At Bloomberg economics columnist Ferdinando Giugliano pens a rather lugubrious column, the thesis of which is stated in its opening paragraph:
The 2008 financial crisis led the public to discover the limits of economics. The Covid-19 pandemic risks having the same effect on scientists and medical doctors.
While I think that the crisis should have that effect I doubt it will, at least not in the near term. You need only look at the TV spots lauding the heroism of medical professionals to recognize that.
Perhaps at some future date a dispassionate inquiry will note that this crisis has revealed just how tenuous a grasp on life medical care has granted so many. Supportive care while the patient heals him- or herself is less a mark of victory than an acknowledgement of inevitable defeat, particularly in the elderly. Quite to the contrary I expect that health care will retain most or all of its patina.
Are we not spending enough on health care or far too much? I suspect that will continue to be debated for the foreseeable future.
Hope springs eternal in the human breast;
Man never Is, but always To be blest.
The soul, uneasy, and confin’d from home,
Rests and expatiates in a life to come.
First, if people really expected that scientists and phsyicians would come up with a cure for a new disease in a few months, then they were bound to be disappointed. What we have always done in the case of an infectious disease that is new is provide supportive care while looking for new therapies or vaccines. That supportive care is much better now than in the past. If we were practicing 1960s era medicine then lives lost would have probably been tripled. (We didnt have Hi-flo oxygen or Bi-Pap. Our ventilators and methods for ventilating would have been harmful for a lot of Covid pts.) Nonetheless, while care is much better than it would have been even a few years ago, the author is correct that we have not come up with a cure or vaccine in 3 months. By that standard medicine is a failure. ***
However, his second primary point seems to be that there has been poor messaging on the part of scientists and phsyicians. While there has been some disagreement, there has been more agreement than not. The initial statements on masks were an attempt to preserve masks for health care workers. In retrospect that was probably a mistake since it has been used as a political cudgel to oppose mask use. Much better to have a few more healthcare workers die from a lack of masks rather than this continued political issue. However, the big inconsistencies have occurred due to the political figures not the scientists and physicians. He gives the example of hydrochloroquine. There we had the unprecedented involvement of a POTUS into a treatment that was already being used and under investigation. It looks as though as a treatment it will probably end up ineffective or causing a few extra deaths. As a prophylactic we still dont have results, but all of this wasn’t due to scientists, it was due to politicians. He points out Britain and Sweden. As I have noted, Sweden’s voluntary lockdown works about the same as our involuntary ones. It is probably more sustainable. Britain decided to try the herd immunity approach, but when they saw deaths increasing so quickly they gave it up. Ihavr to suspect the initial choice was politically influenced, but they ultimately made the correct decisions.
So as I have said before, the scientists and doctors dont get to make the decisions. The politicians do that, hopefully with the input of those with other kinds of expertise. (Again, let me note that people other than doctors are experts in lots of stuff.) If there have been issues with messaging, while the medical profession has not been perfect, that mostly lies at the feet of our politicians.
*** While we as a profession have failed to save a lot of lives, it has not been for lack of effort or an unwillingness to put ourselves at risk. We have come up with new treatments on the fly, but as you note we have failed since people did die. The big disappointment here is the CDC, an agency which has performed very well for the most part during past outbreaks. In this outbreak it has sucked. While there have been multiple issues, the testing problem and the unwillingness to admit that there is asymptomatic spread have been, IMO, the worst. With testing available sooner we could have known that Covid was already here and spreading in January. The refusal to admit that there was asymptomatic spread let the CDC, and the federal response in general, go in slow motion and underplay the problems with Covid.
Steve
Especially since Sweden is more a consensus-based society than we are.
It really should be pointed out also, that economists and finance people created the 2008 crash. They believed it was OK to pass out 125% mortgages, give out loans without confirming that people had income, etc. They didnt think it was possible for the real estate market to have a broad crash. Physicians didnt go out and create Covid.
Steve
“It really should be pointed out also, that economists and finance people created the 2008 crash. They believed it was OK to pass out 125% mortgages, give out loans without confirming that people had income, etc. They didnt think it was possible for the real estate market to have a broad crash.”
“It really should be pointed out also, that mortgage applicants created the 2008 crash. They believed it was OK to sign up for 125% mortgages, without any consideration that they did not have the income, etc. They didnt think it was possible for the real estate market to have a broad crash. They thought it was easy money and they could brag to their friends about what savvy investors they were.”
There. Fixed it for you.
The banks were giving out free money. A lot of people thought they must know what they were doing since banks are supposed to assess risk and allocate capital. Turned out the financial sector was clueless and people were wrong to trust them.
Steve