In these days of the COVID-19 pandemic, there is a great deal of commonly held focus on hobbled supply chains, widespread lack of PPE, the egregiously defunded American public health system, and other ills that negatively impact our ability to mitigate and respond to this existential crisis.

While this writer in no way claims to have deep knowledge of healthcare economics and related policy, the obvious fact is that something is wrong when a country largely perceived to be a “global superpower” cannot effectively launch and sustain a concerted, cohesive response to such a threat. Something is indeed amiss, so how can we think critically about this lamentable turn of events?

Critical Thinking: Our Superpower

When attempting to unpack the relative debacle of the American response to this novel coronavirus, finger-pointing and blame are an easy default setpoint. However, that alone is not enough and is largely seen as counterproductive.

What we truly need is the ability to objectively examine the situation and consider possible solutions that might prevent such rampant bungling and splintered mismanagement the next time around. This is not a simple task in the face of this gargantuan challenge, yet when we finally look back at how we handled COVID-19, we will by necessity have the task before us of finding our way to more robust solutions for the inevitable pandemic or public health crisis to come.

Critical thinking is a concept that receives a considerable amount of lip service in certain quarters, yet the ability to think in such a manner allows for the highest possible level of objectivity, even when our hearts cry out for subjective blame and recrimination.

We can think critically about our own behavior; the flawed strategies employed by the government; the cynicism of profiteering, price gouging, hacking, and hoarding; as well as the healthcare industry’s shortcomings. Government obviously cannot solve all ills without the private sector also doing its part, thus thoughtful public/private partnerships are likely to be our best bulwark against future disaster.

One superpower that we can individually and collectively manifest is critical thinking. While passions can and do run high under duress, we can also choose a dispassionate approach that allows us to consider all sides of a situation and then use our deliberative powers to tease apart that which needs to be examined more closely. This takes courage and the determination to engage in deep collective soul-searching while looking squarely in the mirror.

Is Public Health Sexy?

Let’s face it: public health isn’t sexy. Are there TV shows and movies about public health? Hardly, unless it’s a cheesy Hollywood vehicle about a pandemic. Are there scores of shows that make the emergency department glamorous and exciting? Just think about a young George Clooney and you clearly have your answer.

Public health happens in the background. We don’t think about it, we rarely see it, and we don’t celebrate it. In fact, certain elected leaders use it as a political football or punching bag and then blindly defund it since it doesn’t really seem to accomplish much in the eyes of an unenlightened bureaucratic observer.

However, when things go south like they have in the early months of 2020, we want our public health system to magically coalesce from its underfunded deep freeze and save our collective derrieres from most certain doom.

Can we blame public health officials from crying “foul” when they don’t have the wherewithal to adequately protect the public from harm? Their hands have been tied and their shoes taken away, yet we want them to run a marathon.

And what can we realistically expect when we give them the budgetary crumbs and subsequently order a last-minute feast? The folks who make up the public health infrastructure cannot be expected to create loaves and fishes just because we demand it now.

Up until early 2020, the American public hasn’t had to think much about pandemics. H1N1 was a big scare, but it was largely a dodged bullet in the scheme of things. And SARS, MERS, Ebola, and other biological threats by and large seem to happen to “other people,” not Americans. Yes, some cases of many smaller epidemics have emerged in the U.S. over time, but nothing to the scale of COVID-19. HIV/AIDS woke us up for a while, but then we fell back into a cozy, ignorant slumber.

Rejected Stepchild No More

If we want the American public health system to live up to its potential, we need to stop treating it like the rejected stepchild we’ve relegated to the closet under the stairs. And if COVID-19 is, like some epidemiologists predict, a dress rehearsal for things to come, then we need to make up our fickle minds and make public health a national priority.

A massive lack of ventilators, N-95 masks, and other PPE coupled with a lackadaisically maintained supply chain is proving to be a problem of epic proportions that has likely cost many lives. And when we initiate social distancing in a patchwork manner among the 50 states without a cohesive federal mandate and narrative, we lose ground and trust with the public.

We have the war against the virus itself, and we also have the information war, which may actually be equally deadly. Misinformation and governmental amnesia and tone-deafness do absolutely nothing for the cause, and we can only hope that when the next pandemic inevitably rears its ugly head, we’ll have learned, digested, integrated, and operationalized the painful lessons of COVID-19.