We ensure quality care through
Interim Management, Skilled Monitoring, and Reinvention
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Greetings!
We lead again with the comparative data: On August 7, in the U.S. there were 60,975 new cases: 1,354 deaths (161,589 total) in comparison to 552 new cases and 3 deaths (35,203 total) in Italy, 1,147 new cases and 8 deaths (9,259 total) in Germany; 2,028 new cases 12 deaths (30,324 total) in France, 410 new cases and 11 deaths (278 total deaths) in Australia and 1,552 new cases and 7 (1,042 total) deaths in Japan.The data illustrates and we continue to curate the reporting that finds that in the U.S., the pandemic was not met by a national plan nor coordinated effort. Elsewhere, a plan and coordinated effort were matched with continued vigilance, and, although lives in Berlin, Paris, Melbourne, and Kyoto have not returned to normal, citizens are far closer to life than we are.
The curators offer The New Yorker's look into how the President’s actions and inactions got us where we are. Michael Specter asks and answers in the lead: "How worried should we be that the President of the United States recently described as 'very impressive' a woman who claims that doctors make medicine using DNA from aliens? Or that he shows no sign of recognizing the magnitude of the Covid-19 pandemic? It’s simply not possible to worry too much.”
What further grabbed our attention, and elevated this article is Specter’s memory of a prior pandemic: “Twenty years ago, reporting from South Africa, I saw firsthand what happens when a national leader forces his people to subsist on lies and magic. From 2000 to 2005, according to a definitive study by researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health, Thabo Mbeki, then the President of South Africa, let as many as three hundred and thirty thousand of his fellow-citizens die and thirty-five thousand babies be born with H.I.V., by refusing to permit the country’s health service to treat AIDS with antiretroviral drugs. Mbeki and his health minister, Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, insisted that antiviral medicine was the product of a plot by Western pharmaceutical companies to kill Africans. The Harvard study concluded that the drugs were withheld largely because of Mbeki’s well-known refusal to initially accept that AIDS is caused by a virus, H.I.V.” Specter states “the most important public-health institutions in America have essentially been hijacked by a man who seems to detest science and expertise in equal measure,” therefore to complete our first block we offer our own antidote of science, methodology and facts.
A new addition to Revitalize we offer Stat News's “Winter is coming: Why America’s window of opportunity to beat back Covid-19 is closing." An article in the New York Times on a recent study in Korea and reported in JAMA about asymptomatic patients is a worthwhile read. We return to Stat News for excellent reporting on what data are collected and what data sets should be reported on more in “Measuring excess mortality," which they and others find gives a clearer picture of the pandemic’s true burden.
The Second section offers from the NY Times "The Unique U.S. Failure to Control the Virus”. We also link The New Yorker's “Coronavirus endurance test," in which we benefit from the author's experience as a leading epidemiologist who early in his career was “in the room” when “flattening the curve” was first coined. We also recommend a podcast on the great Ed Yong article that was our lead last week.
A third block has an article that will draw you in slowly and another that from the first paragraph pulls you quickly into another country’s tragedy. China got it so wrong to start and finished so strong, The New Yorker writer Peter Hesslare was a visiting professor there when the pandemic hit and reports as much on his students and the culture that promoted an effective response as he does the strategy employed. Belgium started with a flawed effort that resulted in, as The New York Times reported on Sunday:“When Covid-19 Hit, Many Elderly Were Left to Die." Both articles are must reads.
This is the Revitalize list for Aug. 12, 2020:
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Revitalize: The week in health-care news you need
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The New Yorker: Trump's unprecedented attacks on our nation"s health system
Stat News: Winter is coming: America's window of opportunity is closing to beat back Covid-19
Via Mike Pesca’s podcast “The Gist" we offer a must-listen follow up to last week’s article by Ed Yong from The Atlantic, “A virus has brought the world’s most powerful country to its knees.” Please listen if you have not read the Yong article and, even if you have, this offers an important follow-up and deeper explanation.
A study in Korea shows 30 percent may spread the virus though asymptomatic. The New York Times: Even Asymptomatic People Carry the Coronavirus in High Amounts
Stat News: Weekly reports of excess mortality—broken out by age group, sex, location, and by race where appropriate—provides important information for those making policy and decisions about healthcare.
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Slowing the coronavirus has been especially difficult for the United States because of its tradition of prioritizing individualism–and missteps by the Trump administration.
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Plagued by early failures, see The New Yorker: How China controlled the Coronavirus
The New York Times: Warnings had piled up for years that Belgian nursing homes were vulnerable. The pandemic sent them to the back of the line for equipment and care.
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Jerry Seelig, CEO
Fax: 310-841-2842
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