This is just another nail in a very ugly coffin for anything in the US described as "public health". There has been literally nothing that public health, writ large, has done that is really constructive over the past five years. Please do not whine to me about how everyone works so hard and wants the best things to happen. Covid is an…
This is just another nail in a very ugly coffin for anything in the US described as "public health". There has been literally nothing that public health, writ large, has done that is really constructive over the past five years. Please do not whine to me about how everyone works so hard and wants the best things to happen. Covid is an even better example of the disaster that "public health" is, but the list is long, including the vaping issue.
If we wish to make America healthier, the right place to start would be completely dismantling the current "public health" structures and (if people insist) starting over. Clean water, etc. are in a different category and have been addressed well for 100 years. But vaping, vaxxing, diets are part of medicine -- not community cleanliness. Since medicine is an n-of-1 profession, it is unclear how much benefit population measures homogenized by governments led by those with other agendas will ever do. And the tendency of "public health" to squelch all dissenting opinions is reprehensible at best and lethal at worst -- as we are increasingly finding out.
Personally, I believe that the worst part of the "public health" debacle is that it has taken down the medical profession with it. After decades of gaining people's trust, patients now disbelieve much of what we physicians say...and I cannot blame them. Some of that belongs to each practitioner who (AB2098 before the law) just recited the government pabulum -- although some of us did not. But a lion's share of the loss of trust belongs to the NIH/CDC/FDA axis that promotes things that most normal people can detect are just wrong. (Note the number of boosters given, or the continuing strength of vaping.)
It will be decades if forever before medical practice/health care regains the credibility many of us have worked hard to earn to provide the best care we know how for our patients. If "public health" remains as it is, it will NEVER happen. People are now in the "fool me twice" position. They know better.
As a physician training in public health, can't really argue against the demise of its credibility, but that doesn't meant that there is no ingenuous meaning of the term.
Love your thoughts. It’s so hard to trust - I watched public health fumble locally with addiction - literally watched a high ranking government official get bought by a for profit treatment (I should stress NON treatment) organization who was basically buying MDs’ DEA licenses and paying them well. Still several more around here doing it. I as an ex healthcare provider do not trust anymore and I’m not sure that will come back, but that had been waning for a long time.
This is just another nail in a very ugly coffin for anything in the US described as "public health". There has been literally nothing that public health, writ large, has done that is really constructive over the past five years. Please do not whine to me about how everyone works so hard and wants the best things to happen. Covid is an even better example of the disaster that "public health" is, but the list is long, including the vaping issue.
If we wish to make America healthier, the right place to start would be completely dismantling the current "public health" structures and (if people insist) starting over. Clean water, etc. are in a different category and have been addressed well for 100 years. But vaping, vaxxing, diets are part of medicine -- not community cleanliness. Since medicine is an n-of-1 profession, it is unclear how much benefit population measures homogenized by governments led by those with other agendas will ever do. And the tendency of "public health" to squelch all dissenting opinions is reprehensible at best and lethal at worst -- as we are increasingly finding out.
Personally, I believe that the worst part of the "public health" debacle is that it has taken down the medical profession with it. After decades of gaining people's trust, patients now disbelieve much of what we physicians say...and I cannot blame them. Some of that belongs to each practitioner who (AB2098 before the law) just recited the government pabulum -- although some of us did not. But a lion's share of the loss of trust belongs to the NIH/CDC/FDA axis that promotes things that most normal people can detect are just wrong. (Note the number of boosters given, or the continuing strength of vaping.)
It will be decades if forever before medical practice/health care regains the credibility many of us have worked hard to earn to provide the best care we know how for our patients. If "public health" remains as it is, it will NEVER happen. People are now in the "fool me twice" position. They know better.
As a physician training in public health, can't really argue against the demise of its credibility, but that doesn't meant that there is no ingenuous meaning of the term.
Love your thoughts. It’s so hard to trust - I watched public health fumble locally with addiction - literally watched a high ranking government official get bought by a for profit treatment (I should stress NON treatment) organization who was basically buying MDs’ DEA licenses and paying them well. Still several more around here doing it. I as an ex healthcare provider do not trust anymore and I’m not sure that will come back, but that had been waning for a long time.