtual Workforce • Leave a comment

https://www.forbes.com/sites/johndrake/2020/08/21/the-science-of-campus-outbreaks/#4c5704ae6893

LSU frat parties become coronavirus 'superspreader events ...

Colleges And Universities Reverting To Online Instruction

On August 17, seven days after the start of in-person classes, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill announced that, due to a dramatic increase in Covid-19 on campus, all undergraduate classes would be held online for the remainder of the fall. Ithaca College and Michigan State pulled the plug on August 18. Two days later, N.C. State joined the club. More may follow. (The Chronicle of Higher Education maintains a live update feed.) In fact, only a minority of colleges and universities are still attempting fall instruction fully or primarily in person (about 25% at this writing).

Only time will tell if these rapid course changes were warranted and, of course, the answer may not be the same everywhere. Each institution is unique with respect to size, culture, infrastructure to provide online learning, and ability to cope with transmission.

What We Know About Infectious Diseases On College Campuses

In thinking about Covid-19 transmission on campus, it may be useful to know something about the science of epidemics among college students in general. There is a small scientific literature on disease outbreaks on campus. Campuses are special for several reasons. News photos of students lounging on green quads, engaged in late night study groups, or partying into the wee hours reminds us that if college is known for anything other than studying and college sports, it might be the unique gregariousness that attaches to what many people call the “college experience.”

Although outbreaks of infectious diseases on college campuses are routinely reported, there is little evidence that they are more explosive than in the general population. Outbreaks of directly transmitted diseases like measles, mumps, and whooping cough occur with some regularity and are typically contained through isolation and other public health measures. But, no study has been done to systematically examine how the campus environment differs from community-based transmission. 

Influenza is a particularly interesting case because, like Covid-19, it is a respiratory disease transmitted directly through close contact and also has a short incubation period. The basic reproduction number (R0) is a measure of the explosiveness of an epidemic, with anything over R0 = 1 indicating the possibility of sustained transmission.

In 2014, CDC and academic scientists compiled a list of all estimates of R0 for influenza. While most estimates for the 2009 pandemic were between 1 and 2, estimates from some schools (not necessarily colleges or universities) were noticeably higher (2.3 for a school in Japan and 3.3 for a school in the United States), although other cases (Iran and the United Kingdom) were similar to the rest of the population.

Perhaps more importantly, a study in Pullman, Washington (home to Washington State University) estimated R0 of the 2009 pandemic flu to be around 6, which is two to four times larger than most other estimates. So there is some evidence that campus contagions may be more prone to outbreak than other places.

Since Covid-19 is typically much less severe in young adults than in older adults, another question that seems particularly important now is whether transmission among students remains primarily within the student population or readily spreads to the rest of the community. 

In a measles outbreak at a university in China, the fraction of staff who were infected was not statistically different from the fraction of students. The total number of staff infected — three — was small, however, and it seems unlikely that this is the usual pattern.

A study of the 2009 influenza pandemic at the University of Delaware found that the risk of infection for people older than 30 was roughly half the risk of those that were 18 to 29.

An even more interesting aspect of the University of Delaware study is the association with student activities. Reports of influenza-like illness among students at a nearby emergency health center remained stable for almost a month after spring break. But cases increased almost five-fold following “Greek week”. In the final analysis, belonging to a fraternity or sorority doubled a student’s chances of being infected.

What’s Happening Now

This is concerning now as cases of Covid-19 are rising among college students nationwide. College leaders such as Penn State president Eric Barron, University of Kansas chancellor Douglas Girod, and University of Tennessee chancellor Donde Plowman have reproached students, especially fraternities and sororities, for ignoring guidance to avoid large gatherings.

Yesterday, J. Michael Haynie, Vice Chancellor for Strategic Initiatives and Innovation publicly excoriated students at Syracuse University for “selfishly jeopardizing” the possibility of in-person instruction this fall. “Make no mistake,” he wrote, “there was not a single student who gathered on the Quad last night who did not know and understand that it was wrong to do so.”

The science of Covid-19 tells us that students are vulnerable, just like everyone else. Although the evidence is somewhat thin, what there is points only in one direction: because of their specific social structure, college campuses are especially prone to outbreaks of infectious diseases. As in the rest of society, the only way to slow down the Covid-19 pandemic on college campuses is to reduce the rate of infectious contacts. There is too much value in the college experience to reduce it to partying, and it should not be squandered altogether for the sake of the party experience.

 

 

 

 

Cartoon – Covid Facts Don’t Matter

Posted on by • Posted in 2020 Election Issues, Cartoon, Coronavirus, Evidence-based Leadership, Evidence-Based Plan, Evidence-Based Policy, Expert, Expert Opinion, Fact-Denying Populism, Facts, False Hope, False Narrative, Infection Control, Infection Control Plan, Infectious Virus, Misinformation, Misinterpret, Mislead, Misleading, Mistake, Mistrust, Mixed Message, Mortality, National Strategy, Pandemic, Partisanship, Public Health, Public Opinion, Public Perception, Public Safety, Public Schools, Public Trust, Quarantine, School Reopening, Scientists, Social Distancing, Wishful Thinking • Leave a comment

Facts Don't Matter (cncartoons033663-514) | Speak Up For Success

Florida Hits 10,000 Coronavirus Deaths—The Fifth State To Reach That Mark

Posted on by • Posted in 2020 Election Issues, Clinical Testing, Contact Tracing, Coronavirus, Crisis, Crisis Management, Economic Crisis, Economy Reopening, Evidence-based Leadership, Evidence-Based Plan, Evidence-Based Policy, Infection Control, Infection Control Plan, Infectious Virus, Leadership Decentralized, Mortality, National Strategy, Pandemic, Positivity Rate, Public Health, Public Opinion, Public Perception, Public Safety, Public Schools, Public Trust, Quarantine, School Reopening, Scientists, Social Distancing • Leave a comment

https://www.forbes.com/sites/nicholasreimann/2020/08/20/florida-hits-10000-coronavirus-deaths-the-fifth-state-to-reach-that-mark/#29e05eb438f3

Florida Hits 10,000 Coronavirus Deaths—The Fifth State To Reach ...

TOPLINE

Over 10,000 Floridians have now died of coronavirus, marking a grim milestone that comes weeks after the state led the record U.S. coronavirus case surge earlier this summer.

 

KEY FACTS

10,049 Florida residents have died of coronavirus, according to the state, reaching that mark after adding 117 deaths Thursday.

Florida is the fifth state in the U.S. to record over 10,000 deaths, joining New York and New Jersey, where most deaths happened during the spring coronavirus surge, along with California and Texas, where most deaths occurred during the summer.

Florida has been the nation’s recent coronavirus epicenter, but the pandemic’s spread seems to have slowed there over the past few weeks, even as deaths, which lag behind other statistics, have been at record highs in the state.

New cases have recently reached their lowest daily increases in two months, and hospitalizations have trended downward since late July.

The testing positivity rate, seen as one of the first indicators of increased coronavirus spread, dropped below 10% Thursday—the first time the state has been below that threshold since June 21, and less than half the 20.71% positivity rate the state had at its highest point on July 8.

 

BIG NUMBER

23.8%. Gov. Ron DeSantis said that’s what the positivity rate was Thursday for antibody testing at state-run drive-through sites. That number suggests a massive amount of Floridians, much higher than the record-setting confirmed case counts, were infected with coronavirus this summer.

 

SURPRISING FACT

There are five U.S. states that have over 10,000 deaths. That’s a number that only 14 countries around the world have hit, according to Johns Hopkins University. The U.S. continues to have by far the most coronavirus deaths of any country and could reach 175,000 deaths before the weekend.

 

KEY BACKGROUND

The U.S. as a whole is on a downward trend when it comes to coronavirus metrics, which seems to be influenced by large states, like Florida, having a reduction in coronavirus spread.

States like California, Texas and Florida, the nation’s three most populated, were all setting records when the U.S. had its highest confirmed coronavirus spike earlier this summer. They now seem to be pushing the country in the other direction.

 

 

 

 

Op-Ed: American Exceptionalism or American Insanity?

Posted on by • Posted in 2020 Election Issues, Centers for Disease Control & Prevention (CDC), Coronavirus, Coronavirus Treatment, False Hope, False Narrative, Hydroxychloroquine, Judgement, Misinformation, Misinterpret, Mislead, Misleading, Mistake, Mistrust, Mixed Message, Pandemic, Panic, Panic Mindset, Physician, Public Health, Public Opinion, Public Perception, Public Safety, Scientists, Unnecessary Care, Wishful Thinking • Leave a comment

https://www.medpagetoday.com/infectiousdisease/covid19/88163?xid=nl_popmed_2020-08-20&eun=g885344d0r&utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=PopMedicine_082020&utm_content=Final&utm_term=NL_Gen_Int_PopMedicine_Active

We don’t have all of the answers, but that’s not our biggest problem.

Thirty years ago, in preparation for hunting season, I went to a shooting range to practice with my bow. I felt fine. When I finished, I got in my truck and began to back out. When I pressed on the brake, I felt a sharp pain in my foot. My first instinct was to go over what I did walking back and forth to pull arrows from the target. Had I twisted my foot, did I trip on something? No, I had not injured my foot in any way.

When I got home, I took off my shoe and looked. My big toe was slightly swollen and slightly red. It looked like gout. I took ibuprofen. I was better by the next day. I never had another attack until this week.

I was at a friend’s house drinking wine. My knee suddenly began to hurt. I walk or jog 6-8 miles per day, so my first thought was that all the exercise was catching up to me. I took ibuprofen. It got better. But the next day my ankle suddenly became very painful; then my wrist hurt a bit. I remembered my experience with gout. I treated myself for gout, and got better.

I feel very fortunate to live in a time when gout can be easily treated. One hundred years ago, I would have been in big trouble. Which is not to say that I would not have taken medicine in an attempt to get relief. I would have tried a variety of products that claimed to help but did no good.

Today, we can treat so many illnesses that were brutal and deadly in the past. A long time ago, all children with type 1 diabetes died. Today, we have effective therapy — insulin. When I was a resident in the early 1980s, we had no specific way of treating a heart attack. Today, we can place a stent and reverse the pathological process.

In the past, something as simple as poison ivy could make a person’s life miserable. Today, we can knock it out in a short time. Modern medicine can do amazing things. To a large extent, it can do these amazing things because of effective biomedical science.

However, it can’t cure everything. Nor can it beat death. The amazing accomplishments of the medical profession in the last 100 years seem to have led some to believe, or want to believe, that doctors can solve all medical problems. This belief system came to bear with the COVID-19 pandemic.

Many expected the medical profession to step up and solve the problem. When it didn’t, disappointment arose. Then accusations began to fly. Some claimed that there were conspiracies involving Big Pharma and doctors. Others claimed there were cures that were being suppressed by the government.

Some doctors and scientists responded to this by trying to appease. They turned to in vitro data — such as the zinc/hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) interaction — to claim that zinc and HCQ would work wonders. When other doctors and scientists pointed out flaws in that data, they were attacked. It was another conspiracy. I even heard accusations that this was a plot by Bill Gates for population control.

Some doctors also turned to poor, anecdotal trials with HCQ that supposedly showed benefit in a few patients. This led quite a few to believe that HCQ was a wonder drug. Once the exaggerations about HCQ came out, it could no longer be found in pharmacies. The panic was just that strong.

Everyone seemed to get caught up in the panic mindset, and then work under the notion that a lack of clear medical success just can’t be possible in the 21st century. Many patients in intensive care units across the country were being put on HCQ, steroids, remdesivir, anti-IL-6 medication, vitamin C, and whatever else seemed like it might do something.

Many patients who were put on that medication cocktail died, because there was no legitimate science behind this approach — whether it helped was unclear.

However, over time, it became more clear that steroids helped. It became more clear that HCQ did not help. Such revelations led to more reasonable, though not entirely proven, therapeutic approaches. But because the less scientific approaches had so much hype in the beginning, and because the panic was so strong, getting away from them has been fraught with problems and accusations, and even physical threats.

Sadly, some of these accusations and threats were fueled by irresponsible doctors in academic medical centers. Misinformation was fed to the public, and the public, being not well-versed in biomedical research, latched onto the credentials of these doctors rather than seeing through their hysterical and misguided arguments about HCQ and such.

The internet and the free flow of information allows many who don’t really understand the ins and outs of biomedical research and clinical medicine to read something that sounds good and believe it because it satisfies psychological needs. This is a clear pattern of behavior when it comes to HCQ.

But it is not just irresponsible people in academic medical centers who contribute to this process. Doctors, many of whom post on medical blogs, accuse anyone who says we should slow down and evaluate our therapy of “wanting to do nothing” or “not caring about the thousands who are dying.” Even well-intentioned doctors get caught up in this need to seem like something is being done, and so they order all sorts of useless tests.

One such useless test being ordered more commonly in COVID patients is an MRI of the heart. One study in a few patients comes out that shows that COVID can affect the heart, and the next thing you know everybody with COVID needs a heart MRI. Whether the MRI is a reliable test for this is unclear. What we do with the information from the MRI is unclear. It just makes some doctors and some patients feel good to engage in such useless practices.

This pattern of behavior, the pattern of engaging in useless practices to give the appearance of care, is quite common in the profession of medicine. I find it interesting that it has not been challenged by progressives, like those so interested in the Green New Deal. The environmental harm done along these lines by misguided doctors might do as much or more environmental harm than fracking — but at least with fracking you get something to show for your efforts.

With out-of-control doctors, ordering useless tests, running MRI machines and CT scans, etc., day in and day out, without valid justifications, produces nothing useful — unless one believes that feeding hypochondriasis and feeding poor medical judgment is useful.

The profession of medicine accomplished great things in the 21st century. These great things came through American exceptionalism. They came through valid biomedical science. These amazing accomplishments led many to believe that the profession of medicine has all the answers.

But it doesn’t. The COVID pandemic has shown us that. I’m sorry that we can’t save everyone. It is tragic. But it will be more tragic if we let our limitations along these lines lead us into a dark place of anger, lack of reason, lack of valid science, and then on to invalid conspiracy theories.

American exceptionalism does not need to die because of COVID. Instead, what needs to die is a type of insanity that makes us think we have all the answers. What needs to die is a type of insanity that makes us think that if we don’t have all the answers, we have to turn to useless testing, unproven therapies, and futile care.

What needs to die is the turning to false prophets and conspiracy theories. The profession of medicine has proven that it can do a very good job combating illness.

Good doctors are trying hard to deal with and solve this pandemic. When a type of insanity gets in the way, it is a problem.

W. Robert Graham, MD, completed medical school and residency at UTHSC-Dallas (Parkland Hospital) and served as chief resident. Graham received a National Institutes of Health fellowship at the Salk Institute for oncogene research in 1985. He was a professor of medicine at Baylor College of Medicine from 1998 through 2016. In retirement, he enjoys writing and ranching.