Here's a little thread on crappy public responses to pandemics of the past. Whenever you feel angry about the behaviour of your fellow man, remember, all this has happened before, and all this will happen again - history offers comfort. None of this is new. Enjoy.
1918 Influenza pandemic.
1885 Smallpox Pandemic (vaccinia vaccine)
1801 "La Dindonnade" - a word meaning 'turkey' and 'hoax' - the smallpox vaccine originally was taken from cowpox pustules on cows. No one believed it worked, some believed they would turn into cows.
1885 Excerpt from an antivaxxer pamphlet re Smallpox (one of the most successful vaccination strategies in the world, given we don't get smallpox now)
1802 Antivaxxer caricature of vaccinated men and women growing cow parts. (Gillray).
1885, antivaccination poster, Montreal, saying all the same things they say now (like sticking the boot into medics for imaginary kickbacks).
There are hundreds more like this. I haven't done the Chinese ephemera because I don't have the language to search for it, but if any of my Chinese colleagues could, I'd be delighted. The Chinese were hundreds of years ahead of us on variolation/vaccination.
But take heart everyone. All the arguments you see being made today have been made before. And we've prevailed through pandemics and epidemics before, and we will again. Keep speaking your truth. 🙏
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I had a great chat with @MyaCubitt this morning and the word excellence in the context of healthcare came up. Since becoming a patient myself, this word has changed in meaning entirely for me. As a doctor I found the word utterly intimidating... 1/
Excellence to me meant big and impressive. It meant straight As. Prizes. Dux of something. Harvard. Perfection. Everyone lauding your perfect knowledge. But that is not what it is at all.
As a patient, I want to feel safe more than anything. And to feel safe, I need anyone looking after me to be polite and professional, and to know their job so well that it is routine for them, so they can be calm while they are doing it.
My school kiddo came home from school really worried a couple of weeks back. An older kid with unfettered Youtube access had watched a video that said the government was going to kill all schoolchildren. Some thoughts. 1/
Firstly, I take a harm minimisation approach with devices. I'm internet-savvy, I have a background in it before changing careers to medicine so this comes with a small degree of confidence (and a bit of terror). Outright banning devices does not educate kids.
After some reassurance, it was a good discussion on "how do we know if what we see is real?" We talked about how there are some really bad people out there who like to cause harm and chaos for no other reason than they're just bad.
"I'm a geriatrician - do you know what that is?"
This is the first question I often ask of my patients, and the answer is often no.
"I didn't think geriatricians would have much work during the pandemic...what is it that you do again?"
A thread on what a geriatrician does! 🧵
A geriatrician is a non-GP specialist doctor that looks after multiple diseases, syndromes, and situations that occur more often in older age (usually over 65 around these parts, over 70 in others).
The diseases we treat are usually in combination with other diseases/problems. Diseases such as dementia, osteoporosis, heart failure, Parkinsons, diabetes, strokes - that on their own you could see a specialist just in that disease for, but in combination with each other?
I used to be that person that said kindness costs nothing. And in day-to-day life, it's probably true. It costs you nothing to be kind to the shop assistant, wait staff, post office staff, especially when they are polite too. But as a health care worker?
Every day we meet new people. New patients, their families, other healthcare workers due to the transient shiftwork nature of the job. It costs nothing to be kind - initially. We meet thousands of new people a year.
One comment I will make about the persistent rate of covid deaths, is that a) they are in addition to everything else causing death, and b) death has a ripple effect... 1/
So you don't just have a high load of death, you have a whole cohort of people - family, friends etc, being affected by these deaths. Death of someone close to you is very often a pivotal moment in your life. When everything you hold to be real is challenged...
... you come out the other side of that grief with a vastly different set of priorities. So whether you think the death statistics are important or not, there is a much bigger picture here and it's that society is shifting and changing right underneath you.
What healthcare workers really want, more than anything, is for people to be truly free of preventable diseases and poor health, for the disabled to live in and access the world freely, and for chronic diseases to be managed into the background. 1/ (rant incoming)
This is a big, and dangerous idea. People being free from disease means addressing all the big names. Big food. Big fossil fuels. Big pharma. It means holding people truly accountable to their actions towards others, to hold them responsible for traumatising others.
The "personal responsibility" crowd, simply wish to absolve themselves responsibility for the harm they do. Harming others is a direct cause of ill health. A box of chicken nuggets being cheaper than fruit and vegetables causes harm. Underpaying people causes harm.