In this special episode, Richard and Jim have an extended conversation around six solutions to help us manage the ever-changing coronavirus pandemic more successfully, and improve responses to future public health emergencies. While the pandemic has lasted far longer than expected, valuable lessons are being learned.
Among them:
1. Have a more realistic view of the virus. This includes understanding that the virus won't go away anytime soon. Clear, honest communication from government health officials will help. So will less emotional media coverage.
2. Restoring Trust. We had overlapping failures from the US and global institutions that undermined the public's trust in authorities. Greater transparency and expert honesty about what is not known are two solutions.
3. Improve access to care and medical literacy. COVID is not the only health emergency raging across the country. States now struggling the most with infections have the least healthy populations. Richard argues that one reason why so many people died from COVID was that many people had no health insurance coverage and no relationship with a care provider.
4. Focus on the severe cost of the pandemic to children.
Immense harm this has done to children’s prospects might be justified if closing school classrooms were one of the best ways of preventing lethal infections among adults. In the US children have missed more in-person schooling than anywhere else in the rich world.
5. Make it Harder for People to be Unvaccinated.
Over 95% of new COVID-related hospital cases are among unvaccinated Americans. That speaks to the remarkable effectiveness of the vaccines. State and local governments should consider mandating vaccines for employees, and especially, educational staff and medical workers. P
6. COVID will probably increase life expectancy: The virus killed hundreds of thousands of people since February of last year. But it has also led to advances in mRNA vaccines and viral medicine. The pandemic will speed up and intensify research into other life-threatening illnesses, including cancers and possibly Alzheimers. Already, we have much more knowledge about how to reduce the spread of seasonal flu.