Month: March 2020

In pandemics, like the current COVID-19 outbreak, the first concern is to stop the spread of the virus. The administrative decision by President Trump to limit the travel from Europe to the United States is not exactly effective in decreasing the rate of the virus spreading because it is already in our country. The CDC just recently issued a statement urging residents from New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut to refrain from non-essential domestic travel for 14 days, along with other travel restrictions in other areas in the United States.[1] Although the spread from citizen to citizen is important to control, the main focus should be on preventing the spread of the virus to healthcare professionals, which none of these current mandates have worked to achieve.

Without healthy doctors, nurses, and other healthcare workers, the death rates would go up and hospitals would not be able to function or treat the high-risk people that are in desperate need of care in these times. Personal protective equipment, or PPE, is especially important when working with contagious viruses, like COVID-19. Since this virus spreads by direct contact with fluids from an infected patient, health care workers must reduce this contact as much as possible.[2] Already, hospitals around the country are reporting a lack of PPE including respirators, gloves, face shields, gowns, and hand sanitizer. This situation is so drastic that a new hashtag, #GetMePPE has been trending around the country, urging a change to the lack of PPE in hospitals.[3] In Italy, health care workers experienced such high rates of infection and death due to this lack of PPE, so if the United States wants to protect its workers, there needs to be immediate action in supplying PPE to hospitals.[4]

There are a few ways that would increase the availability of necessary PPE to protect the health care workers. The Defense Production Act (DPA) allows the President to direct private companies to produce equipment needed for a national emergency. By utilizing this act, companies could halt the production of other products and focus all attention on the production of PPE. Their suppliers should also be encouraged to maximize the raw material available to these companies to increase production. Since only a few companies would have the expertise to produce these devices, the federal government needs to rope in other industries in the production effort. The automobile industry and the fashion industry could have the adequate materials to make PPE and contribute to these efforts, ensuring that United States healthcare workers have the adequate means to provide care to infected individuals while also protecting themselves against infection.[5]

Another aspect to consider is the unnecessary contact of healthcare professionals to contagious individuals experiencing mild symptoms. The hospitals are open to treat severe cases of COVID-19, but patients with suspected cases of the virus and those strong enough to not need direct hospitalization should get care through an alternative method than doctor visits. Digital therapeutics, or DTx for short, is an emerging health discipline using a more hands-off approach, amplifying or even replacing active drugs in disease treatment using technology.[6] The use of DTx would help effectively treat patients who need care, but do not need the direct supervision of doctors, limiting healthcare professionals’ contact to exposed individuals and reducing the number of infected people from leaving the quarantine of their own houses.

The simultaneous push for increased PPE production along with the implementation of DTx would monumentally change how the United States is trying to combat the pandemic of COVID-19. As the country is facing new challenges economically and socially, the United States government needs to utilize its power and implement the necessary means to flatten the curve and protect its citizens.

Question: I focused mainly on two ways to reduce the exposure of doctors (increasing production of PPE and DTx). Would it be beneficial to solely focus on one of these or would both be necessary to the assessment of this issue?

It was an interesting experience both participating in a deliberation other than my own and planning and executing my deliberation. “Setting the Standard on Standardized Testing” allowed me to appreciate the work that goes into such conversations and attending “To Drink or Not to Drink: A Spirited Conversation of Binge Drinking on College Campuses” allowed me to view a different conversational experience to compare to my own. Overall, I thought that both deliberations that I will be discussing met most of the criteria stated in Gastil’s chapter on deliberation, although there were areas in which both groups could have improved upon to perfect their deliberation.

One of the most important elements in a productive conversation is respecting participants and adequately distributing speaking opportunities. In my deliberation, I do believe that these criteria were adequately met. The deliberation was held in Webster’s Bookstore Café, which had many downfalls and impeded our conversation. The arrangement of the café caused half of our participants on a stage, and the others surrounding us on a lower surface in rows. The people in the back row on the lower surface did not get to share their opinions as much, but after prompted by our deliberation moderators, were willing to share more than in the beginning. I also thought that everyone’s opinions were respected, and all participants were honest and acknowledged other’s unique experiences and viewpoints. Also, since the café was relatively loud, we tried using a microphone to make the speakers heard, but it ended up making the conversation turn into more of a presentation and somewhat annoyed the normal café-goers, who were not participating in the deliberation.

The binge-drinking deliberation did not have these barriers to overcome, and I thought that their conversation was able to run more smoothly because of it. It was easy to hear everyone, which allowed for a better, more adequately distributed speaking process. I think that there was a bit less respect in this conversation because some people were not open-minded in possibly changing their predetermined views on drinking in college and argued a bit more, but overall it was a respectful experience.

