It Will Eventually Touch All of Us

Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease, said recently that the Omicron variant of COVID-19 will eventually touch all of us. Are we ready for this? Will the days, weeks and years ahead be fraught with masks, shortages, boosters, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera?

Although the 1918 flu pandemic brought death and despair it also ushered in new concepts in the practice of medicine, advances in epidemiology and occupational medicine, vaccinations, housing, and the utilization of wireless technology.

In her December 2020 article, Professor Heidi Tworek writes that the transformational power of this new communication modality provides an excellent platform for sharing epidemiological data but it really cannot stop a pandemic. ¹ Other forces must come into play to affect change. She continues to posit that the League of Nations Health Organization leader (precursor to the United Nations and the World Health Organization), Ludwik Rajchman, believed that nation states could communicate with one another to build awareness and perhaps be better prepared in the face of a pandemic. This wireless system worked throughout the world until 1939 and the beginning of World War II.

The actual tools, although of importance, began to be used for other “military” motives, which in and of itself can set a dangerous precedent. News spreads quickly, regardless of its accuracy. The lesson here is that technology must be embraced by leadership to be effective and of value.

So if everyone out there will be exposed to the omicron variant or any variant of any virus, then are we doomed? Of course not; we learned a lot from the early 20th century pandemic and we have learned a lot from the current pandemic. Although it is interesting to look at masked individuals in every pandemic dating back into antiquity in art or photography, we see the need for masking and yet today there are those who believe it to be an intrusion of our civil liberties. Is it messaging, belief systems, freedoms, fear of autocratic rule, just to name a few?

As I have reported and as you have all witnessed, telemedicine and telehealth have reached a milestone as a direct result of COVID-19 and the resultant pandemic. Each day more and more people are impacted by the virus and more and more of us are relying on, or looking to use, telemedicine and telehealth. Sure there are those who want to and have stymied its growth, but eventually telemedicine and telehealth will be commonplace and will indeed touch all of us.

For most of January, teaching students of all ages has been relegated back to web-based tools. As a professor at a large midwestern university, I have found this to be quite challenging. The literature is devoid of a lot of data on this subject. In medicine remote learning and training in telemedicine has been shown to be useful. ² And although the literature will catch up with our present challenges in education, some recent studies indicate further study. Camargo et al. conducted a meta-synthesis on online learning in Brazil by examining both synchronous and asynchronous methods, suggesting its feasilblity. ³

Dost et al. posit that medical training will continue to integrate online learning. ⁴ The last thoughtful citation is one from a couple of dentists. Spielman and Sunavala-Dossabhoy review pandemics and education as an historical review. In this piece, they comment on how education changed after major pandemics beginning with Leprosy in 1200 to the pandemic of 1918 and the current COVID pandemic. After each pandemic, the world changed as aforementioned; technology was key. ⁵