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pandemic public health us travel quarantine pre-existing conditions
shared by Javier E on 27 Oct 20
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1 big thing: America's poor health is jeopardizing its future
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An analysis published this week by researchers at Columbia University's National Center for Disaster Preparedness found at least 130,000 of America's 212,000 COVID-19 deaths so far would have been avoidable had the U.S. response been in line with that of other wealthy countries.
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That failure is even more glaring when you consider that just last year the U.S. was ranked as the country most prepared for a pandemic, according to the Global Health Security Index.
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What that index didn't take into account — and what has compounded months of governmental failures — is that even before COVID-19 arrived on its shores, the U.S. was an unusually sick country for its level of wealth and development.
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Healthy life expectancy — the number of years people can expect to live without disability — is 65.5 years in the U.S., more than two decades fewer than in Japan.
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65,700 Americans died of drug overdoses in 2019, more than double the number in 2010. Those deaths account for more than half of all drug overdose fatalities worldwide and held down life expectancy in the U.S.
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Mortality for mothers and children under 5 is 6.5 per 1,000 live births in the U.S., compared to 4.9 for other wealthy countries.
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Context: Lancet Editor-in-Chief Richard Horton has called COVID-19 a "syndemic" — a synergistic epidemic of a new and deadly infectious disease and numerous underlying health problems. The U.S. is squarely in the heart of that syndemic.
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A study published in August found cardiovascular disease can double a patient's risk of dying from COVID-19, while diabetics — who number more than 30 million in the U.S. — are 1.5 times more likely to die.
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All in all, more than 40% of American adults have a pre-existing health condition that puts them at higher risk of severe COVID-19.
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Those conditions are particularly prevalent in minority communities with unequal health care access that have disproportionately suffered from COVID-19.
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A report from McKinsey earlier this month estimated that poor health costs the U.S. economy about $3.2 trillion a year
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For every $1 invested in targeting population health, the U.S. stands to gain almost $4 in economic benefit, and altogether health improvements could add up to a 10% boost to U.S. GDP by 2040.
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The bottom line: There is no excuse for the way the U.S. has mishandled COVID-19, but the seeds of this catastrophe were planted well before the novel coronavirus arrived on American shores.
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What's happening: Researchers in Germany studied the effect of entry bans and mandatory quarantines on COVID-19 mortality, and found the earlier such measures were implemented, the greater the effect they had on limiting deaths.
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Of note: The study found mandatory quarantines for incoming travelers were more effective than outright entry bans, largely because such bans often exempted citizens and permanent residents, while quarantines usually applied to everyone.
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The U.S. lost track of at least 1,600 people flying in from China in just the first few days after the ban went into effect, according to reporting from the AP.
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Border controls are of little use if governments don't track and quarantine travelers coming from infected areas.
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The bottom line: A virus only moves with its host. One lesson we should learn for future pandemics is that restricting that movement is key to controlling a new pathogen, even though the costs of such controls will only grow in a globalized world.