Social Media Discovers Managed Care and Rages - Or Not?

I watched TMZ last night and they were fascinated about the homicide of Brian Thompson the CEO of United Healthcare in New York City the night before.  The hosts could not approach that topic directly so they brought on Taylor Lorenz who they described as a social media expert.  She made some posts about healthcare companies.  She claims that the “entire internet left and right” was united in celebrating the death of this CEO because “Somebody stood up to this barbaric, evil, cruel violent system.”  Her rational is that if you see a loved one die because an insurance company denied care it is natural to want to see that person dead and this is not advocating homicide. It is a justice fantasy.  She went on to say that United Healthcare has murdered tens of thousands of Americans by denying healthcare.  She sees this as a revolution and it is a problem that should be addressed without violence.  She suggests letter writing and possibly politicians and journalists getting a clue and seeking to correct this imbalance. 

I have been aware of United Healthcare for at least 30 years.  They are renowned in Minnesota for their initial emphasis on not funding psychiatric care and moving on from there.  Physicians like me have been railing against United Healthcare and other managed care companies for decades.  And nobody - and I mean nobody cares. No politicians, nobody in the media, and nobody in physician professional organizations.  There has been an occasional activist state Attorney General suing these companies into a temporary correction that they can easily wait out.   The American Medical Association just recently came out against prior authorization one of the main forms of managed care denial – just a few years ago.  It has been in place along with utilization review – the other main form of denial for at least 40 years.

These business practices have transformed the practice of medicine into a high productivity and low-quality enterprise where medical judgment is replaced by the judgment of middle managers with no medical training and company profit in mind. Physicians have been displaced in their roles in managing the treatment environment and now it is staffed by business people concerned only about the bottom line. If a company decides it is not going to cover a medication or a procedure or a hospitalization – the general message to the patient is “you are out of luck.”  I worked at the same hospital for 22 years and during that time we went from providing care to anyone who walked in the door to care based on businesses telling us what to do.  At one point to make things less contentious (and after we were bought out by a managed care company) – the external review was replaced by the same kind of decisions made by internal staff.  Some physicians became "managed care friendly" in order to move up the corporate ladder.

How did these organizations get so much power over healthcare?  A lot of it depended on lying to gullible politicians.  The original sales job was that physicians were just too expensive.  They order too many tests.  They were going to close down or buy out the expensive specialists and greatly expand primary care.  That primary care expansion would lead to more prevention and reduce the overall costs of medicine. But once these organizations were granted all the power they wanted, they began acquiring specialists and providing their own specialty care.  They also greatly expanded middle management to micromanage staff and basically tell them to work harder.  The result is a system that is much more expensive rather than more cost effective.  Shareholder profits and CEO salaries require a lot of denied care to fund.  This article about the company is an indication of the amount of money that we are discussing. We are talking about executives that are making tens of millions of dollars in an organization that rations health care.

Of course, people are angry about the situation of rationed health care. But it is more about how things are organized and all the associated politics. I think we can all agree that there do not seem to be many bright politicians out there and that low bar took an even more precipitous drop in the last election. Even managed care companies know more than to ration vaccines or give everyone hydroxychloroquine for COVID.

 Politicians have invented this system at every step of the way and made it impossible for the average citizen to get any satisfaction when their health care is denied. Federal and state governments both side with healthcare companies to support the denial of care and (incredibly) indemnify them from liability when their denials result in bad outcomes.  Death is just one of many bad outcomes. 

The press does not get it. I am tired of writing about it for physicians.  The only bright idea that group seems to have come up with is not contracting with these companies and either charging cash or asking the patient to seek their own insurance reimbursement after paying their bill. This obviously has limited application and doesn't work if the patient needs more resources like operating rooms or rehab facilities.  So - Ms. Lorenz’s solution of writing letters certainly will not work.

Some news services seemed to connect a policy reversal by Anthem Blue Cross/Blue Shield (ABCBS) to the homicide. Some of the original stories claimed that anesthesia time per procedure would be limited and the patient might need to pay the balance. Subsequent stories state that the insurance company planned to pay the time allotment indicated in the estimated relative value units (RVUs) for the surgery.  They claim their reversal was based on misinformation. RVUs are another form of rationing – paying only a set amount irrespective of the complexity of the case.  It is another way that psychiatric services were also rationed by reduced reimbursement.  In some cases, it leads clinics to stop seeing all the patients from a particular insurer based on low reimbursement to the physicians and providers.  Lorenz posted a caption of the ABBCBS story with the additional line:  ‘And people wonder why we want these execs dead.'     

This is the state of medicine in the US today. We have just had an election that puts the most rational parts of the fragmented healthcare system (the ACA or Obamacare, Medicare, and Medicaid) at risk.  The party in power espouses gun extremism and uses political tactics that direct violence and aggression toward specific individuals or groups. The party in power favors the top wage earners rather than production or knowledge workers. That includes large healthcare conglomerates that all function by rationing care and access to medications and procedures. And in that context, we have a social media expert claiming that we now have bipartisan rage against these health care companies who have murdered tens of thousands of people by denying their care.  I certainly know many people who have been harmed by the denial of care.  In some cases, I spent hours advocating for them and trying to get the care they needed but I was simply ignored.   

