The COVID-19 pandemic

[danbrotherston]

I don't think so either, and as someone who only recently got a family Dr. who I now can't really see, that too. I explicitly did not say that I thought it was 1 in a million, although I've heard plenty enough stories of people who think they should have tests, who probably are one a million "I've got a runny nose and and ichy leg, I think I have COVID", that's what I mean. There are always going to be people who think they should get a test, who don't need one.

I agree there are certainly bureaucratic issues, I hope they solve them, but I see progress.

As for Doctors running down checklists, you'd be shocked by how much of a doctor's job is nothing more than checklists--not that I don't respect doctors, I do, and honestly, the parts of their jobs which are more than that, are so critical, but it is a little weird how much of their diagnosis are done via a flow chart.

Boiling a differential diagnosis procedure down to using a flow chart is simplifying to a rather absurd degree. There is years of knowledge and experience that are needed to make a proper differential diagnosis. That's like saying that flying airplanes is little more than using a checklist.

Flying an airplane is mostly just checklists--there is a reason that computers can do most of it.

I did not say that following a flow chart is all of their jobs, but it is a surprisingly large amount of it. And nobody is saying it doesn't take training, but it is nonetheless the case that a large amount of the job is a mechanical process of applying knowledge gained by others to peoples situation.

Further, it does not devalue peoples work--it's simply realistic. Using checklists and proceedures is how we enable doctors to determine the best treatment for someone, or the best way to land a plane with a specific type of failure in a reliable way. Drs use charts to ensure that we are using data to guide the best care people get.

You will find that this applies to more careers than you might think.  We've had this conversation about transportation/civic engineering before. Virtually everything our transportation engineers do is simply applying existing engineering designs and standards onto our city. The problem I have with how city engineers do it, is their models are oversimplied, lack context and generally have very little to no evidnece for them.  Parking policy for example, is almost 100% voodoo. The effect is that we have dangerous, wasteful, expensive roads that make our cities worse. I feel those engineers should use more of their own expertise.

The medical profession on the other hand has a very rigorous process for developing treatments and proving their effectiveness.  But just because most of one's job is applying previous medical knowledge, statistical tests, "flow charts" doesn't mean that it isn't valuable or helpful...and frankly, Drs. are more open to adjusting treatment for individual needs than our traffic engineers (at least the ones at the region) are about adjusting designs to specific context.