An honest and open debate about the medical trade-offs might still have led to shutdowns, writes Stephen L Carter, but the debate didn’t happen
An honest and open debate about the medical trade-offs might still have led to shutdowns, but the debate didn’t happenPicture this scenario: You walk nervously into the office of the oncologist to whom your primary physician has unexpectedly referred you, and as soon as you see the specialist’s facial expression, you know the news is bad. You’re right. “If only we’d caught this six or eight weeks earlier,” the oncologist says.
Let’s be clear. These aren’t deaths caused by the pandemic. These are deaths caused by our response to the pandemic. Even though patients in most places can now go back to the doctor, the damage has already been done. When we tell patients to skip “routine” screenings and appointments, we’re sentencing thousands of people to premature and preventable deaths.
Fauci’s estimate of 10,000 deaths echoed a June prediction from the National Cancer Institute. A July 20 article in, relying on data from the English National Health Service, concluded that lost medical visits in the UK would likely lead to enormous increases in the number of cancer deaths five years after diagnosis. Breast cancer deaths, for example, are expected to be 7.9%-9.6% higher. For colorectal cancer, the predicted range is 15.3%-16.6%.
The time to deliberate about emergencies, says Scarry, is before they occur. The problem is that we’re not good at talking about emergencies that seem remote; and then, when the emergency arrives, it’s too late for a conversation. At times, we try — a little more than a decade ago, a federal task-force published an excellent primer on how governmental and private entities alike should prepare for a future pandemic — but few of its recommendations were ever implemented.
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