Both deliberations also identified a broad range of solutions and adequately weighed the pros, cons, and tradeoffs among the proposed solutions. With the SAT deliberation, since I was involved with choosing the three proposed solutions, I am somewhat biased in saying that they did cover a broad range. It was interesting to me that our solution to create a more strenuous college application process for applicants and reviewers by adding more elements was a more popular solution among participants than eliminating the SAT. These two solutions were quite opposites, and going into the conversation, it was interesting to hear how most participants did not enjoy the SAT, but afterward, gained a newfound appreciation for the exam due to our discussion. Each solution proposed by our deliberation assessed both the pros and cons of the proposals, although more than half of the time for each solution was spent on the pros, so it was not exactly even.

During the binge drinking discussion, I thought that the conversation also had a broad range of solutions. The proposal of lowering the age of drinking for beer and wine but keeping the age of 21 for hard liquor to have kids adjust to alcohol slowly was interesting to me. I did not know that some countries already implement this and already have a lower rate of teen-drinking incidents than the United States. The pros and cons were weighed well, although it was hard to assess the pros because it is known that anyone consuming alcohol under the age of 21 is breaking the law, so some people were reluctant to share their opinions due to the loaded capacity of the topic. There was a great discussion of the limitations to each solution proposed because none of the solutions will truly eliminate binge drinking.

Finally, both conversations seem to adequately provide a solid information base to build upon in the deliberation while also ensuring mutual comprehension. In the SAT deliberation, I feel as though team overview did a great job with the issue guide and the presentation of background at the beginning of the deliberation. The microphone did catch us a bit off-guard, but I think we adjusted well and adapted to the situation as best as possible. Since most students had to take the SAT to get into Penn State, all of the participants had background already on the subject, so by listening to us and reading the issue guide that we created, it was well understood what the deliberation was about. A few of the participants even told us afterward how much they liked our topic and how relevant it was. This ensured a mutual comprehension and participants did ask for clarification respectfully on several occasions when needed.

The drinking on college campuses presentation also provided well-explained background information. It was slightly overdone and took up a large portion of the time that would have been better used to further discuss the solutions, but it was thorough and relevant. I think they could have discussed the background of Penn State-specific information more and discussed less of the United States as a whole to make it more applicable and specific, but overall it was great. They also had an adequate mutual comprehension, although as I stated before since teen drinking is more of a touchy topic to some people, many participants did not speak plainly about their opinions. Also, there were many more people at that deliberation than the SAT deliberation, so this could also account for why more people shared during the SAT conversation than the binge drinking one. Despite the circumstances, I believe that both deliberations were successful and stimulated interesting conversations in their unique ways.

In terms of an issue brief focusing on COVID-19, there has never been a more relevant time to talk about this topic due to the current events surrounding this new virus and the havoc it is causing around the globe. I will address the exigence of this topic by addressing how COVID-19 is continuing to spread in current society and how solutions proposed by the United States government of simply shutting down travel from Europe to the United States is not enough. I will reference specific events and statistics relevant to the recent spread of the virus, making it especially relevant to this time period. Since every conversation in recent days seems to have the word “coronavirus” or “COVID-19” in it, Kairos of this issue is very relevant and applicable to modern society. By stating something containing these “triggering” words at the beginning of the issue brief, it will grab the attention of the audience due to the recent peaked interest in the subject.

Whether or not people get the virus or have nowhere to buy toilet paper or food, everyone in society will be impacted by this pandemic, making the audience for this issue everyone across the country, and in other countries worldwide. But, due to the extensive breadth of this issue and the fact that I am not able to accurately reflect issues catered to each area, I will only be addressing United States towns because I am more knowledgeable in these areas and have easier access to information relating to these areas.

Since my civic issue blogs previously have covered many controversies in the medical field, it is only fitting that my issue brief topic will be related to the relevant issue of coronavirus, or COVID-19. I will be discussing how individual towns need to enforce the social distancing policy more firmly to stop the spread of coronavirus and why this is beneficial to health and the environment itself. The administrative decision by President Trump to limit the travel from Europe to the United States is not exactly effective in decreasing the rate of the virus spreading because it is already in our country. If people continue to move around, from state to state on spring break trips, or even from town to town, the spreading rate will continue to increase exponentially, and we as a nation will likely run into the problem of limited hospital space and inadequate supplies, as seen in the recent “toilet paper shortage”. Not only would stopping these travels limit the spread of the virus, but it would also help the environment. There is already evidence that the pandemic, although terrifying, has a silver lining in that the air pollution has been reduced. For example, nitrogen dioxide emission levels across China have plummeted, in part due to travel bans with decreased usage of motor vehicles and domestic airplanes. A source discussing this pollution reduction amidst the coronavirus states that, “The two months of pollution reduction, Burke calculates, has probably saved the lives of 4,000 children under 5 and 73,000 adults over 70 in China. That’s significantly more than the current global death toll from the virus itself” (Bowler, 2020). If each town were to implement a no travel policy, it would in turn help stop the spread of coronavirus and decrease air pollution, saving lives on both ends.

The cause of the issue of COVID-19 spreading is mostly inadvertent. People traveling as normal on spring break plans, preplanned vacations, or even to a restaurant a couple towns over could be spreading the virus. Since it is already in most of the larger cities in each state, bringing it to different places and even coming into contact with it and bringing it home from the airport is a dangerous risk, although people may be asymptomatic and not even know that they have the virus. Increased caution is needed to stop this spread.