At this point, the crime is being analyzed like it is just another true crime TV show. Endless analysis about the perpetrator’s behavior and possible motivations.  It is all highly speculative but made as controversial as possible.  All the analyses I have seen so far seem way off the mark – but I am not going to add mine at this point.  I am more than a little suspect about all the social media rage. Is it real or just generated by a few provocative trolls?  Will it lead to a typical Congressional show hearing where members manufacture outrage and nothing changes. One thing is for sure – the current state of events is not a good sign.  It is a sign of just how corrupt, ignorant, and not self-correcting the American political system is - and just how much those politicians collude with businesses.

In the end, Americans end up paying top dollar for a healthcare system that may refuse to treat them, an airline system that may refuse to fly them, a financial system with excessive charges and minimal interest payments on savings, and a system for workers that disproportionately pays the people who do not do any of the brain or physical work.  Is it any wonder that 4 people in the US possess more wealth than 50% and that 50% are essentially left hoping for changes that never come.

 

George Dawson, MD, DFAPA

References:

Jeremy Olsen.  Shooting of UnitedHealthcare CEO revives criticism of company’s medical claim denials.  Some mourn the shooting of chief executive but still have scorn for the insurance company he ran.  StarTribune.  December 5, 2024.  https://www.startribune.com/why-unitedhealthcare-is-a-four-letter-word-to-critics/601191492

 

Addendum:

As any reader of this blog can attest – I do not consider homicide as a solution to any problem.  The two main features of homicide that I consistently observe on this blog is homicide as a primitive value and a primitive solution.  It has no place in civil society.  In the anthropological literature homicide as a solution dates to prehistoric times when minor conflicts escalated from individuals to entire villages.  Modern man has not uniformly progressed very far as evidenced by every active war in the world right now and ever.  The shooting of Brian Thompson is no exception. Given everything, I have listed in the above post – it changes nothing.  It was a cowardly, immoral act, and unlawful act. I hope that the perpetrator is caught and punished.  I hope that the privacy of Brian Thompson’s family is respected.  

Killer Mike's Gun Recommendations for Families

I watched TMZ Live yesterday. They interviewed the rapper Killer Mike. Harvey Levin was his usual overcomplimentary self. He asked the rapper about his recommendation that every family should have "multiple guns, all sorts of guns" and this is what he said:

"5 - 5. I have always just said 5. You should have a revolver, a semi-automatic pistol, you should have a shotgun, you should have one bolt action rifle, and you should have a semi-automatic rifle."

When questioned about the semi-automatic rifle:

"I said semi-automatic, military is fully automatic. It's not military - it just looks cool. It can look like a race car but it doesn't go 200 miles an hour. My thing is simply this - the founders of the Constitution saw a need to fight tyranny at some point and they believed that that could happen again so they wrote that provision so to get to the ultimate answer you got to dig up those old white guys and ask them. I'm simply applying - I'm going by the rules that were given to me in the Constitution - nothing more-nothing less."

When asked about the risk of an increasingly armed and divided population, Killer Mike points out that the fastest growing group of gun owners is black women and he does not want to get in the way of black people enjoying their freedom.

In terms of stopping gun violence he was in agreement with curfew and an exception for working adolescents. He believes that no new gun laws are needed and echoes the line that there are enough laws to take care of the problem already on the books and that criminals are not going to follow the laws anyway. That ignores the fact that almost all mass shooters have no criminal record and in many cases have recently purchased firearms that they use in the mass shooting crime.  Instead he recommends "Stop the Bleed" classes and joining gun associations or gun clubs. His rational is that if you have a tool that can cause harm you should be educated about what to do for that harm.  Unfortunately if you get hit anywhere in the body - the education you will need is how to be a trauma surgeon and even then you had better be at a Level 1 trauma center. 

Consistent with the previous writing on this blog Killer Mike is clearly behind gun extremism and normalizing it as a constitutionally derived right. Obvious gun extremist rhetoric includes the claim that just because an assault rifle is not fully automatic it is somehow less worrisome. Anyone who has fired an AR-15 knows that you can fire as many high velocity rounds just as fast as you can pull the trigger and if that gun is discharged in a residential community that bullet is going a long way and in some cases through multiple buildings.  In fact, all of the weapons he recommends for the family will penetrate multiple walls and are a potential risk for the entire neighborhood.  The normalization of assault rifles by the NRA and Republican party was a move away from the use of guns for hunting to the use of guns for killing people and there is no way around it.  From the testing link this was a quote about the assault rifle result.  It speaks to the mechanism of assault rifles as a combination of high velocity and bullet deformation and tumbling:

"Though the 5.56 bullets showed the most deformation, they were also terribly penetrative (19 panels, or nine walls) and, beyond the first two or three panels, created relatively large holes as they tumbled along their paths."

Just as a reminder this is the full text of the Second Amendment:

"A well-regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed"

Nothing about tyranny. Gun extremists ignore the preamble. The "well regulated militia" these days is each state's National Guard.  This country went through a period of gun regulation that was widely accepted and reasonable until one political party realized they did not have many ideas to run on and decided to make guns a part of that culture war. I don't know Killer Mike's political affiliations.  There may be a subcultural effect since this same show regularly reports gun violence and deaths within the rapper community.  

The problem with all forms of extremism is that it is an appeal to emotion and it typically ignores the facts. Killer Mike sees the problem as encroaching on the rights of black people but that doesn't address the problem that firearm homicides have increased in the black community by 39% from 2019-2020 (1). We know that the political rhetoric that more guns for defensive purposes does not put a dent in those numbers and that these are almost always impulsive homicides based on gun availability.

