Virus response lessons about U.S. health care

In your "Doctors' 9 reasons to remain calm," number 8 stated that "the actual care provided in the U.S. is the best in the world." When it comes to the U.S. government's response to COVID-19 and the general planning for a pandemic, the U.S. is far from the best.

From the moment this pandemic started, the messaging from the White House was in disarray. The President urged people to go to work, the passengers on the cruise ship were not correctly quarantined, and the availability of test kits was woefully inadequate, and remains so to this date. In public statements, the director of the CDC and the Surgeon General of the U.S. felt compelled to praise the President and his apparently excellent health instead of providing accurate medical information to the public. The White House also used their political power to restrict the release of travel advice from the CDC career professionals for fear it \would hurt the economy and further drive stock prices lower.

While insurance companies are waiving cost sharing for testing for COVID-19, there is nary a mention of the millions of uninsured Americans who cannot afford a visit to a physician or emergency room. They also neglect to discuss the millions of people who work paycheck to paycheck and could not afford to self-quarantine for 14 days if they get sick so they will continue to show up at work, potentially spreading COVID-19 further.

On March 10, the CDC released guidance to health care workers that in light of the shortage of proper N95 masks, due to improper government disaster planning and cutbacks to the pandemic planning funds, that regular surgical masks should be used. It is known that these masks do not properly protect people from infection, so this advice is similar to telling a police officer that the government ran out of bulletproof vests so they should wear thick down jackets instead.

Everyone hopes that proper hand washing and surface cleaning along with social distancing will limit the spread of COVID-19 but even if the number of deaths are limited, there will be a lot of lessons to be learned from this disastrous federal government response.

Ronald Hirsch

Elgin