cactuswatcher: (Default)
( Mar. 23rd, 2020 07:44 am)
Don't mistake me, I think our medical system is doing everything it can to deal with the COVID-19 crisis. However it is clear that the system here in North America and in Europe is totally inadequate for the task. I can't deny that shutting down whole national economies is being done to try to protect people my age, and others with serious medical problems. But it is no solution. The virus will continue to exist in the world's population, and viruses have a habit of mutating quickly and unpredictably, which means the vaccines against viral diseases are always hit and miss. So the vaccines feverishly being developed now for use sometime next year may be of limited use against the virus as it develops. Indeed, I have already heard that there are two very similar strains of the virus now.

The history of the Spanish flu (H1N1 virus) shows that the best protection against serious complications is unfortunately getting the disease, and developing a natural immunity. At some point in my life many people developed partial immunity to the disease from catching similar kinds of flu, so that the pandemic of 2009 was fortunately a fraction of the problem the disease was in 1918 when it first spread through the world. I certainly can't recommend letting everyone catch COVID-19 in hopes those of us alive now will be done with it. But flattening the curve as our medical systems call it, will in fact prolong the epidemic, for the sake of our physicians being more able to treat the most dire cases as they arise.

Not only is there a shortage of equipment for treating COVID-19 there is a shortage of physicians. While stockpiling respirators for some possible future respiratory viral epidemic is likely impractical, something could be done about the shortage of physicians. I don't mean simply training more doctors. I would suggest that a new class of health care worker falling somewhere between nurses and doctors be developed. This epidemic has proven we can't always rely on an American system that requires a four-year college degree, plus three years of medical school, plus an internship to practice at all, plus three years of residency to practice outside of a hospital. City dwellers seem to forget that large sections of the country have very limited access to medical care, simply because medical education is so expensive that physicians simply can't afford to practice in smaller communities any more. Some other countries at least skip the four-years of college to train physicians. Our system breeds physicians very protective, even jealous of their position in society. I don't say we don't need those experts as now fully trained. But I do say that we've come to a point where it's too expensive, and perhaps too dangerous to rely on them entirely.
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