The answer to how to reduce gun violence is not increasing guns and I don't care what your rationale is - but that is the residue of this interview that started with that question.

George Dawson, MD, DFAPA

References:

1:  Kegler SR, Simon TR, Zwald ML, et al. Vital Signs: Changes in Firearm Homicide and Suicide Rates — United States, 2019–2020. MMWR Morb Mortal Wkly Rep 2022;71:656–663. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.15585/mmwr.mm7119e1

The Many Excuses for Ignoring Science – Where Did SARS-CoV-2 Originate?

 

The COVID origins story started off with a bang last weekend.  Woody Harrelson gave the monologue on Saturday Night Live comparing pharmaceutical companies to drug cartels and COVID vaccinations to illicit drugs. He was conveniently able to ignore the fact that these vaccinations have saved an estimated 20 million lives and could have saved more if vaccination goals were met. By way of contrast there are about 30,000 drug related homicides in Mexico every year, several thousand per year in the US, and tens of thousands dead from overdosing on illicit drugs. A stark contrast to the way this monologue was presented. There was plenty of commentary on the monologue – mostly focused on Harrelson’s antivaxx stance in the past including a post that he had to remove at one point. Elon Musk enthusiastically supported the monologue – but didn’t say if it was for the comedic or scientific genius. Harvey Levin praised producer Lorne Michaels for not censoring Harrelson, but didn't comment on editing for comedic content. Nobody recited the simple facts listed above.

The monologue was followed Sunday by a more detailed story without much more scientific credibility in the Wall Street Journal (1).  The authors of that story discuss a 5-page report by the Department of Energy stating the opinion that a lab leak was the likely cause of the pandemic but that theory was given a ‘low confidence’ rating.  They describe the DOE as having many relevant scientists.  Other than controversial headings and fueling partisan debate – what good is a low confidence theory?  The FBI has the same theory with “moderate confidence.” They explain that the US has an 18 agency intelligence community implying that there is adequate expertise there for these low to moderate confidence lab-leak theories. Is this the same intelligence community that was confident that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and who seemed vaguely aware of Chinese balloons invading US air space?  They might have better things to do than speculate about pandemic virus origins and rate those speculations.  Protecting US infrastructure against cyberattacks and criminal activity would seem to be at the top of that list.

I would like to see that 5 page report at this point – to see if there is any reference to a recent consensus statement from the virology community on the origins of SARS-CoV-2 (2).  The full text of that report is available online.  If you read that report a few points jump out at you.  First – these are the professionals with the most expertise in viral genetics and evolution. It is their full-time job and they do active research in the area.  Second – beyond claiming expertise virologists have been very successful at reducing the disease burden through their efforts.  They get results. Third – while emphasizing neutrality they point out that the zoonosis hypothesis (wild origin) has the most supporting data and that there is “no compelling data” to support either a lab leak or intentional contamination hypothesis. Fourth they point out that “gain-of-function” is an inexact term but within the field it also means modification for therapeutic purposes.  The term has been used by some politicians to suggest “nefarious” activity. Fifth – they review the extensive oversight of their research.  They conclude that millions of people are alive today because of their research and that there is adequate oversight. All of that clearly stated before the start of Congressional hearings on these issues.

 There is pre-existing research on viral origins from other groups and wild origin is the most likely scenario (3, 11, 12).

In an interesting twist of events the celebrity gossip show TMZ (10:34 to 18 minute mark) ran with the story.  They started out with the Harrelson monologue followed by Harvey Levin’s characterization that the lab leak theory “blossomed” with the Wall Street journal article.  To their credit they brought on Michael Worobey an evolutionary virologist with a previous description of the wild origins of SARS-CoV-2 in Science (4).  Dr. Worobey pointed out that he wrote a letter in 2021 that the ‘lab leak’ hypothesis had to be taken seriously, but since then then there has been “really strong scientific evidence” of a wild origin of the virus and no real scientific evidence of a lab leak.  Just from a probability standpoint he pointed out that all of the cases were in the area of the Wuhan market, there were animals present that carried coronaviruses, and there is really no other explanation for that degree of localization in a city of 12 million people. He also pointed out the severe social media backlash that he received as a result of following the evidence but encouraged a systematic approach to the research.  He suggested taking the DOE report with a “grain of salt”.

A final comment on the DOE report was made on the public radio show All Things Considered.  Michael Osterholm from CIDRAP was interviewed (5).  He describes himself as being agnostic towards the lab leak versus zoonoses but clearly sees the preponderance of data supporting the wild origin.  He goes on to suggest that people want certainty when a high degree of certainty is not possible and that has led to definitive headlines (about lab leak for example) when hard evidence is lacking. He adds the following characterization and challenges the DOE to present their data:

“…. again, there is a very different type of theater being played out here. It's not one that's based on science.”

He also describes a very plausible scenario of a new virus occurring in the Caribbean and how that could be spun into a ‘lab leak’ from the CDC in Atlanta.

Expect a lot of political demagoguery on the issue with Congressional hearings in the months to follow. Unless there is any data as good as the references I have posted - keep an open mind.  In a postmodern world – people with no or vague expertise make unfounded claims about scientific evidence.  The strongest evidence by far is with the experts and scientists listed in this essay. And that is a wild origin of the virus – just like previous coronaviruses. Anyone suggesting otherwise needs to show up with some data and not excuse making or political theater.

