Thread by @yaneerbaryam

Facing leadership that kills

"How could public health reimagine ways to protect the population and reinvent itself amid a pandemic?

"Before covid only two things were known to influence the course of pandemic diseases—isolation and vaccination. 1/

WFPHA link.springer.com/article/10.105…

"We must now add murderous incompetence, culpable negligence, perfunctory conduct of government response, wantonly foolish ideology-driven reliance on organisations and individuals who conspicuously lacked the necessary attributes to perform their assigned tasks. 2/

"Abbasi equated the lethal results of political decisions during the pandemic to ‘social murder’.This describes what occurs when those in power force the population to live in conditions that increase,inevitably,their risk of avoidable and premature death. doi.org/10.1136/bmj.n3…

"Motivation for such an unusually harsh indictment arises from a large proportion of excess mortality reported during the pandemic that could be attributed to measures put in place by politicians—out of ignorance, incompetence, indifference, negligence, or malice. 4/

"As deaths and suffering mounted, public health experts also failed to lead, while witnessing the squandering of an historical opportunity to stop a global plague. In most cases, those responsible for public health were aware of their political masters’ wrongdoing. 5/

"Given their dependence on government employment, most public health experts chose to remain silent out of fear of committing career or financial suicide or the belief that, even if they took the risk to speak out, nothing would be done or make any difference. 6/

"In other cases, they remained quiet due to lack of clarity as to how, where, and to whom to report their concerns. With even more deaths and hardship looming in the aftermath of COVID-19 and expected to recur with new pandemics, it is imperative for the...7/

"...public health community to determine how best to protect people from the effects of harmful political leadership, and to learn how to use the shockwaves of the pandemic as a source of energy in the creation of a brighter future. 8/

"Tackling these two apparently divergent challenges simultaneously requires a good dose of what Hearn and Banet–Weiser called ‘scandalous thinking’, or bold mental leaps of imagination to transcend what is presently imaginable. 9/

"Such a radical approach is essential, as timid variations of the status quo or small incremental steps could aggravate the weak state in which the pandemic may leave the field of public health and increase risk of its relegation to the margins of societal life. 10/

"Such a risk, perhaps unimaginable before COVID-19, appears clearly given the role of the political class, the much more assertive medical profession, and the naturally aggressive corporate sector (especially pharmaceutical, e-commerce and telecommunication companies). 11/

"These three dominated the limelight, pushing public health to the fringes of decision-making process and public awareness, should and could have outshined the others. In most countries, politicians updated reports and directives for containment and mitigation,.. 12/

"..with public health officers standing behind them, while physicians and other healthcare providers called attention to optimization of emergency rooms and ICUs, and private companies controlled most of the vaccines produced and distributed (or not), worldwide. 13/

"Arguably, the precarious state in which public health finds itself, coupled with the traditionally conservative nature of the field and what appears to be a built-in aversion to disruptive innovation, put a damper on what we can imagine within academic institutions,..14/

"think tanks and professional bodies to transform its future. At the moment, large supra-national organizations are likely to be in a much better position to create the conditions for the audacious, long-range leaps of imagination that 15/

"..public health needs to survive and, ideally, to thrive. In reality, the World Federation of Public Health Associations, is the only worldwide non-profit professional society representing and serving the broad areas of public health. 16/

"..It works to boost capacity of more than 130 organizations—serving over five million professionals in 104 countries—to share resources and expertise, and to implement innovative health strategies. 17/

link.springer.com/article/10.105…