Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Viewpoints: What To Expect From Covid In The Future; Examining The Toll Of Covid On Health Care Workers
Houston Chronicle: After Omicron, This Pandemic Will Be Different
Omicron is really good at infecting people and doing it fast. So fast, in fact, that by the time you read this, chances are that cases may have already reached a peak in your neighborhood. While some countries are experiencing a rapid plunge in cases, it’s unclear how smooth the descent from the omicron surge will be in others. Some places may continue to experience spikes in cases even after initial peaks or plateaus. (William Hanage, 1/21)
CNBC: There Will Never Be A Post-Covid World
It’s been two years since we first heard of Covid-19. I think many of us are wondering, where are we in the arc of the pandemic, what have we learned and where are we going. While some may feel like we’ve been running in place, I believe that we have in fact come a long way and learned a great deal. We are more resilient than ever. And it is time to allow ourselves to see a future full of possibilities once again, even if that future looks a little bit different. (Michael Dell, 1/20)
Stat: Crisis Standards Of Care Need To Encompass Health Care Workers
As the Omicron variant of Covid-19 rages across the country, health care workers who are already physically, mentally, and morally exhausted are facing a hidden crisis: having to make decisions at patients’ bedsides about rationing health care. Political leaders and health care system administrators have left them to make life-or-death decisions about how to allocate increasingly scarce resources — not least of all their own time and expertise.Leaders have long known that a prolonged pandemic was likely to produce severe shortages in supplies and staff. In anticipation of such a moment, guidance known as crisis standards of care (CSC) have been developed. These are defined by the Institute of Medicine as a strategy to optimize the allocation of scare medical resources and shift the moral burden of making these decisions away from bedside clinicians to triage officers or others not directly involved in a patient’s care. Although implicit in CSC standards, staff allocation is generally viewed as an operational issue. (Cynda Hylton Rushton, Ian Wolfe and Tener Goodwin Veenema, 1/21)
The Washington Post: Everyone Has Their Limits. We Health-Care Workers Must Reclaim Ours
When I sense that I’m on the verge of tears, I do all I can to hold them back, crying being a bad look for a physician. But earlier this month, when I scanned down to the end of my patient’s progress note, which contained an account of the day’s events and recommendations from the other specialists involved in his care, I found my eyes unexpectedly blurred. (Arjun V.K. Sharma, 1/19)
Los Angeles Times: Anti-Vaccine Patients Vent Anger On Healthcare Workers Like Me. It Takes A Toll On Care
As a pulmonary and critical care physician in Southern California treating hospitalized patients with COVID-19, I am noticing a rising tension. Beyond just being overwhelmed, we are now part of the collateral damage. I recently asked a security guard to accompany me and an ICU nurse to meet the family of an unvaccinated 42-year-old firefighter who refused to accept that COVID-19 caused his respiratory failure. Adamantly refusing intubation despite worsening over weeks, it was only when his oxygen levels precipitously dropped and he complained of excruciating breathlessness that he accepted a breathing tube. (Venktesh Ramnath, 1/20)
Stat: Getting To 'New Normal' Means Focusing On All Respiratory Viruses
Much of the response to Covid-19 to date has been reactionary. Travel restrictions were implemented after a new variant had already breached the country. The use of higher-quality masks was recommended months after the emergence of increasingly more infectious variants — Alpha, Delta, then Omicron — and well after shortages had subsided. The need to ramp up the availability of rapid antigen tests was recognized during the sixth wave of Covid and amid the winter holidays. To reach a state of normalcy, leaders must look beyond the latest crisis and proactively prepare for an unknowable future, instituting policies and building programs that will guard against all respiratory viruses that pose threats to public health, society, and the economy. (Celine Gounder, Rick A. Bright and Ezekiel J. Emanuel, 1/20)