 

George Dawson, MD, DFAPA

 

References:

1:  Gordon MR, Strobel WP. DOE Says Lab Leak Is Likely Origin of Covid-19 ---New intelligence about China outbreak spurs assessment; finding is given 'low confidence'.  Wall Street Journal.  Wall Street Journal.  February 27, 2023.

2:  Goodrum F, Lowen AC, Lakdawala S, Alwine J, Casadevall A, Imperiale MJ, Atwood W, Avgousti D, Baines J, Banfield B, Banks L, Bhaduri-McIntosh S, Bhattacharya D, Blanco-Melo D, Bloom D, Boon A, Boulant S, Brandt C, Broadbent A, Brooke C, Cameron C, Campos S, Caposio P, Chan G, Cliffe A, Coffin J, Collins K, Damania B, Daugherty M, Debbink K, DeCaprio J, Dermody T, Dikeakos J, DiMaio D, Dinglasan R, Duprex WP, Dutch R, Elde N, Emerman M, Enquist L, Fane B, Fernandez-Sesma A, Flenniken M, Frappier L, Frieman M, Frueh K, Gack M, Gaglia M, Gallagher T, Galloway D, García-Sastre A, Geballe A, Glaunsinger B, Goff S, Greninger A, Hancock M, Harris E, Heaton N, Heise M, Heldwein E, Hogue B, Horner S, Hutchinson E, Hyser J, Jackson W, Kalejta R, Kamil J, Karst S, Kirchhoff F, Knipe D, Kowalik T, Lagunoff M, Laimins L, Langlois R, Lauring A, Lee B, Leib D, Liu SL, Longnecker R, Lopez C, Luftig M, Lund J, Manicassamy B, McFadden G, McIntosh M, Mehle A, Miller WA, Mohr I, Moody C, Moorman N, Moscona A, Mounce B, Munger J, Münger K, Murphy E, Naghavi M, Nelson J, Neufeldt C, Nikolich J, O'Connor C, Ono A, Orenstein W, Ornelles D, Ou JH, Parker J, Parrish C, Pekosz A, Pellett P, Pfeiffer J, Plemper R, Polyak S, Purdy J, Pyeon D, Quinones-Mateu M, Renne R, Rice C, Schoggins J, Roller R, Russell C, Sandri-Goldin R, Sapp M, Schang L, Schmid S, Schultz-Cherry S, Semler B, Shenk T, Silvestri G, Simon V, Smith G, Smith J, Spindler K, Stanifer M, Subbarao K, Sundquist W, Suthar M, Sutton T, Tai A, Tarakanova V, tenOever B, Tibbetts S, Tompkins S, Toth Z, van Doorslaer K, Vignuzzi M, Wallace N, Walsh D, Weekes M, Weinberg J, Weitzman M, Weller S, Whelan S, White E, Williams B, Wobus C, Wong S, Yurochko A. Virology under the Microscope-a Call for Rational Discourse. mSphere. 2023 Jan 26:e0003423. doi: 10.1128/msphere.00034-23. Epub ahead of print. PMID: 36700653.

3:  Garry RF. The evidence remains clear: SARS-CoV-2 emerged via the wildlife trade. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2022 Nov 22;119(47):e2214427119. doi: 10.1073/pnas.2214427119. Epub 2022 Nov 10. PMID: 36355862; PMCID: PMC9704731.

4:  Worobey M. Dissecting the early COVID-19 cases in Wuhan. Science. 2021 Dec 3;374(6572):1202-1204. doi: 10.1126/science.abm4454. Epub 2021 Nov 18. PMID: 34793199. (see also the map of SARS-CoV-2 origins)

5:  Contreras G, Brown A, Shapiro A, How an infectious disease expert interprets conflicting reports on COVID-19's origins.  All Things Considered.  February 27, 2023.

https://www.npr.org/2023/02/27/1159821909/how-an-infectious-disease-expert-assessed-how-covid-19-started

6:  Worobey M, Levy JI, Malpica Serrano L, Crits-Christoph A, Pekar JE, Goldstein SA, Rasmussen AL, Kraemer MUG, Newman C, Koopmans MPG, Suchard MA, Wertheim JO, Lemey P, Robertson DL, Garry RF, Holmes EC, Rambaut A, Andersen KG. The Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market in Wuhan was the early epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic. Science. 2022 Aug 26;377(6609):951-959. doi: 10.1126/science.abp8715. Epub 2022 Jul 26. PMID: 35881010; PMCID: PMC9348750.

7:  Pekar JE, Magee A, Parker E, Moshiri N, Izhikevich K, Havens JL, Gangavarapu K, Malpica Serrano LM, Crits-Christoph A, Matteson NL, Zeller M, Levy JI, Wang JC, Hughes S, Lee J, Park H, Park MS, Ching Zi Yan K, Lin RTP, Mat Isa MN, Noor YM, Vasylyeva TI, Garry RF, Holmes EC, Rambaut A, Suchard MA, Andersen KG, Worobey M, Wertheim JO. The molecular epidemiology of multiple zoonotic origins of SARS-CoV-2. Science. 2022 Aug 26;377(6609):960-966. doi: 10.1126/science.abp8337. Epub 2022 Jul 26. PMID: 35881005; PMCID: PMC9348752.

