Ever get that feeling that you are a bit helpless, maybe not in total control of your life?
I just read an article published by the editors of The New England Journal of Medicine, one that castigates government officials for their response to the pandemic.* I can understand their frustration. They are medicine men and women. They seek cures, and, if possible, preventions. They are “scientists” who look to double-blind studies for evidence, and they try to deduct rather than induct. But they focus on the incompetence of government leaders, both Federal and state in a process of hindsight assessment. Oh! To have known the game’s score ahead of time! We could all be rich.
I’m not up on my medical journal reading, so I went through the Journal’s archived articles, starting with January 2, 2020. Recall that the Wuhan virus began to receive serious notice in late 2019. The first issue (Vol. 382, No. 1) of the NEJM this year had articles on climate change, drug policy, “performance art of student doctoring” (?), ischemic strokes, alcohol and atrial fibrillation, hemophilia, head and neck cancer, fallopian tube torsion, emphysema, statins, CIRIPR, and thrombosis during spaceflight (no doubt, a serious problem for so many of us). I noted no articles on COVID-19, its prevention or cure. I did find an article on “fun” (Yes, fun) in the fifth issue. In the February 20, 2020, issue, the magazine published a report initially published in its online forum at the end of January. That article, “A Novel Coronavirus from Patients with Pneumonia in China, 2019” noted a link between pneumonia and a wholesale seafood market in Wuhan and ascribed the illness to “2019-nCoV” (the “novel” coronavirus). You can read that article online at https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2001017 . A follow-up article appeared online on January 31, but it was not published in the journal until March 5. That article contains this statement: “Currently, our understanding of the clinical spectrum of 2019-nCoV infection is very limited.” And this statement: “Finally, this report highlights the need to determine the full spectrum and natural history of clinical disease, pathogenesis, and duration of viral shedding associated with 2019-nCoV infection to inform clinical management and public health decision making.” Keep in mind that that was March 5.
Closing the barn door after the horses escaped? The first US case was a guy who had traveled from Wuhan to Washington state. By January 30, the WHO had declared a public health emergency. Maybe I missed the NEJM’s insightful warning and recommended preventions in those early issues. Maybe the editors issued guidelines for whose absence they fault the non-medical leaders. You can have a look through the archived articles for yourself.
I don’t know about you, but by the end of February, I was already making trips for some extra groceries (and, yes, for toilet paper and disinfectants) because the disease was spreading, and in early March, on a trip out of state, I took care to avoid close contact with strangers. I did not take those precautions because the medical community—specifically, the editors of the NEJM—had given guidelines or spread those guidelines the way the Weather Channel and the National Weather Service spreads warnings about dangerous storm conditions.
In Vol. 382, No. 11 (March, 12) issue, the NEJM began to run articles about COVID-19. Good for the editors, not good enough for the general population. By that time, the disease was becoming widespread. Again, maybe my laziness has prevented me from reading through all the NEJM articles to find specific information about prevention. Maybe I missed the journal’s call for banning all flights from Europe and, more specifically, from China (though any Chinese citizen could have flown to some other country and then to the US). I haven’t found any early articles on using Vitamin D3, or zinc, or turmeric, or thiamine, or Vitamin K2, or any other suspected preventatives. Sure, early on no one knew anything about such dietary additives, and even now there are debates and some conflicting studies. But if the medical community is still debating, why should anyone expect that the medically untrained politicians serving in state and Federal positions to know a precise course of action?
What I have witnessed, as you have, is a plethora of blame, of finger-pointing. I have NOT contracted COVID-19—yet (WHEW!). I might not get it. I might get it and survive. I might get it and die. But I cannot in good conscience look around for a scapegoat. I’ve known about the disease since it was first reported, and I tried from the outset to avoid it. I had no medical knowledge about any therapies or preventatives; I simply tried to keep a safe distance from strangers. Of course, that meant I was around relatives and friends, and I did know of a family in NJ that spread it among themselves at a family gathering.
I never died from the flu, but having been a college professor for four decades, I certainly had my bouts with flus of various kinds—until I began to get flu shots. I do remember having a flu once that seemed particularly debilitating—I wasn’t quite sure I was going to make it through the night. Every year the flu spreads. Every year everyone knows that the flu spreads. Every year people get very sick from the flu, and many people die. Which one of us goes around faulting others for the spread of the flu? Which one of us finds a scapegoat in a political leader? Which one of us finds a scapegoat among those in the medical profession? Flus come and go. We have no control over their arrival, only control over whether or not we have taken personal precautions against contracting them.
That the NEJM has decided to fault political leaders for not stopping a virus seems to me to be a bit of psychological projection, possibly even a bit of hypocrisy. Did the editors call a press conference? Did they bombard newspapers with information on COVID-19? Did they make a YouTube video, a tweet storm, a declaration on FB, all designed to prevent the spread of the virus?
