(Snippets from the frontline)
COVID-19/BLM: Re-opening: How safe are you?
Once your doctor makes a diagnosis, a treatment plan is made. Will it be surgery, medication, or other evidence-based guideline promoting longevity or diminishing suffering?
For example, over the past 50 years, control of hypertension has increased life expectancy while diminishing heart attacks, strokes, and kidney disease. Starting a patient on medication is not simply flipping a coin. Taking a good history, doing a worthy physical exam, and knowing how compliant a patient might be helps in making that decision.
For COVID-19, isolation by staying home was meant to “flatten the curve.” Now though, how do we “re-open” communities safely? Like in medicine, are there evidence-based guidelines that might help?
No.
How do you know the business where you buy food or eat-out with your family will be safe? Has the barber sterilized the scissors, or the church de-sanitized the pews correctly? What makes a business owner believe they have devised the correct way to prevent viral exposure?
Medicine long ago was standardized using evidence-based information, yet the behavior of COVID-19 is still unknown, and therefore not easy to contain.
Re-opening should not be simply flipping a coin.
Gene Uzawa Dorio, M.D.
Leave a Comment