When [disease] Can't Be Stopped, That's Where

After Readinf Some Essay On The Nature Of Human Fallibility, I Was Very Aware That We Are The Recipients Of A Huge Amount Of Discovery Over The Last Century. Medicine Exemplifies This. And That Has Transitioned Us From A World In Which People's Lives Were Mostly Governed By Ignorance To One That's Constrained By Ineptitude. A Century Ago, We Didn't Know, For Instance, What Diseases Afflicted Us, What Their Nature Really Was, Or What To Do About Them. And That Has Changed.

Expertise Is The Mantra Of Modern Medicine.

We Have Medicalized Aging, And That Experiment Is Failing Us.

No Travel Ban Or Quarantine Will Seal A Country Completely. Even If Travel Could Be Reduced By Eighty Per Cent-itself A Feat-models Predict That New Transmissions Would Be Delayed Only A Few Weeks. Worse, It Would Only Drive An Increase In The Number Of Cases At The Source. Health-care Workers Who Have Fallen Ill Would Not Be Able To Get Out For Treatment, And The International Health Personnel Needed To Quell The Outbreak Would No Longer Be Able To Go In.

At Times, In Medicine, You Feel You Are Inside A Colossal And Impossibly Complex Machine Whose Gears Will Turn For You Only According To Their Own Arbitrary Rhythm. The Notion That Human Caring, The Effort To Do Better For People, Might Make A Difference Can Seem Hopelessly Naive. But It Isn't.