8:  Bloom JD, Chan YA, Baric RS, Bjorkman PJ, Cobey S, Deverman BE, Fisman DN, Gupta R, Iwasaki A, Lipsitch M, Medzhitov R, Neher RA, Nielsen R, Patterson N, Stearns T, van Nimwegen E, Worobey M, Relman DA. Investigate the origins of COVID-19. Science. 2021 May 14;372(6543):694. doi: 10.1126/science.abj0016. PMID: 33986172; PMCID: PMC9520851.

This is an important reference form May of 2021 signed by Dr. Worobey suggesting that a more thorough investigation of the origins of the SARS-CoV-2 virus needs to be done.  Per the above assay and several references - he has concluded that the virus originated in the wild rather than lab leak since this letter. I think this letter also addresses the censorship comments.  Clearly the suggestion by this group that the lab leak had to be reinvestigated illustrates there was no censorship on the science side. 

9:  Chait J.  The Surprisingly Contrarian Case Against Lying About Science.  The Intelligencer.  February 28, 2023  https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2023/02/lab-leak-hypothesis-lying-about-science-is-bad-for-liberals.html 

10: Garry RF. SARS-CoV-2 furin cleavage site was not engineered. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2022 Oct 4;119(40):e2211107119. doi: 10.1073/pnas.2211107119. Epub 2022 Sep 29. PMID: 36173950; PMCID: PMC9546612. 

11:  Pekar JE, Magee A, Parker E, Moshiri N, Izhikevich K, Havens JL, Gangavarapu K, Malpica Serrano LM, Crits-Christoph A, Matteson NL, Zeller M, Levy JI, Wang JC, Hughes S, Lee J, Park H, Park MS, Ching Zi Yan K, Lin RTP, Mat Isa MN, Noor YM, Vasylyeva TI, Garry RF, Holmes EC, Rambaut A, Suchard MA, Andersen KG, Worobey M, Wertheim JO. The molecular epidemiology of multiple zoonotic origins of SARS-CoV-2. Science. 2022 Aug 26;377(6609):960-966. doi: 10.1126/science.abp8337. Epub 2022 Jul 26. PMID: 35881005; PMCID: PMC9348752.

12:  Worobey M, Levy JI, Malpica Serrano L, Crits-Christoph A, Pekar JE, Goldstein SA, Rasmussen AL, Kraemer MUG, Newman C, Koopmans MPG, Suchard MA, Wertheim JO, Lemey P, Robertson DL, Garry RF, Holmes EC, Rambaut A, Andersen KG. The Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market in Wuhan was the early epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic. Science. 2022 Aug 26;377(6609):951-959. doi: 10.1126/science.abp8715. Epub 2022 Jul 26. PMID: 35881010; PMCID: PMC9348750.

13:  Wu Y, Zhao S. Furin cleavage sites naturally occur in coronaviruses. Stem Cell Res. 2020 Dec 9;50:102115. doi: 10.1016/j.scr.2020.102115. Epub ahead of print. PMID: 33340798; PMCID: PMC7836551.

14:  Xiao, X., Newman, C., Buesching, C.D. et al. Animal sales from Wuhan wet markets immediately prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. Sci Rep 11, 11898 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-91470-2

15:  Lenharo M, Wolf L. US COVID origins hearing renews debate over lab-leak hypothesis. Nature. 2023 Mar 9. doi: 10.1038/d41586-023-00701-1. Epub ahead of print. PMID: 36890328.

"Michael Worobey, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Arizona, Tucson, who has studied genetic evidence from the early days of the pandemic, told Nature that he found the proceedings “shockingly unscientific” and that they do not bode well for the overall investigation. “Not one of those witnesses had any scientific record of investigating and publishing peer-reviewed research on the origins of this virus in quality journals,” he said."

16:  Cohen J.  Science takes a backset to politics in first House hearing on origin of COVID-19 pandemic.  Science.  March 8, 2023.  doi: 10.1126/science.adh5155

Very useful essay that points out little science is occurring and the intelligence is very sketchy.

17:  Rutledge PE. Trump, COVID-19, and the War on Expertise. The American Review of Public Administration. 2020 Aug;50(6-7):505-11.

This is a good reference to keep in mind because it points out that President Trump and his administration actively promoted the lab leak theory of the pandemic dating back as far as May 2020.  All of the pundits decrying censorship of the lab leak hypothesis should ask themselves how censorship is possible when the theory is being actively promoted by the Executive Branch. 

18:  Maxmen A. Wuhan market was epicentre of pandemic's start, studies suggest. Nature. 2022 Mar;603(7899):15-16. doi: 10.1038/d41586-022-00584-8. PMID: 35228730.

This study links to three preprints describing the origin of the virus in the wild with spillover to humans.  As far as I can tell these preprints became the 2 papers listed below as well as reference 12 above:

19:  Pekar JE, Magee A, Parker E, Moshiri N, Izhikevich K, Havens JL, Gangavarapu K, Malpica Serrano LM, Crits-Christoph A, Matteson NL, Zeller M, Levy JI, Wang JC, Hughes S, Lee J, Park H, Park MS, Ching Zi Yan K, Lin RTP, Mat Isa MN, Noor YM, Vasylyeva TI, Garry RF, Holmes EC, Rambaut A, Suchard MA, Andersen KG, Worobey M, Wertheim JO. The molecular epidemiology of multiple zoonotic origins of SARS-CoV-2. Science. 2022 Aug 26;377(6609):960-966. doi: 10.1126/science.abp8337. Epub 2022 Jul 26. PMID: 35881005; PMCID: PMC9348752.

