The Physician Anthropologist: THE CULTURE OF FEAR DURING THE TIME OF CORONA VIRUS. USA

jeudi 21 mai 2020

THE CULTURE OF FEAR DURING THE TIME OF CORONA VIRUS. USA

THE CULTURE OF FEAR DURING THE TIME OF CORONA

Following the pandemic situation around the world, it Is becoming obvious that one of the more misinformed countries is the United States. Unlike Sweden, New Zealand, Australia, and even Malaysia and not to mention Israel, the people who are governing have allowed industrialists and business tycoons make medically relating decisions. Social opinions has become medical decisions.

Mayor of New York said: Go to bars and enjoy yourselves. New York City has the largest number of deaths.

President of USA said two months ago: the virus is going down, now a full months later, the virus does not show a downward trend, at best it is remaining the same .

Disregard seems to be the general attitude of the team of businessmen and industrialists. But the medical experts and the troubadours of tragedy, the epidemiologists, were trumpeting doom, predicting numbers of deaths not even imaginable. Breathing fear and social disregard is characteristic of USA and the establishment were reflecting the society they live in.

I still remember my medical anthropology teacher, Ronnie Frankenberg discussing a paper by medical anthropologist Robert Hahn, analyzing his experience of shadowing an Internist in private practice for a long time. I had my own share of such experiences when I would observe clinicians making rounds in private hospitals in the USA.

I will recount one such experience. I was with a friend who had seen a patient in the Emergency room and an X-ray had shown a shadow on the periphery of the lung. I was present when the doctor discussed the possibilities including cancer of the lung. I can see the fear in the eyes of the sixty plus years old man at the mention of lung cancer. He was admitted to the ward for CT scan as well as a biopsy. The poor man mentally began making preparations for the worst and his family gathered around him.

A CT was performed and showed that the shadow seen on chest x-ray was an artifact and that cancer of the lung was not even a remote possibility. I entered the room with doctor, who proclaimed

I have wonderful news for you .

The family looks expectantly.

The CT shows there is no cancer.

Joys and tears from the family.

I was thinking, now my friend the doctor is appearing as a savior to these people, as the person who have saved the patriarch from a sure death. Every believes in the story and all are happy.

But was this not a creation? A construction in the context of a elderly man coming to the Emergency room with a chest related complaint ?

Later on I confronted my friend, I asked him, why did you have to frighten him by saying this may be a cancer, when the possibility was not high, and then appear as if you are the miracle maker? He did not understand my question , so imbedded was this method of fear and relief in the American system.

I have seen this being employed by not only doctors but also by auxiliary medical personnel such as advanced nurses and physician assistants, physiotherapists and the like. It is truly a reflection of the culture of medicine in America.

Make the patient feel afraid with the worst and then appear, get some credit for yourself, by telling them the truth.

Why not tell them the truth from the beginning ?

Perhaps a fear of the loss of prestige ?

Perhaps a desire to appear larger than life ?

Social Media and the Media in general promote this fear, so that people become afraid to say hello to a stranger, touch anything

They advised to be careful of doorknobs and all the surfaces. Obviously they were opinions and not scientific research and they were not going to spend money on research which cannot monetarily benefit them.

Research arrived from China, like many other scientific investigations.

Stability of SARS-CoV-2 in different environmental conditions

School of Public Health, LKS Faculty of Medicine, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, China

When will we hear about these conclusions in the USA? Where there is a shortage of surgical masks ?

Strikingly, a detectable level of infectious virus could still be present on the outer layer of a surgical mask on day 7 (~0·1% of the original inoculum).

We also tested the virucidal effects of disinfectants by adding 15 μL of SARS-CoV-2 culture (~7·8 log unit of TCID50 per mL) to 135 μL of various disinfectants at working concentration (appendix p 1). With the exception of a 5-min incubation with hand soap, no infectious virus could be detected after a 5-min incubation at room temperature 22C

Coronavirus 'does not spread easily' by touching surfaces or objects, CDC says. But it still 'may be possible.'

In the meantime, we plod on :