COVID19 is the only thing on people’s minds. Everywhere you turn organizations are trying to create policies to address the crisis and inevitably they are turning to the CDC for reliable recommendations. Unfortunately, the CDC seems to be making scientifically questionable and politically motivated recommendations. News reports keep filing stories of scientists being muzzled so that they only voice the administration’s position. Dr. Paul Sufka was as frustrated as I was about this and wanted my advice about sending a letter to state officials asking for more aggressive measures to be taken to stave off the pandemic. I thought it was a great idea and suggested a joint letter. Later that day he added me to a DM group of physicians working on such a letter. The mission of the letter mutated over the next 72 hours from a plea to government to an informational post for patients.
The final result is now up at Kevin MD and Howard Luks website. Howard was really the driver of the letter. It felt like a productive project to work on as we wait for the disease to wash over our hospital. On Thursday (3/12/20) I was editing an early outline and documented there were 1,200 people in the US with confirmed cases of Corona. Then when re-editing on Friday, that number was up to 1,600. Today it was 2,100. In three days the number almost doubled.
This is going to get rough.
Let’s be careful out there.
Update. Howard Luks’ website is getting hammered. This post is really catching fire. He is asking that people look at the Medium post for now.
Update 2: the post went viral and was read by approximately 8 million people. 5 million on Howard’s site, 2+ million on KevinMD, and 1.5 million on Medium. This is the most reach I have ever been a part of. It speaks to the tremendous hunger people had for unbiased, science-based information in a time when everything seems to be politicized.