COVID-19 in America: Healthcare

If you are not caught up yet, click here for how the COVID-19 pandemic affected America’s supply chain and economy.

This pandemic has been a stress test for America’s health-care system.

For those of you not familiar with the term, I picked it up from the TV show Bar Rescue, where host Jon Taffer would pack a struggling bar after some training to identify its weak points.

Suffice to say, the system failed, and in several important locations/ways, it did so catastrophically.

What Went Right?

Considering just how much damage COVID-19 did to the United States and how many people have died, you may be wondering why on earth I am emphasizing this point. It is important to look at what went right because it contains hints for how to deal with future pandemics.

First of all, a few states had some success at containing the virus and limiting the damage. The prime example of this is Washington State under the leadership of Governor Jay Inslee. Washington State was ground zero, yet although its health-care system was pushed hard, it was not overwhelmed at any point (I have an aunt who works as a hospital administrator in Port Angeles). I can say the same thing about Minnesota. In places where COVID-19 did less damage than it did in other states, necessary measures were adopted early and people largely did what had to be done to contain COVID-19.

American scientists and researchers showed what they are made of when they managed to develop a COVID-19 vaccine at record speed. Multiple companies were involved in this undertaking, such as Moderna, Pfizer, and Johnson & Johnson. These vaccines saved hundreds of thousands if not millions of Americans and for sure millions of people worldwide. Undeniably, the United States has some of the best scientific minds and tools in the world.

Most importantly, millions of EMTs, nurses, doctors, and other health-care professionals pushed themselves enormously to care for those who caught COVID-19. They deserve so much more than they are getting, and it is vital that their contributions are recognized. In fact, that so many of these dedicated professionals have passed the point of burnout is a serious problem on its own.

What Went Wrong?

Despite some states and other locations doing things correctly, the outstanding talent of American scientists and medical personnel, and the heroic efforts of millions of health-care workers across the United States, the country as a whole performed poorly when it came to COVID-19, and in some places like Florida, the health-care system failed disastrously for inexcusable reasons.

The supply chain issues meant that it was hard to get personal protective equipment, such as face masks and gloves. The medical supply chain was stretched past its breaking point because the demand had spiked. Making things worse, the Trump administration was at best neglectful by not helping states get badly needed equipment and in some cases actively sabotaged efforts by states to get PPE or contain the pandemic.

Even without the Trump administration actively making things worse, this pandemic would have been a huge challenge for someone like President Obama or Secretary Clinton.

Making things worse was the virus hitting the United States just as the country was at its most divided politically. Because of this, the pandemic response has become politicized in the most destructive way possible. Many people, in particular Republicans, began to deny the virus was even real.

Because COVID-19 restrictions were actively ignored all over the country (often with the encouragement of the Trump administration), many hospitals were pushed past capacity. Combined with the PPE shortages and a health-care workforce pressed beyond their limits, many patients with COVID-19 were unable to receive proper care. As a result, the death toll surged early and fast.

Because of how unprepared many hospitals in the United States were and how fast cases surged, health-care professionals began to work outside human limits. Out of all the failures of the American health-care system, this is perhaps the most serious because it is difficult to replace the knowledge and experience these professionals bring to the table.

As The Death of Expertise by Tom Nichols shows, Americans have less respect for expertise than ever before. Misinformation about the virus spread even faster than COVID-19 itself. This played a part in the vaccination rate being so low.

The pandemic also shone a bright light on systemic racism in the American health-care system. In particular, Black Americans were hit disproportionately hard. Black Americans are more likely to have preexisting complications such as asthma and heart disease that make COVID-19 more serious thanks to being more likely to live in food deserts, being overrepresented in occupations where COVID-19 is a much bigger risk, and living in neighborhoods with more serious air pollution. Add into this mess the justified mistrust many Black Americans have of medical personnel, and you have a situation where Black people disproportionately died from COVID-19.

What Needs to Be Done

First and foremost, the health-care system urgently needs more people to work in it. More recruitment needs to be done in these sectors. In addition, the United States urgently needs to get more health-care professionals to immigrate to the United States.

The fact that America’s health-care workforce has worked for so long beyond human limits must be recognized as a crisis. Besides encouraging more immigration to fill this shortage, other steps must include figuring out how to get more Americans to become doctors, nurses, and other types of health-care workers. Money must be invested to make the health-care system more resilient for the next pandemic.

Unpleasant as this may be, Americans must do better to take care of themselves and listen to what health-care professionals tell them.

It is vital that institutionalized racism inside the American health-care system be targeted and eliminated, not only in the attitudes of too many health-care workers, but also in the systems that lead people of color to be more vulnerable to disease in the first place.

This pandemic killed hundreds of thousands of Americans. We must do better.