Is the treatment for COVID-19, Ebola, and H.I.V. all the same? Charlie Warzel’s July 22nd piece in the New York Times, “How to Actually Talk to Anti-Maskers” is an excellent reminder that the very bottom of the medical pyramid should always be the way we treat other people – the human connection.
His article is not just about how to talk to people about wearing masks, it’s a reminder to always treat people (and patients) with dignity and respect. It’s about talking to scared people about COVID, vaccines, public health, and meeting them where they are.
Mr. Warzel writes about Dr. Niang, a Senegalese medical anthropologist who was instrumental in addressing the Ebola outbreak in Guinea in 2014 by building trust with the local people. He also spoke with Dr. Julia Marcus, a Harvard Medical School epidemiologist, who feels institutions such as the C.D.C. and W.H.O. should draw from lessons learned from the H.I.V. epidemic. Warzel specifically references Dr. Marcus’s recent Atlantic article about men who don’t wear masks, and how to talk with them empathetically.
These issues are dealt with daily by many physicians. He also addresses building trust on big picture issues, writing about his conversation with Dr. Rhea Boyd, a pediatrician who teaches at Stanford. She argues that we need public health solutions that actually work in order to build trust. To read about how Texas has specifically been impacted in this regard, see this piece by Jeneen Interlandi.
How we manage the epidemic is, at the base, the same as how we should practice medicine every day. As Dr. Niang told Mr. Warzel, “An epidemic is not only technical and medical — they are not cured only by science or vaccines.”