It is too early to begin a comprehensive review of our response to the coronavirus here in the United States. We had warnings with HIV, SARS, MERS, H1N1, and Ebola, but we were not ready for COVID-19 — not even close.
I’m a family physician, busy revamping my entire practice in order to provide safe and effective medical care to patients fearful of the pandemic. Many of my patients are sick and experience symptoms of common illnesses that they would normally just tolerate; this time, they universally worry that they have been hit by the deadly coronavirus.
They need office visits for their existing medical problems, blood tests, physical examinations, colonoscopies. For now, they only get a televisit, plus a nasal swab in the parking lot if I suspect a coronavirus infection.
I’m stressed, but the heroic front-line EMTs, doctors, nurses, and hospital staff in New York and other hot spots are likely overwhelmed, exhausted, and emotionally spent. These people are saving as many lives as possible, but they are also expressing anger and frustration. They didn’t have the tests, supplies, or equipment they needed to do the work and protect themselves from the disease. What happened to the epidemic response plans, where were the supplies, and how did the government agencies responsible for our health and safety let this virus attack across our border without even enough masks and gloves?
There is too much to do to spend much time on anger. Our media should check their current outrage, honor the many heroes, and use their resources to help in the fight. We can’t stop to do a review of our response now, but we need to take contemporaneous notes of the deficiencies while we battle COVID-19. I have started my list from the perspective of a family physician and citizen. Others from their fields of expertise will do the same. I expect to be horrified to learn that the lists and recommendations from 2020 will precisely match lists from 1981, 2002, 2009, 2012, and 2014 — the years corresponding to previous viral outbreaks. We, as a nation, need to be better prepared. The public should demand it.
Perhaps it was naive of me to think that our state, local, and federal governments had a comprehensive plan to fight an epidemic and misguided of me to believe that an action plan was ready. Push the red button, and in unison, we counterattack the deadly virus we were certain was coming our way.
I expected stockpiles of personal protective equipment at the state and national level, ready for deployment. I expected a plan for development of testing kits and accelerated production of those kits. I expected a generic coronavirus vaccine in stock, with facilities ready for mass production of vaccines for future pandemic virus strains. I assumed we had a stockpile of ventilators to deploy for treatment of respiratory failure due to chemical or infectious causes. Not having these things ready was shocking to me as a physician. Decades to prepare, and the cupboard was nearly bare. Not acceptable — not in America.
We will certainly have politicized congressional hearings rife with accusations and finger-pointing before the November election, and these will be a colossal waste of time. In fact, these congressmen and senators should be deposed by the American people. Our politicians at the state, local, and federal level are responsible for the legislation pertinent to, oversight of, and funding of their respective health departments — HHS, CDC, and others.
Clearly, something went terribly wrong here. Were these agencies and programs neglected, was oversight ignored for four decades, was funding denied? More important, I want to know why politicians, who have so much time to fight with each other, neglected their most important job — the health and safety of the people they represent.
I have questions for people other than our politicians, as well. We have public health professionals, epidemiologists, and infectious disease experts, who are telling us they expected such a pandemic. If so, why were we not fully prepared to respond? We have state and local health departments that carry primary responsibility in our federal system to care for the health of people in their states, including responsibility for epidemics and disasters. Why were they not prepared with supplies for their front-line medical personnel and equipment for their hospitals?
We citizens just paid $2.2 trillion for the consequences of this decades-old neglect, and once we get this pandemic under control, we deserve answers.
Eugene Shmorhun is a family physician.
