Value and Price, lessons by covid19
Since my last post on the 9th of March the global scenario over this pandemic codiv19 has indeed changed at important level. Millions of people confirmed all over the world, hundreds of thousands of deaths, it´s true that others have recovered, healthcare systems at global level are overworked, more than a half of the global population are locked down in their houses, global economic markets are totally stopped, apart from the essential ones. A real global viral war. Our young generation, at least in Spain, had been lucky not to live any kind of war before, but covid19´s scenario is the most similar situation to a global war, around this virus.
I have been working in pharma and biotech Companies for more than twenty years, I have always moved with total respect in all my conversations with healthcare professionals- at all levels- perhaps because I´m aware that I am not a doctor, nor a pharmacist, my degree is on Policy and Sociology. But you don´t have to be a technician, just have common sense, to know that all this situation could have been avoided.
Some previous signals, before covid19´s global crisis could have been, for instance:
- Some scientific publications have been written in 2017 and 2019, making references to the possibilities of new pandemics such as those which have already been lived in this century in several Oriental and African countries: Hendra in 1994, Nipah in 1998, and the mentioned SARS in 2003, Mers in 2012, and Ebola in 2014. All these pandemics, like covid19, were human global pandemics caused by virus originated in host animals and adopted by humans. In conclusion, precedents existed.
- The Institute of Medicine in US carried out a study in 2004, in which they warned about the quick reaction and prevention about SARS, like a public health success, but also a warning, recommending a global control, like something essential.
- Richard Horton, editor of The Lancet publication, wrote in his article in The Guardian that the global answer related with this covid19 pandemic, is the biggest failure in scientific global policies in a generation. Precisely due to existence precedents between 1994 and 2014.
- Different updates done by WHO in January 2020, which ended in January 30th with the announcement of International Health Public Emergency.
- European Union, at the beginning of February 2020, started to send ALERTS to different country members, although Úrsula von der Leyen, UE´s president, recognized that they could have reacted better, faster and before.
- If we are focused in Spain, the Spanish Institute of Strategies Studies published on 2018, the General Catalogue of Official Publications (online access) the Geo- politicians trends Horizon 2040 (link) where that document alerted the potential risk of global pandemics considered as threats in the period 2018–2040.
On the other hand, it´s stupid to compare procedures carried out by different national governments, so dramatic is to compare procedures between Oriental & Occidental countries. The previous ones have advantages based on living previous experiences about pandemics between 1904 and 2014. Where is globalization´s concept? Where are 360 visions? Where are prevention and prevision concepts? Is that concept exclusive for private companies?
Fantastic example would be oriental countries, South Korea, Singapore, etc. We can revise like example South Korea. Please, feel free to revise this explanation in this video (8 minutes):
Mainly, we can resume South Korean´s case in four aspects. Firstly, Prevention Policies as a result of managing previous pandemics (MERS, for instance).
In second place, the quick public and private alliance developed by government and biotech companies, when the first covid19´s cases took place in China, and with the aim of suppling diagnostic test in a big scale developing the idea of testing high percentage of population, and as soon as possible, apart from developing health policies based on covid19 attending to metrics, lockdowns, managing confirmed cases, managing capacities at Hospitals trying not to collapse, etc. Germany and Portugal have been following this example, with fantastic results in the Occidental world.
Apart from following routes by positive cases since 31st positive case, attending to physical movements and routes by patients, detecting since this 31st positive case a focus on a church during a spiritual event, after confirming this point, is time to test all these attendees and contacts.
The third point, more examples based on public and private collaboration, developing mobile Apps to monitor population, with the aim of sending alerts to their mobile phones when citizens were close to some covid19´s focus or positive cases.
This example has been replicated by Google and Apple alliance, after catastrophic events caused by covid19 in US. Talking about possible privacy policy conflicts, and its differences between Occidental and Oriental worlds, feel free to read this Enrique Dans´ publication.
Finally, South Korean authorities are working on the control of second and third covid19 waves with strict policies of social distancing until national registration of 50 new confirmed cases per day, or lower.
At the same time, South Korean authorities are analyzing 91 cases of recovered patients becoming covid19 positive again. The authorities are working on investigating virus mutations studying possible virus mutations, epidemiology, etc.
That is to say; getting ready for the worst.
On the other hand, in my previous post, I mentioned the dashboard developed by Johns Hopkins University. A fantastic dashboard consulted by all of us daily, with data about positive cases, deaths, recovered patients, by countries and at global level. Precisely, this data has been very well analyzed by the Financial Times team, composed by a group of collaborators lead by John Burn- Murdoch, with daily updates about covid19 curve evolution in each country, main cities, etc.
Leaving out the aim of tracing and the great exercise of comparative graphics about pandemic expansion, the question is the following: is this data correct?
Obviously not, in this sense the number of positive cases are much higher, and it would be necessary to use mathematical estimations at least to draw supposed scenarios, and on the other hand, there are also conflicts counting deaths, with different data between administrations, number of funerals carried out, different data by national and regional governments within the same country, where it would be necessary to create unique data by public consultancy at Civil Registration Office level.
Even in some international and specialized media, there is suspicion about mortality and positive cases data transparency, reveled by China due to its great volume of population. It´s true that Orient countries have been more precautious than Occident. At the same time, we could talk about regulation about some animal markets which are based on oriental countries.
Meanwhile in China, the FT´s picture of coming back to routine is that moment to stop for having lunch in Honda´s factory in Hubei, covid19´s zero zone, I can´t see a similar scenario in Occidental countries, at all.
We should learn from all this, it´s a must. There will be new pandemics. We have to choose what kind of societies we want to live in, once we are ready to go out again, what kind of economic models we will want to have, if it´s possible to do things in a different way, for instance, working in a remote way, polluting less, being more efficient managing time, commuting, from work, social, health and family point of view.
In another post in this blog, in January 2015, I mentioned Valentin Fuster´s declarations, where he exposed economical evidence of how it´s more cost-effective and cheaper to prevent than to treat diseases.
These prevention policies, as well as this global health crisis, as stated by Cesar Nombela in his ABC column, show that a scientific government is necessary. The economic and social effects of this health global crisis will probably be one of the most important secondary effects of this pandemic for the governments.
Precisely for this reason thinking about future, we should have clear ideas about the difference between price and value. It´s not a matter of collecting sentences from Buffet, Wilde, Nietzsche, Machado. It´s not reasonable to see in the world, some professional sports or dark TV characters salaries, compare with healthcare workers, scientist and researchers, who need to spend a lot of years in Education, with the aim of studying, investigating, taking care of all of us, and putting their lives at risk, mainly due to serious mistakes related with prevention and supply policies from Occidental governments.
Without this prevention policies we are exposed, with no defense in front of the virus, which has stopped the world and the most important thing, our lives.
When everything goes back again, the whole world must remember difference between price and value.
