[Important Thread] My position on #OpeningAZ. As a doctor I cannot express enough how central every patient's symptom and life is to my care and practice and life purpose. In this pandemic like with any illness or illnesses,ethically every patient is equal and every treatment 1/9
should be balanced. So, the public cacophony that even a suggestion of being in favor of urgently opening our economies-- yesterday-- but doing so smartly and staged, will somehow then be responsible for subsequent COVID19 deaths is simply demagogic and "illness trading" 2/9
It dismisses equal value of ideas, and
prioritizes one path, some lives, over others. Yes. We Americans can have a debate, fall on either side of this public health decision tree without attacking the other side as "heartless" or "unscientific". Respected medical scholars 3/9
prioritizes one path, some lives, over others. Yes. We Americans can have a debate, fall on either side of this public health decision tree without attacking the other side as "heartless" or "unscientific". Respected medical scholars 3/9
disagree every day on many courses even within decades of standard of care. This type of wholesale quarantining is not only unprecedented but surely to be studied for years with infinite critiques. Anyone today with certainty is in denial to the obvious uncertainties that 4/9
Shod be balanced for localities to make their own variations of decisions. One thing is certain. This treatment is not one-size-fits-all or binary. We are way under the 3rd? versions of 'curves of healthcare capacity'. #StayAtHome delayed infections, but will not prevent them.5/9
Compassionate doctors who give everything for our patients, like all our fellow Americans, can weigh the totality of the ethical burdens and their attendant risks and benefits and then come down respectfully on the side of a quicker, yet staged, opening of our communities 6/9
as an approach to this pandemic rather than extreme and myopically prolonged lockdowns that treat ONE disease instead of all our patients equally. Passionate, competent, primary care doctors can see this as a disease needing a less binary and a more forward, less fear based, 7/9
more targeted strategies, to protect the most vulnerable, while getting the engines of survival for ALL our patients with their host of ignored diseases working, treated again. We can move forward, reopening, accept some risk of some unknown together (ALL paths have risks) 8/9
as we rebalance all of our national and local priorities together, not in isolation from all others.
Stay strong. #Crushthefear. God bless you all.
Faithfully, Zuhdi
9/9
Stay strong. #Crushthefear. God bless you all.
Faithfully, Zuhdi
9/9
