To fight coronavirus disinformation, health care professionals must speak out | Expert Opinion

All health care professionals can play a critical role in creating a “political vaccine” against disinformation. We need to speak out publicly for science now.

We know how to limit the resurgence of the novel coronavirus with common sense steps. But politics has gotten in the way of taking them. We need to mobilize to save hundreds of thousands of lives, while waiting for vaccines and truly effective treatments.

Counterproductive advice and actions have inflated death and sickness in the general populace. That’s costing the lives of health care professionals, hundreds of whom have already died in the U.S. Here in the Philadelphia area, where healthcare is the major employer, we know the health and economic costs of a flawed response to the national emergency.

National health organizations are increasingly engaged in the effort. A few days ago, the American Medical Association, American Nurses Association and the American Hospital Association issued a joint statement pleading with the public to adhere to scientific guidance by wearing masks.

The Bipartisan Policy Center, the respected nonprofit organization founded by the former Senate majority leaders of the Republican and Democratic parties, protested the Trump administration’s use of the Supreme Court to attempt to overturn healthcare reform in the midst of massive job losses. Former FDA and HHS officials, like Scott Gottlieb and Andy Slavitt, regularly defend science in a variety of media.

Medical professionals, scientists and publicly-minded entrepreneurs have organized peers to present data-backed truth and paths to action. ECRI, the Delaware Valley nonprofit from which I retired, offers free evidence-based resources on personal protective equipment and testing kits and guidance on topics such as handling labor and delivery and neonatal care.

Public figures and large organizations are not be the sole voice of health professionals. Grassroots actions are growing: my sister-in-law, a wound specialist nurse in Idaho, is sewing masks nonstop.

Let’s not leave Anthony Fauci or the CDC to be storm tossed. We will all go down with the ship if we do. Health professionals, locally and nationally, can speak on behalf of their patients on issues such as the urgency of keeping access to private insurance coverage for those with pre-existing conditions; letting children up to age 26 stay on their parents’ health insurance; creating a public option to compete with private insurance options on the healthcare exchanges.

It is uncomfortable for many health professionals to seem to take political sides. But when the issue is science versus destructive fantasy, it’s time to step out of private comfort zones and to advocate for patients against the accelerating waves of virus and disinformation. Let’s use the “social capital” of the professions in letters, op-ed pieces, social gatherings and other forums.

Nurses rate highest for honesty and ethics among all professions, and engineers and doctors are second and third. Health professionals are a trusted voice.

The political vaccine is to no longer stay silent when the issues deserve public voice. Organizations such as Ask Nurses and Doctors can provide the tools for responsible political expression. People with expertise need to take the plunge into unaccustomed waters.

Protecting patients, the public and health care colleagues is a traditional medical responsibility, and fulfillment of "a higher calling". The higher calling is calling. Will we answer?

Jeffrey. C. Lerner is President Emeritus at ECRI and a senior adjunct fellow at the Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics at the University of Pennsylvania.