20:  Mueller B.  W.H.O. Accuses China of Withholding Data on Pandemic’s Origins.  New York Times March 17, 2023.

21:  Cohen J. Anywhere but here. Science. 2022 Aug 19;377(6608):805-809. doi: 10.1126/science.ade4235. Epub 2022 Aug 18. PMID: 35981032.

22:  Cohen J.  Chinese researchers release genomic data that could help clarify origin of COVID-19 pandemic.  Science 2023 March 29; doi:10.1126/science.adi0330.

Supplementary 1:

The director of the FBI came out in the media today (02/28/2023) and reiterated that the FBI has concluded the virus most likely originated as a lab leak but provided no additional data. As far as I know at this point the FBI and DOE data has not been released to the public.

Supplementary 2:

How is science ignored?  I realize after reading the post it contains historical information but nothing explicit about how science is ignored.  Here is the short list:

1:  Science is a process of serial approximations to reality or more to the point - an empirically acceptable model of reality.  Politics, journalism, and entertainment clearly are not. As a result the scientifically informed realize this is often series of hypothetical steps and missteps until a widely agreed upon model is accepted in the scientific community.  That contrasts sharply with a long series of provocative headlines and opinion pieces.  

2:  Science deals with probability statements - politics, journalism, and entertainment exists largely on the plane of dichotomous thinking.

3:  The probabilities on the probability statements can be adjusted in either direction.  As is the case in the Dr. Worobey references above - his probability of a "lab leak or nefarious activity" hypothesis was adjusted drastically downward over time as the probability of a wild origin was adjusted upward to the point where it became most likely.  This adjustment of probabilities is often seen as a "mistake" or "lie" by the nonscientific community. Within the scientific community it can be difficult to change your mind.  Neither of those considerations invalidates the process. 

4:  There are still scientific standards that acknowledge expertise and peer review. Although peer review is criticized by authors it has resulted in conventions that probably limit grand pronouncements like a newspaper headline.  The evidence should be in the 'limitations' section of any scientific paper.  In the postmodern world expertise is seen as relative by those in many nonscientific endeavors - to the point that anyone who can Google is considered an expert. This is also the predominate social media method of operation. 

5:  The legal/political model of ascertaining the truth or reality is highly flawed - and the evidence is obvious in studies of racial profiling, unjustified violent encounters with law enforcement, wrongful convictions, unequal treatment based on economic considerations, fallible eyewitness testimony, and highly flawed interrogations. Focusing only on coronavirus - the interrogations of Dr. Fauci by Sen. Paul is an additional example. And yet - this is the process that is going to be used by the government to decide on the origins of the virus.  Unless the DOE or the FBI have concrete scientific proof - it will be an exercise in rhetoric.

6:  If not science what? Typical analyses presented in the media can occur at several levels that cut science out of the mix. Anytime you hear an analysis by a group of journalists, politicians, regulators, administrators or consultants who lack the requisite expertise to analyze the problem take a close look at that final product. Ask yourself if there is anyone with scientific expertise who should have looked at it.  Be very skeptical of analyses that are not disclosed because they are proprietary or classified.

Supplementary 3 (Updates):

Update 03/02/2023:  As expected the COVID origins appearance of controversy was still whipping up the media today.  TMZ continued with their fractured analysis – continuing to focus on the FBI and DOE reports as a game changer and not mentioning at all what the evolutionary virologist Michael Worobey told them yesterday.  They played a brief John Stewart tape and suggest that he was now “vindicated” for suggesting early in the pandemic that this was probably a lab leak. Harvey Levin pointed out that Stewart was not crowing about being correct in the brief clip that they played and how could he? How can a guy who knows nothing about epidemiology or pandemic viruses and has no information about what transpired in Wuhan suggest there was a lab leak?  The excerpt that I saw had Stewart talking about the need to have both sides represented.  TMZ did touch on the most important aspect of this debate and that was rhetoric and how President Trump’s racist polarizing rhetoric led to conflation of the viral origin hypothesis with racism and that created significant backlash from the left. But we are still dealing with a non-scientific argument and ignoring Dr. Worobey. Harvey Levin seems stuck on these events as primarily a free speech issue.  To me that is obviously not a problem given the degree of bullshit and demagoguery that occurred around this issue.  There was probably no more “free speech” exercised at any other time in the history of the country. Watching TMZ the last two days just illustrates that they can avoid science as rigorously as anyone else – even after talking to a top scientist in the field. As some level the free speech argument just becomes a rationalization.

New York Times political columnist Jonathan Chait wrote a piece in the Intelligencer entitled “The Surprisingly Contrarian Case Against Lying About Science”.  He claims the DOE analysis has weight because there is a division there that is supposed to assess bioweapons threats. To me that just deepens the nonscience of it all. From a rhetorical standpoint we have gone from an appeal to emotion to an appeal to authority.  He goes on to analyze the rhetoric starting with the need to shift blame away from the Trump administration and their “mishandling of the epidemic.”  He is the first journalist I have seen who writes about how China unleashing the virus on their own people (one suggestion) is absurd.  I would add even considering the coronavirus as a bioweapon is equally absurd. In his analysis of Peter Hotez Tweets he gets it wrong.  Dr. Hotez characterizes the antiscience aggression of certain elements of the media and Congress as: “The best defense is a good offense”.  Chait’s response is:

 “I’m neither a professor, a doctor, nor a Ph.D., but I know enough to state confidently that the ethos of the scientific method is not “the best defense is a good offense.”

