The Threats We Ignore

As a horror movie lover, it is a strange thing to be in the midst of a pandemic. It's pretty clear that while this novel coronavirus creates a serious disease, it's not a thing of science fiction. I stopped at Target today to get contact lens solution and was met with sections of empty shelves where there was once hand sanitizer and wipes and toilet paper.

I'm a data junkie, so we could talk for a long time about the impact of COVID-19. What is most concerning to me, though, is our panic at this and how readily we ignore other things that are far more threatening. Climate change, for example, will actually kill a large chunk of humanity in the not too distant future. The great migrations we are seeing are one significant effect of climate change.

COVID-19 will likely illuminate how broken our healthcare system already is. Plenty of people already know it. We already know paid time off is precious and rare. We already know many hourly workers can't afford to miss work. We already know our systems do not care for people well. I wonder if we realize how this is slowly killing us all.

In the Phoenix metro area, hospitals are already at capacity, having nothing to do with a new threat. Most of the hospitals are at or near capacity January through March. In a fiscal year that begins in July, these same hospitals do not enter the black until January or later. Winter visitors push our healthcare system over capacity, while it is so under capacity in the summer months that it doesn't expand sufficiently. I went to visit someone in the hospital less than a week ago and that hospital had patients waiting in hallways in the ER because they were at capacity. The patient was in observation, the current location of overflow for admitted patients. A volunteer helped me find the patient because the room was in such an obscure location.

When I moved to Arizona, I got a rash that no one could figure out. I went to urgent care, than a primary care office, then to a dermatologist. I made it to the dermatologist by April. They could get me in the same week, but told me that two months earlier, the first appointment would also have been in April. Often, I have had to wait weeks for a specialist appointment, with a nice relief from the wait during the summer months.

I could go on about the limits of health insurance, the fact that Marketplace insurance is functionally Medicaid when accessing care. The list is long. But when a new virus reveals our vulnerabilities, we have an opportunity to realize we were deeply vulnerable all along.

When this is over, what will we do to address those threats that we ignore day in and day out? Our answer to that question matters for the good of humanity.

And in the meantime, wash your hands.