Many ways could stop the spread of COVID-19, but the most feasible would be mandates and urgent capacity builders. By announcing mandates along with town-wide quarantines, the spread of COVID-19 could be slowed and controlled. An example of a mandate for this town quarantine would be to fine citizens who are found traveling to nonessential places. This would give incentive for people to stay home and reduce the likelihood that they would carry the virus to another place if they were carrying it and would separate those who have it from those who do not. Urgent capacity builders would also be effective because, amidst the COVID-19 panic, there are many misconceptions about the virus and its effects spreading throughout the media and from the mouths of politicians that we are supposed to trust, so if the public were properly educated on means to stop the spread other than singing a song while washing hands, it would further reduce the spread of coronavirus. Also, providing resources that show how quarantines and travel bans are helping reduce air pollution and also saving lives would give more incentive for people to follow the town-mandated rules.

 

References

Bowler, Jacinta. “New Evidence Shows How COVID-19 Has Affected Global Air Pollution.” ScienceAlert, 17 Mar. 2020, www.sciencealert.com/here-s-what-covid-19-is-doing-to-our-pollution-levels.

Bowler, Jacinta. “Nitrogen Dioxide Pollution Over China Plummets in New Satellite Images.” ScienceAlert, 2 Mar. 2020, www.sciencealert.com/nitrogen-dioxide-pollution-has-dramatically-dropped-over-china-because-of-the-coronavirus.

In terms of the health industry, it is clear that there have been many beneficial changes discussed in previous blog posts. However, a large issue has not been addressed thus far. Climate change in modern society is a controversial issue and one that needs immediate attention. But how can an industry focused on saving lives contribute to such a negative effect on the Earth? This blog post will be a discussion of this issue and the many caveats surrounding it.

Greenhouse gas emissions are a large contributor to the negative effects of climate change, like the depletion of the ozone layer in our atmosphere. In the United States alone, health care is responsible for about a tenth of the country’s greenhouse gas emission. Machinery necessary for certain medical procedures like CAT scanners, dialysis machines, and respirators come at a large energy expense, which is mostly met by fossil fuel usage. This is an incredibly tricky issue because although climate change is an immense problem, reducing some of the emissions produced by methods of care in hospitals comes at the expense of human lives. How far are people willing to go to save the environment? Although it seems like a daunting task to approach this issue, there are several approaches that could be effective in both reducing greenhouse gas emissions of the health sector and maintaining the level of intense care that is necessary to maintain hospitals. First off, hospitals could commit to 100% clean energy, or at least significantly decrease their fossil fuel usage. As we have seen in recent years, the research and funding for clean energy discovery have paid off and the United States is seeing a significant increase in clean energy usage with increased options to make a cleaner choice. Hospitals can commit to these means of clean energy, as exemplified by Gundersen Health Systems, a nonprofit hospital network operating in the Midwest who, in 2014, became the first health system to achieve energy independence by producing their energy from wind power, solar power, and capturing methane from landfills (Chen, 2019). Many other health care companies and hospitals like Kaiser Permanente, Partners HealthCare, and Boston Medical Center are also working towards carbon neutrality by reducing their emissions (Belluz, 2019). This approach would make the health care system significantly reduce their contribution to the total emissions, making the United States a much cleaner nation.Another approach is for doctors to educate policymakers about the health ramifications being caused by climate change itself. Not many people are educated on the different sicknesses increasing in prevalence due to climate change. An article describing the healthcare industry’s role in climate change explains that “…between 2030 and 2050, a quarter of a million deaths could be caused by climate change-related health problems — such as heat exposure, mosquito-borne diseases, and flooding. Air pollution, including household air pollution, already cause 6.5 million premature deaths each year” (Belluz, 2019). If people were more aware of how their energy and emission choices were directly affecting their health and the health of their future generations, they may be more motivated to ignite change. Groups like “American College of Physicians”, “Healthcare Without Harm”, the “Medical Society Consortium”, and “Physicians for Social Responsibility”, are groups of doctors and related individuals who are pushing for reduced emissions in their fields. Furthermore, health care organizations could divest from fossil fuel companies to cut off their financial dependence on them, making it easier to go green.

Although this issue seems like a double-edged sword, there truly are ways that could make a positive impact on the environment while also maintaining the procedures that make the healthcare system able to treat patients.

 

References

Belluz, Julia, and Umair Irfan. “Doctors Are Frightened by Climate Change. Their Industry Is a Big Part of the Problem.” Vox, Vox, 19 Jan. 2019, www.vox.com/2019/1/17/18184358/healthcare-doctors-climate-change-divesting.

Chen, Alice, and Vivek Murthy. “How Health Systems Are Meeting the Challenge of Climate Change.” Harvard Business Review, 19 Sept. 2019, hbr.org/2019/09/how-health-systems-are-meeting-the-challenge-of-climate-change.