The COVID-19 pandemic has been a national stress test. From my vantage point, the indirect effect from our response to the virus has been more revelatory than the direct effects of the virus in exposing preexisting weaknesses across society.
In a way, that’s a metaphor for the way the SARS-CoV-2 virus kills us - it’s not the virus itself, but it’s the way we respond to it that matters.
We’ve all certainly learned lot about ourselves, our country, and our healthcare system. But in the midst of all the chaos, there’s been a shining beacon of competence that we can learn from - the NBA.
The NBA’s reopening plan is a coherent, rational strategy that’s been executed precisely
It feels weird to write that heading about any part of an American response in the time of COVID, but it’s true.
The NBA has a 6 phase reopening plan with clear isolation protocols, testing plans, and physical distancing guidelines.
We can learn from their response and I think it’s instructive for all of us to think about how they did this - as well as contrast this to how our health care system and our government have approached the pandemic.
The major steps of their plan tell us a lot:
They first decided on their preferred outcome before designing a strategy to achieve it - in this case, to have a legitimate end to the season, crown a champion, and minimize the economic loss to the league
They made clear, shared sacrifices in the interests of their larger strategy - no in person crowds, no home court advantage, everyone confined to a “bubble” in Disney World
They got all the major stakeholders involved in the decision-making process to ensure buy-in with the final product - players, owners, and TV networks all had a seat at the table
They invested in a surveillance strategy that permits a reopening - the NBA is completing 2000 (two thousand!) COVID tests per day and having all players wear a smart ring for early COVID detection, which is a topic for another day
Both our healthcare system and our government should learn a lot from the NBA’s plan and execution.
What doctors should take from the NBA
Rogue actors and poor coordinaton make for a chaotic strategy where no one knows what’s going on. Just like the way we’ve been taking care of COVID patients.
Medicine has always had a cowboy streak in it that’s put on a pedestal by society - think about how many media representations of the rogue doctor who breaks all the rules to do what’s right for their patient that you’ve seen.
But real healthcare is about incremental progress, building of knowledge, and the accumulation of evidence to inform practice. High quality medicine is more about checklists than eureka moments.
We screwed this up from the beginning and we’re still doing it. Think about all the articles you’ve read about the different treatments given to patients with COVID that haven’t had any evidence behind them - hydroxychloroquine, tissue plasminogen activator, azithromycin, Actemra, sarilumab, convalescent plasma.
Maybe it’s excusable at the very beginning of the pandemic (a tough maybe), but cowboy medicine slows the accumulation of knowledge and ultimately retards our understanding of how to treat COVID.
We should be doing this like the UK did with their RECOVERY consortium - it’s a huge, systemic failure that we haven’t.
What our government and society should learn from the NBA
You can’t only focus on the endgame, you need have a strategy. The NBA was only able to open up their “economy” because they made clear, coherent sacrifices with eyes on the prize.
They invested in testing and detection first, second, and third. If you read any pieces on the NBA’s reopening you’ll see how much of a keystone testing is to reopening. Without testing, there’s no hope for a next step.
And testing is an investment - in money, in time, and in attention. It’s not easy, but it’s the only path forward. But if you start putting even a small amount of thought into how to beat a pandemic you very quickly learn that knowledge about who has the disease is the only way to get to where to want to be.
The second thing the NBA did that our government should learn was that having everyone sacrifice a bit helps get us all to a better place more quickly.
Owners sacrifice revenue from not having crowd revenue and from a shorter season with fewer teams
Players sacrifice months in a bubble in Orlando and submit to frequent testing and isolation
Employees have to abide by restrictive protocols and wear masks, but they get to keep their jobs and still get paid
If we don’t embrace a strategy to get back to normal and accept that there might be some sacrifice, we’ll keep treading water. This means investing in testing and a national mask mandate (or at least a social expectation that everyone wears a mask). It’s the only way forward.
A goal without a plan means you’ll always be stuck at the beginning - kind of like our national response to the pandemic.
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