November 06, 2021
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Yasmin S. Keynote lecture: The Covidization of Rheumatology: What will or will not change beyond the Covid-19 pandemic. Presented at: ACR Convergence 2021; 5-9 November 2021 (virtual meeting).
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Yasmin does not report any relevant financial information.
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Seema Yasmin, MD, does not want to “go back to normal”.
Rather, after the end of the COVID-19 pandemic, the doctor is calling for a new, “better normal” that could be possible through nothing less than a fundamental “radical change” in medicine, she said.
“If we end this pandemic, if this new coronavirus becomes endemic, say if we let out a massive sigh of relief and return to normal business, we will have failed,” said Seema Yasmin, MD, in the ACR Convergence 2021 keynote address. Source: Adobe Stock
Yasmin, a clinical assistant professor of primary care and population health at Stanford University School of Medicine – as well as an Emmy-winning journalist and Pulitzer Prize finalist – condemned the pre-pandemic status quo to the president of the American College of Rheumatology David Karp, MD, PhD, in a keynote speech at the opening of ACR Convergence 2021 with clear words: “I don’t want us to go back.”
“For the first 9 months of the pandemic, I was constantly asked on CNN or another platform, ‘When will things get back to normal, Dr. Yasmin? ‘”She said. “And I was like, ‘Do we want it to go back to normal? Weren’t the conditions and circumstances that led to this crisis’ normal ‘?’ “
Seema Yasmin
“If we end this pandemic, if this new coronavirus becomes endemic, we say if we let out a massive sigh of relief and go back to normal business, we will have failed,” Yasmin said. “The climate crisis is still there, we still have supply chain issues, and we still have an epidemic of burnout and moral injury among healthcare workers that preceded the pandemic. So the status quo was not good for the majority. Perhaps it served the needs of the minority, but I don’t want to go back to normality. “
For Yasmin this “normal” is nothing more than “the prerequisite for another crisis”. Officials should instead learn from the failures of the past 18 months to create a “new normal” that is more resilient and less prone to future pandemics, she said.
To achieve this, Yasmin advocated new systems that should be more resilient instead of relying on a crisis to come and shining light on all that is broken. She also called for a reimbursement of the poor mental health and mental health care of health professionals, which predated and was exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic.
“I think some of the fundamental things in medicine have to change, and that requires a paradigm shift that can feel very revolutionary, but we are dealing with things like suicide among our peers,” said Yasmin. “I think this is not new to many of us. It is a problem that preceded the pandemic and that the pandemic brought to light. If it’s not suicide, it’s other mental health problems; people have the feeling that they cannot go on, it is wear and tear, it is therefore less optimal patient care. ”
“This is just one area where I hope we see a radical change in the way we talk about these issues and how we care for each other,” she added. “I think so many of us even heard those horrific stories by this point where one resident said he was’ in crisis’ and one visitor said, ‘Well, you’d better get your mental health care off the net, or outside of the county because it will affect your community. ‘ To me, these things are a crisis and they add to these larger public health crises and make us less well placed to face and get out of a crisis. “
When asked by Karp what can be done to better prepare for future crises, Yasmin said there were some basic recommendations from epidemiologists, such as better surveillance systems, as well as transparency and improved communication between different countries or between authorities within countries.
However, she added that the pandemic had revealed another urgent need: improving science education among the public.
“We had to keep people informed of the evolving – rapidly evolving – science as we learn it,” said Yasmin. “We build bridges and cross them. And we share that information with the public and realize that they are not coming home. We don’t communicate it well. “
As an example, she cited the early public guidelines on wearing masks. Initially, Anthony Fauci, MDHe had pointed out that most people don’t have to wear a mask. A few weeks later, it was recommended that everyone wear masks, preferably homemade, that would not contribute to a shortage of health workers.
“It reads as good science to a scientist,” said Yasmin. “This is someone who changes a recommendation based on their assessment of the best available data. This is how you do science. For many in the public, this reads as a flip-flop, an ambivalence, as these leaders don’t know what they’re doing and these scientists don’t even know what’s going on. “
“And that shows how difficult it is to bring the public up to speed in a crisis if you haven’t invested in education,” she added. “I think so many of these things are not quick fixes that we want to hear about, but rather paradigm shifts and generational problems that take time to resolve.”
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