Do we need an analogy? Unannounced, friends show up. You are happy to see them, and you feel you are remiss if you don’t serve them snacks, drinks, possibly even a meal. You didn’t know they were coming; you were unprepared for their arrival. You make do with what you have on hand for entertainment and food. That’s the best you can do under the circumstances.
Obviously, a virus isn’t a friend. It showed up on our doorsteps with only a very short warning, not enough warning for even the most highly trained medical minds to know what to do, what medicines to serve, or what specific actions to take. Typical of our times—maybe of every era—we see hindsight assessments. We see scapegoating.
Could things have been done differently? Sure, but who can run the clock backwards? Seems that blame is the best the NEJM can do. But what does the hindsight accomplish unless it serves as a lesson for future pandemics? Who, for example, did anything to prevent the spread of H1N1 that infected, according to the CDC, 60 million Americans? And who does anything truly effective to prevent the spread of flus through schools?
Our current milieu is an Age of Blame and hindsight even though we have more medical technology than any previous age. And why? Regardless of the great strides modern medicine has made, it still operates in a highly complex globalized world, and organisms still evolve to prey on other organisms. If we could see viruses as plainly as we can see ants or termites, maybe we would operate differently, but even the visibility of those critters, larger by many orders of magnitude than a virus, still invade our homes.
Our current milieu is also an Age of Personal Irresponsibility, also. If ants invade my house, it’s because I wasn’t vigilant enough to prevent their invasion. Should I blame the local township supervisor for not warning me and giving me the tools for preventing the invasion? Ants are relentless and ubiquitous, but they don’t even come close to the persistence of unseen viruses.
Stay as safe as you can. Do some research. But realize that you are, in fact, a target. Your best defense isn’t some governmental leader, but, rather, self-defense. And, yes, you will fail to defend yourself on occasion, but that doesn’t justify scapegoating medically untrained political leaders in hindsight, especially when the medically trained experts are puzzled about a disease and the vectors of its spread.**
*https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMe2029812?utm_source=Nature+Briefing&utm_campaign=986c3e4017-briefing-dy-20201008&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_c9dfd39373-986c3e4017-44487885
**The CDC just reversed itself on the transmission vectors. Really? So, I guess in following their previous guidelines for safety, I was actually exposing myself to the virus. What’s next from the medical professionals?
I just read an article published by the editors of The New England Journal of Medicine, one that castigates government officials for their response to the pandemic.* I can understand their frustration. They are medicine men and women. They seek cures, and, if possible, preventions. They are “scientists” who look to double-blind studies for evidence, and they try to deduct rather than induct. But they focus on the incompetence of government leaders, both Federal and state in a process of hindsight assessment. Oh! To have known the game’s score ahead of time! We could all be rich.
I’m not up on my medical journal reading, so I went through the Journal’s archived articles, starting with January 2, 2020. Recall that the Wuhan virus began to receive serious notice in late 2019. The first issue (Vol. 382, No. 1) of the NEJM this year had articles on climate change, drug policy, “performance art of student doctoring” (?), ischemic strokes, alcohol and atrial fibrillation, hemophilia, head and neck cancer, fallopian tube torsion, emphysema, statins, CIRIPR, and thrombosis during spaceflight (no doubt, a serious problem for so many of us). I noted no articles on COVID-19, its prevention or cure. I did find an article on “fun” (Yes, fun) in the fifth issue. In the February 20, 2020, issue, the magazine published a report initially published in its online forum at the end of January. That article, “A Novel Coronavirus from Patients with Pneumonia in China, 2019” noted a link between pneumonia and a wholesale seafood market in Wuhan and ascribed the illness to “2019-nCoV” (the “novel” coronavirus). You can read that article online at https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2001017 . A follow-up article appeared online on January 31, but it was not published in the journal until March 5. That article contains this statement: “Currently, our understanding of the clinical spectrum of 2019-nCoV infection is very limited.” And this statement: “Finally, this report highlights the need to determine the full spectrum and natural history of clinical disease, pathogenesis, and duration of viral shedding associated with 2019-nCoV infection to inform clinical management and public health decision making.” Keep in mind that that was March 5.
Closing the barn door after the horses escaped? The first US case was a guy who had traveled from Wuhan to Washington state. By January 30, the WHO had declared a public health emergency. Maybe I missed the NEJM’s insightful warning and recommended preventions in those early issues. Maybe the editors issued guidelines for whose absence they fault the non-medical leaders. You can have a look through the archived articles for yourself.
I don’t know about you, but by the end of February, I was already making trips for some extra groceries (and, yes, for toilet paper and disinfectants) because the disease was spreading, and in early March, on a trip out of state, I took care to avoid close contact with strangers. I did not take those precautions because the medical community—specifically, the editors of the NEJM—had given guidelines or spread those guidelines the way the Weather Channel and the National Weather Service spreads warnings about dangerous storm conditions.
In Vol. 382, No. 11 (March, 12) issue, the NEJM began to run articles about COVID-19. Good for the editors, not good enough for the general population. By that time, the disease was becoming widespread. Again, maybe my laziness has prevented me from reading through all the NEJM articles to find specific information about prevention. Maybe I missed the journal’s call for banning all flights from Europe and, more specifically, from China (though any Chinese citizen could have flown to some other country and then to the US). I haven’t found any early articles on using Vitamin D3, or zinc, or turmeric, or thiamine, or Vitamin K2, or any other suspected preventatives. Sure, early on no one knew anything about such dietary additives, and even now there are debates and some conflicting studies. But if the medical community is still debating, why should anyone expect that the medically untrained politicians serving in state and Federal positions to know a precise course of action?
What I have witnessed, as you have, is a plethora of blame, of finger-pointing. I have NOT contracted COVID-19—yet (WHEW!). I might not get it. I might get it and survive. I might get it and die. But I cannot in good conscience look around for a scapegoat. I’ve known about the disease since it was first reported, and I tried from the outset to avoid it. I had no medical knowledge about any therapies or preventatives; I simply tried to keep a safe distance from strangers. Of course, that meant I was around relatives and friends, and I did know of a family in NJ that spread it among themselves at a family gathering.
I never died from the flu, but having been a college professor for four decades, I certainly had my bouts with flus of various kinds—until I began to get flu shots. I do remember having a flu once that seemed particularly debilitating—I wasn’t quite sure I was going to make it through the night. Every year the flu spreads. Every year everyone knows that the flu spreads. Every year people get very sick from the flu, and many people die. Which one of us goes around faulting others for the spread of the flu? Which one of us finds a scapegoat in a political leader? Which one of us finds a scapegoat among those in the medical profession? Flus come and go. We have no control over their arrival, only control over whether or not we have taken personal precautions against contracting them.
That the NEJM has decided to fault political leaders for not stopping a virus seems to me to be a bit of psychological projection, possibly even a bit of hypocrisy. Did the editors call a press conference? Did they bombard newspapers with information on COVID-19? Did they make a YouTube video, a tweet storm, a declaration on FB, all designed to prevent the spread of the virus?
Do we need an analogy? Unannounced, friends show up. You are happy to see them, and you feel you are remiss if you don’t serve them snacks, drinks, possibly even a meal. You didn’t know they were coming; you were unprepared for their arrival. You make do with what you have on hand for entertainment and food. That’s the best you can do under the circumstances.
Obviously, a virus isn’t a friend. It showed up on our doorsteps with only a very short warning, not enough warning for even the most highly trained medical minds to know what to do, what medicines to serve, or what specific actions to take. Typical of our times—maybe of every era—we see hindsight assessments. We see scapegoating.
Could things have been done differently? Sure, but who can run the clock backwards? Seems that blame is the best the NEJM can do. But what does the hindsight accomplish unless it serves as a lesson for future pandemics? Who, for example, did anything to prevent the spread of H1N1 that infected, according to the CDC, 60 million Americans? And who does anything truly effective to prevent the spread of flus through schools?
Our current milieu is an Age of Blame and hindsight even though we have more medical technology than any previous age. And why? Regardless of the great strides modern medicine has made, it still operates in a highly complex globalized world, and organisms still evolve to prey on other organisms. If we could see viruses as plainly as we can see ants or termites, maybe we would operate differently, but even the visibility of those critters, larger by many orders of magnitude than a virus, still invade our homes.
Our current milieu is also an Age of Personal Irresponsibility, also. If ants invade my house, it’s because I wasn’t vigilant enough to prevent their invasion. Should I blame the local township supervisor for not warning me and giving me the tools for preventing the invasion? Ants are relentless and ubiquitous, but they don’t even come close to the persistence of unseen viruses.
Stay as safe as you can. Do some research. But realize that you are, in fact, a target. Your best defense isn’t some governmental leader, but, rather, self-defense. And, yes, you will fail to defend yourself on occasion, but that doesn’t justify scapegoating medically untrained political leaders in hindsight, especially when the medically trained experts are puzzled about a disease and the vectors of its spread.**
*https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMe2029812?utm_source=Nature+Briefing&utm_campaign=986c3e4017-briefing-dy-20201008&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_c9dfd39373-986c3e4017-44487885
**The CDC just reversed itself on the transmission vectors. Really? So, I guess in following their previous guidelines for safety, I was actually exposing myself to the virus. What’s next from the medical professionals?
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