What about the ethos of journalism and politics? I am confident that is what Hotez is referring to.  He ultimately makes the argument that the left is not skilled enough to parse the anti-science rhetoric of the right and as a result lump legitimate scientific discussion with anti-science crankery and this is not a good thing. He concludes that ideology cannot be used to settle scientific debate. Some good points and some bad points. I will add it is pretty obvious to anyone who knows a thing about science that real scientific debates cannot be settled in the media and every scientist I know has had bad experiences with the media because they are trying to tell the story they want to tell.  My classic example was television interviews that I was asked to give around the Christmas holiday when I was a young psychiatrist. I knew the reporter was trying to sell the story that there were more suicides at Christmas and no matter what I said there would be that suggestion. I finally just told them – no more interviews. After all – in this case what is the more provocative headline ‘COVID is a bioweapon leaked or intentionally released’ or ‘COVID is a coronavirus that jumped from animal populations to humans like all human coronaviruses before it – including the 4 normally circulating coronaviruses that are considered common cold viruses.”  Rhetoric is a very strong component here and if the press wanted to really be useful, they might point out that on a timeline basis.  The arguments are largely rhetorical rather than scientific and factual.  All the press would have to say about the science is that it is not settled and digress a little into how scientific decisions are made. But I have never seen that happen.     

Update 03/03/2023:  The following document reviews some of the history of the controversy and points out that there really is no definitive proof of the viral origins at this point.  In the last few paragraphs the scientists who see zoonoses/spillover as the most plausible scenario are looking for falsifying data but have not found it.

Robertson L.  Still No Determination on COVID-19 Origin.  FactCheck.org 03/02/2023: https://www.factcheck.org/2023/03/scicheck-still-no-determination-on-covid-19-origin/

Update 03/06/2023:  TMZ was at it again today.  They put up a weekend poll on the origins of COVID and posted 2 possibilities -  wet market or lab leak.  The vote went like this:

wet market - 12%

lab leak - 88%

Harvey Levin's analysis was that this showed censoring the lab leak hypothesis at the outset was the problem.  This analysis is incorrect at two levels. First, there are endless headlines from 2021 where Republicans like Senator Rand Paul accused Dr. Fauci of lying about gain-of-function and labs leaks.  The demonized Dr. Fauci about this to the point that he started getting threats and needed protection for himself and his family. The same sequence of events happened to many public health officials who became objects of right wing scorn.  Secondly - I don't know what you expect when you are hyping unscientific proclamations about lab leak for the past week. Let's not pretend the media is a disinterested party here. TMZ chose the story about "censorship" when there was none and chose to suggest that was a better explanation for why two government agencies were suggesting a lab leak over the expert they interviewed last week. Just another clear example of the title of this post. 

Supplementary 4:

House Committee on Oversight - COVID origins:

Here is the web site - not the current references to Fox News and the New York Post - both obviously the farthest information from science:

https://oversight.house.gov/landing/covid-origins/

Graphics Credit:

Eduardo Colon, MD photo is much appreciated.

 

A Psychiatric Perspective on Beatdowns

My opinion on this is probably long overdue.

A beatdown is popular vernacular for beating someone mercilessly - often into an unconscious state. From the video I have seen of these scenarios - it is at least implicit that the person had done something to "deserve" the beatdown.  The best source of this video materiel is TMZ.com that follows the hip hop culture more closely than most mainstream television.  In watching those videos it is apparent that even the wealthiest and most influential celebrities are not averse to being affiliated with these activities, encouraging them, or even commenting on them.  Any casual observation of what happens during a beatdown illustrates that it is a situation with a very high likelihood of serious injury or death to the person who is being assaulted.

Take for example this TMZ clip entitled Cardi B Security Accused of Post-Met Gala Beatdown.  You see two young men punching a man who is on his back on the ground.  They are punching him rapidly and repeatedly.  When they finish another man runs in and kicks the victim as hard as he can while the victim is still laying defenseless on the ground.  I listened to the TMZ pundits analyze the situation.  One of those pundits is Harvey Levin who is the co-host and is also an attorney.  The consensus seemed to be that nobody had any problem with this man being repeatedly punched by two men when he was paying defenseless on the ground.  Only Harvey Levin thought that the kick was a little extreme and could result in legal charges.

The very first assault case that I was involved in occurred at a University Hospital outpatient clinic.  I was on the consult team and the clinic called to say that they had detained an outpatient who assaulted one of their clerical staff.  When she wasn't looking the patient hit her over the head with a cane as hard as he could.  I went down to assess the patient.  He was very calm and had no evidence of major psychiatric disorder.  He explained that he got impatient because the receptionist was not working fast enough and that was why he struck her. He had absolutely no remorse for injuring her. He minimized the potential for injury by hitting someone over the head with a relatively heavy object when they were not expecting to be hit.  He used the familiar rationalization: "If she didn't want to get hit she should have worked a little faster."  He was not intoxicated at the time.  I discussed the case with my attending and we both agreed that there was no psychiatric disorder and no reason why he should not go to jail to be charged for assault.

