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@huskify, yes, the entire article is really good and is saying so much that I wish more news outlets were saying about long covid!

"We may have too much faith in these institutions. Whether it's the WHO's mishandling of Ebola, the CDC's own admittance of its botched pandemic response or the NIH's lack of urgency in establishing methods for detecting Parkinson's..."

Much has been made of how our institutions collapsed in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic. It could well be that our public health institutions were never truly made for this kind of thing and need building.

Modern medicine is good at stopping obvious cause & effect. Chest pain with abnormal blood work? Got newer & newer procedures to save your life, but preventing that moment in the 30 years leading to it? We're not only not so good, but we don't even communicate effectively about it.

Those of us who do local publishing were thrust into filling in gaps left behind by public health in 2020-22+. All institutions sucked at distilling vital info down for laypeople. I had a science background and spent all my downtime deciphering science-speak.

@TheRatCantRead @huskify

@sysop408, I think what you're saying makes sense. There were numerous failings at all levels of public health institutions long before covid-19, and as you said, it's almost like these institutions really weren't created for that purpose. I think there are many good people doing the best they can within public health institutions, but if these institutions were robust and comprehensive before covid-19, then they wouldn't be on the verge of collapse now. And yes, part of being robust would be to look at long-term and chronic issues, not just immediate health problems.

It sounds like it was a lot for you to take on trying to translate a lot of the science coming out into something the public could understand. Please know that there are a lot of people out here, like myself, who are very grateful to you and others who are doing that work! It should have been work done by the WHO and CDC and others, but the fact that there were people trying to fill in the gaps absolutely saved lives!
@huskify

@TheRatCantRead @sysop408

Historian John Barry said, "When you mix politics with science, you get politics." The challenge we face is how to handle the inevitable mixing. https://bigthink.com/13-8/science-politics/ We need leaders in public health institutions who can keep the politics out of public health decisions and policy.

@huskify, thank you for sharing this article! I agree that public health should be apolitical in the sense that bodies like the CDC should accurately and consistently base their recommendations and communication around science and facts, such as not walking back mask recommendations and covid-19 isolation times to bow to a minority of right-wing extremists or demands of airline CEOs. At the same time, I think science has always been political in a sense. Societies and governments interpret what science means and how it's applied in political ways, based around dominant values and beliefs of the time, and that's been the case ever since people have been doing science. I think the very notion of public health—that we have a collective responsibility to care and take action around protecting each others' health—is also inherently political. The ideal, to me, would be to bring together scientific fact with a politics of collective care so we use science to ensure we're building a better world.

@sysop408

@TheRatCantRead

I'm not trying to absolve the horseshoe union of guilt for poisoning the public discourse, but if we comfort ourselves by pointing to the political rancor, we're going to miss all the ways we need to change at every societal level to better handle the next pandemic. Even without politics, I'm not optimistic that we would have altered the outcome.

@huskify

@sysop408, I'm not sure what you mean by "the horseshoe union." Could you please clarify? Do you mean the idea that the political left and right become the same at extremes? If so, I don't think I see it that way, since the right has been getting more extreme while the centrists have capitulated to them. I don't think the US has a true political left, though there are certainly activist and mutual aid groups trying to change that. Though I apologize if I'm misunderstanding your comment!

I'd also like to clarify what I mean by political. To me, politics is more than just elections, parties or governments. It's how we all come together to shape our society. We co-create it, whether we realize it or not. It's struggles for power over oppression and exploitation. I completely agree with you—we need to change at every level of society for the next pandemic and other problems we face! To me, trying to bring about that change is inherently political and on-going, even if it currently feels a bit stuck.

@huskify

@TheRatCantRead yes that's what I meant by the horseshoe... nominally extreme left and extreme right, but really mostly just inconsistent conspiracy laden ideologies that don't map well to political spectrums.

@sysop408, thank you for clarifying! There is unfortunately too much conspiracy thinking around covid that seems to come, at least in the US, from both major political parties