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How Many Times Are the “Facts” About COVID Going to Change?

The Organic Prepper, Joanna Miller

I have never worked in the medical field. But, I have had many friends and family work in the medical field over the years. We could speak together, intelligently in the past. We could share information and ask one another questions. 

 

It’s important for me to learn what I can do to better take care of myself and my children. While advice from individual practitioners varied somewhat, there was similar advice throughout the field, all around different parts of the country.

 

Everything is different now, and there is far too much uncertainty

This year everything changed. Mainstream media says one thing; the people I know in medicine have various things to say. Some agree with everything on the news, while others disagree. In fact, one day they agree, the next day they don’t. 

 

Chaos reigns. It’s hard to make informed decisions because it’s hard to know what’s going on. Medicine has changed considerably over the last 20 years, likely contributing to the chaos and confusion. 

The health care system has become more bureaucratized over the decades for a variety of reasons. The Affordable Care Act dramatically sped up the process. It significantly increased overhead expenses, which encouraged many private doctors to work for larger groups, such as hospitals, to absorb those costs more quickly. 

 

Private ownership has been decreasing for years but markedly reduced during the years between 2012 and 2018 Physicians began moving away from offering their services privately to providing services at larger institutions. Hospitals and larger groups of physicians can more easily shoulder the burden of high overhead costs.

The voice of humankind no longer belongs to us

I have worked in a variety of settings. When I worked for a privately owned burger joint in high school, I dyed my hair orange and purple and had five earrings. The customers did not care. My boss’s opinion was all that concerned me. His only concern was whether it affected revenue. It didn’t. My boss was cool with my being a strange-looking teen.  

 

After college, I worked for a large consulting firm. My hair was back to its natural color, and most of the piercings were gone. My more heavily tattooed coworkers had to dress very modestly. We represented a business with dozens of offices around the country and were expected to conduct ourselves in a certain way.

 

Rules on what is acceptable in places of employment vary. In larger organizations, these rules tend to be much stricter. In today’s environment, these rules do not only apply to appearance. Especially in larger institutions and corporations. 

 

In medicine, the move away from independent practices toward larger institutions made it difficult for physicians to voice their stance if it differs from the institutions that now employ them, which leads to a lack of information. 

 

I am not arguing about the existence of COVID

I am trying to point out how difficult it is to glean information not influenced by hospital policies and non-disclosure agreements of medical professionals. When dealing with a dangerous new virus, information needs to be gathered from as many settings as possible.  

 

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