My attending psychiatrists at the time always tended to analyze the aggression. Punching or kicking someone when they were unable to protect themselves was viewed as a particularly negative sign and an event more commonly seen in antisocial individuals.  It led me to reflect on people I had known in my peer group who had been killed in fights.  One guy I played sports with who went away to college and ended up getting in a brawl at a large college bar.  He was apparently kicked in the side when he was on the ground. He went back to his dorm room and died that night of a ruptured spleen.  In another fight resulting in a kick to the head - that student went home and expired from a cerebral hemorrhage.  Both students were very bright, full of promise, well-liked and had no history of aggressive behavior but they were killed by blows that are commonly observed in movies and television shows. There are thousands of men incarcerated in this country for punching or kicking someone in a fight and killing them.  I can almost guarantee that at some point in their court proceeding somebody said: "I did not believe that hitting him that way could kill him."

There are mitigating factors in some of these situations.  Psychiatric disorders usually are not.  Personality disorders and intoxicated states are but not from a legal standpoint. Being intoxicated or a sociopath is not a defense in the American legal system.  The best chance to beat the charge is to appeal to sub-cultural mores: "Boys will be boys - it was just a fight gone bad and somebody died.  Nobody is to blame here!"  Or claim it was an accident or there was no intent to do harm.  In both of the cases I was personally aware of there was no case in one and in the other charges were dismissed by the court even though the victim in the case never threw a punch or acted in an aggressive manner.  American law is highly subjective and it is not likely that these cases can be decided in a consistent or necessarily rational manner. 

A medical and psychiatric perspective allows a different analysis.  The human brain has a gel like consistency and it floats inside the skull in cerebrospinal fluid. Any sudden force applied to the skull leads to a shock wave that is initially dispersed as the brain impacts the inside of the skull where the forces was applied (coup injury)  and then when the brain rebounds and strikes the opposite inside area of the skull (contre coupe injury).  Which each violent movement thousands of axons are sheared off in the white matter adjacent to cortical areas.  Some forces shear veins and even arteries that can lead to very rapid death if not treated.  Treatment may consist of neurosurgery that requires opening the skull to remove large blood clots and repair blood vessels.  In extreme cases a piece of bone needs to be removed and stored to allow for the expansion of brain swelling to reduce the chances of death.   Lesser forces lead to more persistent cognitive, personality, and neurological changes.  From a strictly medical perspective - given the amount of damage, morbidity, and mortality that a beatdown can cause it is obviously not a good idea to engage in this kind of activity.  Even widely approved activities like football and boxing can lead to brain damage and death from severe brain  injuries.

I have seen plenty of the victims in clinical practice.  People whose lives has been altered by being exposed to this kind of violence.  Traumatic brain injuries, cognitive disabilities, and post traumatic stress disorder.  Careers and marriages lost from these effects. 

From a psychiatric standpoint, the only acceptable reasons for using force against another are self-defense and stepping in to assist a person who cannot defend themselves.  The latter situation can be difficult to assess and personal safety is always a priority. Those criteria rule out a lot of common altercations based on insults or taunts.  If that happens -  the safest solution is to walk away.  These criteria also rule out violence and aggression as a solution to problems.  If that is an issue, find help for anger control and problems with aggression.  The criteria rule out intoxicants as a reason for using physical force.  If that happened repeatedly with alcohol or drug induced intoxication states - get help with the drug or alcohol problem.  Even self defense may not be an adequate excuse for becoming aggressive and injuring or killing someone.  If you are bigger, stronger, a better fighter, or armed and you can easily handle the aggressor - killing or injuring them might make a self defense strategy less likely to succeed.  The initial example would appear to be a case in point.  Two men on top of the man vigorously punching him at the outset of this clip for pursuing an autograph would violate the acceptable reasons. The next man kicking him is far worse if these blows resulted in significant injury. It is tempting to put these situations in a legal framework - an individual's conscious state is probably more applicable. If you kill or permanently disable someone as the aggressor in one of these situations your conscious state is permanently altered.  You have become a person who is capable of excessive violence and that is remembered the rest of your life. Your entire moral development up until the time of that incident is called into question.  Guilt, shame, doubt, and regret become a major part of your life.

Age is certainly a factor in these situations. I have not seen any statistics but most of the protagonists seem to be in their 20s and 30s.  That is not universal.  I have seen many videos of older assailants beating the elderly or assaulting people randomly on the street.  The vigor, poor judgment, problematic peer pressure, and excessive use of intoxicants make this demographic group the likely perpetrators of beatdowns.

If you like my standard spread the word. There should be no beatdowns of any kind.  They endanger lives, lead to disability, and and can have far ranging effects for perpetrators and victim - both physically and  psychologically. They are unnecessary in what are typically nuisance situations where there are better ways to resolve the problem, including just walking away.

Beatdowns can kill people. They are a throwback to ancient civilizations when conflicts were resolved by violence and the object was to kill all of the adjacent tribes members.  The toll is great and the next time somebody asks you if someone "deserved a beatdown" - let them know that nobody does.

And let them know that two or three people hitting someone when they are down and vulnerable is unconscionable.       



George Dawson, MD, DFAPA