A Different World

A year ago, our lives were what we would now call normal. We planned our days around mundane things, like shopping for a stove. I spent my early mornings exploring the universe from my computer screen. A year ago, for instance, I was awestruck at an estimate by astronomers, appearing in a 2003 article in The Telegraph, that:

“There are 10 times more stars in the night sky than grains of sand in the world’s deserts and beaches, scientists say. Astronomers have worked out that there are 70 thousand million million million – or seven followed by 22 zeros – stars visible from the Earth through telescopes.”

This morning, I tried to read that article again. It is now hidden behind a paywall. Newspapers are attempting to survive a new reality in which the world’s population seems to think vetted information should be just as readily available—and free—as the opinions of “citizen journalists.” Competent journalists face the dissolution of their careers because we are unwilling to place sufficient value on their work to merit paying them for their time and expertise.

Yesterday, as I waited while emergency medical technicians and nurses and doctors looked after my wife, it occurred to me those people were working on Thanksgiving Day just like any other day. Their lives, too, have changed from a year earlier. Like journalism’s paywall, healthcare’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic is a reaction to an unplanned intrusion into our collective world. Journalist managers are attempting to cope with the public’s fickleness about the value and nature of verified information. Medical administrators are attempting to cope with unknowns of even greater and more immediate impact.

How would society react to “citizen healers” who offer to transport patients to alternative care clinics staffed by well-meaning people who, thanks to readily available information technology and medical equipment, compete with trained and vetted medical professionals? It’s not as far-fetched as it may sound. Rabid opponents of governmental “intrusion” into our lives might gladly grant such inadequately trained people authority to compete with medical professionals. Would we willingly take risks with our lives and the lives of loved ones to save the expenses of engaging trained and tested specialists? We’ve been perfectly willing to accept “journalists” without credentials to supply information critical to our decision-making. So why not opt to rely on WannaBeWebMD.com for healthcare?

During the last four months and then some, I have grown more and more appreciative of the competent medical professionals who treat my wife. Thinking back, I am extremely grateful for the doctors and nurses and technicians who have cared for me through extremely intrusive procedures like surgery and chemotherapy and radiation therapy. Healthcare is expensive; more expensive than it should be, in my opinion. But slashing healthcare costs by cutting corners would be even worse than relying on volunteer journalists to report on nuclear nonproliferation treaties.

But there is room for improvement, both in medicine and in journalism, that would cause me to feel better about paying more when necessary. Lately, for example, on several occasions I have had to intervene when technicians (and even nurses) attempted to draw blood from my wife’s right arm or to use that arm to measure her blood pressure. Despite “right arm reserved” notices on the walls and on charts, people rushing through their tasks have overlooked those instructions. I discovered, after the fact, blood draws were done on her right arm in the rehab facility where she presently is housed.  Anecdotally, I seem to see more and more  corrections printed in newspapers and in online news websites; again, rushing through the process of journalism seems to have led to mistakes that probably would not have been made had speed and cost control been given equal value.

I feel incompetent to investigate the issues I’ve raised here. But I am growing more willing every day to pay more to ensure competent people conduct investigations and report the results of their exploration. I don’t know that I’ll ever be willing to pay for individual subscriptions to The Telegraph, the Washington Post, the New York Times, etc., etc., but if those news sources would collectively determine a way to share paid access, I might pay for that. The same is true for healthcare information and medical services. I’d love to be able to go back and read the article that left me awestruck as I contemplated the size of the universe. But, now, as I think about paying for access, I wonder if I would ever have seen it had I been required to pay for it to start.

Solutions. We need lots and lots of solutions. It is a different world today, after all, than a year ago.

About John Swinburn

"Love not what you are but what you may become."― Miguel de Cervantes
This entry was posted in Uncategorized. Bookmark the permalink.

5 Responses to A Different World

  1. Robin and Bev, I knew your perspectives on both hospitals and news would be very similar to mine. After all the years of reading your blogs and Facebook posts, I know we share so many thoughts about this complex world in which we live. I appreciate and thank you for your comments; it’s nice to get validation and, when we don’t see eye to eye, to be exposed to different viewpoints from people I respect and admire.

  2. I share your concern, David. What can be done to rectify the pervasive appreciation for ignorance? I wish I knew. Robin, you hit the nail on the head with “under the guise of news.” And people willingly believe the deceit. Ach! Madness on steroids.

  3. David Legan says:

    Regarding the issue of common folks thinking that they actually KNOW something, Isaac Asimov said it best:
    “There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that “my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.”

    I think it is an increased value placed by many on “anecdotal evidence” that skews the value-of-knowledge equation. “My sister has a friend in Omaha whose child was vaccinated by for chicken pox, and the next day the child was struck by a car. No way I’m gonna vaccinate MY child.” That stuff. Actually BELIEVING a meme on Facebook. Relying on a single source of information to form a hideously uninformed opinion. Listening to a used-up wanna be American dictator as he spews hate and calls everything that does not suit his purpose “fake news” and believing him because it only makes sense that Mexican immigrants cost hi-tech job while they pick cabbages.

    Of the many things that concern me about seven billion of us occupying Spaceship Earth, the loss of respect for those who actually KNOW something is perhaps the most troubling.

  4. robin andrea says:

    Yes, I like your perspective about news sources and hospitals. The modern world is so incredibly challenging in every way and only made more so by the pandemic. We have several online newspaper subscriptions and believe utterly in the importance of good journalism. The 24/7 news cycle has made journalism a little tricky because anyone can put up a website and start spewing whatever they want under the guise of news.
    All the time I have spent at hospitals with my mom and with Roger were eye-opening in so many ways. The 24/7 work there is the real thing, the exhausting endless mind-blowing thing. The commitment to their work is incredible. They do make mistakes, but for the most part their efforts are good.
    I hope all is going well and getting better for your wife.

  5. Bev says:

    Hospitals, especially the very large ones, always seem like their own worlds — almost like spaceships — like the Starship Enterprise — with all of the crew on board — everyone with a job to do. No night or day, weekday or holiday. Having spent more than a little amount of time in them, I marvel at how the big hospitals function so well — at least the one where Don and my mom were frequently hospitalized.
    I’ve wished the same about publications. Too bad we can’t just pay so much per year and have a subscription to a bunch of them. I do subscribe to several — mostly web-news that has to do with nature and conservation, or issues related to social justice. I usually maintain about a half dozen subscriptions. I think of it as a way of chipping in to keep investigative journalism alive and well.

I wish you would tell me what you think about this post...

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.