Be Prepared

I was in fact a Boy Scout, and that was our motto. We had a creed and an oath as well, which were more controversial, but the motto carries over into the realm of public health very well. Preparedness is a major obsession of public health planners and advocates, but it ' s hard to maintain because people get complacent and politicians don ' t want to raise the taxes and spend the money for preparedness in between crises.Covid-19 has demonstrated what fools we are in that regard. Now JAMA has a theme issue on pandemic preparedness and response, including some prognostications about how we can live with this going forward, and they ' ve taken down the paywall for the articles. (The link is only good for  a week -- I ' ll see if it can be updated when the time comes.)I can ' t comment on all of it in a blog post, butyou might want to look specifically at Nuzzo and Gostin specifically on preparedness. They discuss inequity, lack of infrastructure, and other issues, but I ' ll quote this:Public distrust of health agencies and lack of population-level adherence to risk-mitigation measures proved major impediments in the COVID-19 response. A US survey of 1305 people in early 2021 found high levels of distrust: only 52% expressed high trust in CDC, 37% in the Food and Drug Administration, and 41% in state health departments.4 This distrust has led to social and political division over the utility of masks and vaccinations. Nonpharmaceutical interventions require high levels of p...
Source: Stayin' Alive - Category: American Health Source Type: blogs