RWL #169 - one more day
Greetings from the University of New Hampshire - Forward Operating Base Last Homely House (FOB LHH)! We’re still here. We’re hanging in, not going anywhere but an occasional foray out to the grocery store. Online teaching is going OK. I miss being in the classroom and actually seeing my students, but I’m glad I have something to do and I’ve not been shut down like so many other people. I keep encouraging them to attend class synchronously, but I’m also recording and posting my lectures. I’m also making a fair number of mini-lectures to go over specific concepts, like this demo on cost curves. They’re not high quality productions, but hopefully they’re helpful to the students. I also had the chance to interview the president of PRL, Brian Hall, yesterday for the Health Leader Forge. Sadly he’s just down the street, but we did the interview by Zoom anyway. Great interview - we talked about growing a family business through massive change. Some things keep going.
Also from the Coronavirus Kitchen here at FOB LHH, I’m sharing this “perfect puttanesca” recipe from Men’s Journal that I found. This is one of those recipes you can kind of throw together mostly with stuff you have in your pantry (if you cook Italian regularly) - a great thing in this #livinginatimeofcoronavirus . Quick, easy, and flavorful. I’m conserving flour right now - the shelves are still bare. When I cooped up I like to bake. I’m not a great baker, but I enjoy the smell of fresh bread, and when things are particularly frustrating, I like to make cupcakes or ricotta cookies. Maybe next week!
I’m continuing with more links. I feel like I need to share more in this crazy time. I hope you find them useful - as usual, feedback is welcome.
Wishing you all well from FOB LHH. This time will end and we will get back to life. Hang tight, cook some good food, read, watch, and listen, and take care of each other.
Read
What: My Modern Monet, Doctor Starts Life-Saving Movement by Simply Writing His Name on His Scrub Cap
https://mymodernmet.com/patient-safety-scrub-cap-dr-hackett/
Why: Lean principles always point us to simplifying processes. I love this idea for patient safety - just put your name and role on your forehead. I had a nurse anaesthetist friend comment about the issue of personal caps - some hospitals don’t allow cloth caps (makes sense for infection control) - but I can’t imagine it would be that hard for a disposable cap manufacturer to change the design of disposable caps to include a consistent spot where people could Sharpie in their name and role each time they put one on.
What: Texas Monthly, Inside the Story of How H-E-B Planned for the Pandemic
https://www.texasmonthly.com/food/heb-prepared-coronavirus-pandemic/
Why: For those of you not from Texas, HEB is a major regional grocery chain. When we lived in Texas, we shopped there all the time. It’s a nice chain with a good reputation in the community. This is an oral history-style article about the chain’s response to the corona virus, including how they were monitoring for potential disruptions and began preparation well in advance of the disease taking hold in the US. Good lessons that our Federal government could learn from.
The article has some good lessons, but also the style of hearing it in the words of the people is always refreshing.
What: Bottle of Lies by Katherine Eban
Why: I usually recommend articles for “Read”, but I finished reading Bottle of Lies last weekend and wanted to recommend it to you. Eban tells the tale of an Indian pharmaceutical company, Ranbaxy. Ranbaxy was one of the first non-Western pharmaceutical companies to penetrate the US market. The company specialized in making generic drugs at low prices. These were not just generic ibuprofen, but immuno-suppressants for organ transplant patients and chemotherapy treatments. In other words, they were life or death drugs. And it turns out the company was a massive fraud. You get what you pay for. I wrote a longer review on my blog here.
Watch
What: Family's lockdown adaptation of Les Misérables song goes viral
Why: You’ve probably already seen this very cute and clever rendition of One More Day by a British family, but in case you haven’t, you should watch it. If you have, you should watch it again. They’re wittiness is great. It’s wonderful to see that talent is everywhere, and it only takes a global health crisis to bring it out.
What: TED, Bill Gates, The Next Outbreak: We’re Not Ready
https://www.ted.com/talks/bill_gates_the_next_outbreak_we_re_not_ready?language=en
Why: From 2015. Unfortunately prescient. He recommends a medical reserve corps and pair that group with the military. Sadly, the military and Congress is in the process of ripping apart and reducing the military health system. Maybe we’ll re-think that as we the nation now is counting on the military health system to come into action and relieve the civilian health system. I’ve seen FaceBook posts showing former colleagues and former students working on the Comfort and Javits Convention Center. The problem with readiness is it is expensive when nothing happens, and looks wasteful. Building flexibility and an ability to respond and ramp up rapidly is a cost that we need to continue to think about. Running lean (“Lean”) has to mean more than just cutting costs.
Listen
What: JAMA Network, COVID-19 Update With NIAID's Anthony Fauci, MD; March 6, 2020
https://edhub.ama-assn.org/jn-learning/audio-player/18297084
Why: So this is kind of ancient history - March 6 was so three weeks ago - a pre-quarantine world. I didn’t know who Fauci was. My father, a retired pathologist, knew of him, of course. I probably should have started paying more attention.
So I include this podcast now more as a “what did we know when” opportunity. I actually had clipped this and had it in my Evernote files for this letter back on Mar 17. I didn’t appreciate the seriousness of what was just a few days.
Fauci has advised 6 presidents - starting with Reagan during the AIDS epidemic. Let’s hope Trump keeps him on as a leader on the team.
There is an interesting discussion of trying to model this particular disease because so many people are asymptomatic, also discussion of the challenges of producing a vaccine and how long it will take.
What: Reason Interview, The CDC and FDA Have Failed on Coronavirus
https://reason.com/podcast/the-cdc-and-fda-have-failed-on-coronavirus/
Why: I never had Tabarrok as a professor when I was at Mason, but I had a chance to listen to him several times, and I enjoy his posts on Marginal Revolution. He has a great article (with my dissertation advisor Dan Klein) about how the FDA regulates (especially relevant given the agency’s recent corona virus failure) - you can download it here. In this interview he talks about how the CDC and FDA failed to react in predictable ways (from a Public Choice perspective). It’s sad that the Federal government in particular seems to be getting more in the way right now than helping. Something to consider for future planning.
What: Tim Ferriss Show, Lori Gottlieb — The Power of Getting to *Unknow* Yourself (#415)
https://tim.blog/2020/03/19/lori-gottlieb/
Why: And now for something not corona virus related. Ferriss does a nice job talking with Gottlieb, the author of Maybe You Should Talk to Someone, about therapy, but also about Gottlieb’s winding career that led her to where she is now. I posted her TED Talk in a previous RWL. I loved Gottlieb’s book. I have a number of friends and colleagues who are involved in mental health, so I’ve heard some of these sorts of stories, but she tells both her own story of therapy as well as a sanitized version of some of her own patients, in such a sympathetic way that I came away appreciating the art of therapy far more than before. Check out this interview, then I suggest her book.
Thanks for reading and see you next week! If you come across any interesting stories, won't you send them my way? I'd love to hear what you think of these suggestions, and I'd love to get suggestions from you. Feel free to drop me a line at mark.bonica@unh.edu , or you can tweet to me at @mbonica .
Also, if you find these links interesting, won’t you tell a friend? They can subscribe here: https://tinyletter.com/markbonica
See you next Friday!
Mark
Mark J. Bonica, Ph.D., MBA, MS
Assistant Professor
Department of Health Management and Policy
University of New Hampshire
(603) 862-0598
mark.bonica@unh.edu
Health Leader Forge Podcast: http://healthleaderforge.org
'It is the small things, everyday deeds of ordinary folk, that keep the darkness at bay. Simple acts of kindness and love.' - Gandalf (The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey)