A Farewell to CurveFlattening (Part I)

The NPC Healthbiz Weekly is here to keep on informing you through 2021. Your weekly briefing on topics pertinent to healthcare marketers and executives is published in cooperation with Peak Pharma Solutions. 

⇒ Issue #199 (In numerology, 199 suggests ever-present humanitarian potential.)
⇒ Worldwide Covid cases as of 06/23: 179,639,390*
⇒ Worldwide Covid fatalities as of 06/23: 3,892,872*
⇒ Confirmed Covid cases in Canada as of 06/123: 1,418,467*
⇒ Confirmed Covid fatalities in Canada as of 06/23: 26,144*
⇒ Number of vaccine doses administered to Canadians as of 06/23: 33,585,366*

June 23, 2021—Good morning, CurveFlatteners. It’s Chronicle publisher Mitch Shannon at the keyboard today. You’re currently eyeballing edition number 199 of this publication. As we divulged earlier, tomorrow’s newsletter, number 200, will be the last issue. (One thing you learn in the freshman class at the Famous Publishers’ School is that it’s always best to schedule your exit around a nice, round number.) 

The CurveFlattener archives will be preserved at http://curveflattener.chronicle.org for future historians to cluck their tongues over. This statement assumes that there will be a place in the days to come for historians, along with some form of future – and we’ve seen what happens when we assume, haven’t we? Along comes something very much like a global pandemic to make an ass of you and me.

So, following that theme, I’ll ask the question: Where were you, reader, on March 17, 2020? 

I can tell you exactly where I was: sitting in the parking lot of the Loblaw store on Burnhamthorpe Road, a couple of blocks from the Chronicle office. Along with most of the community, I had been trying to buy a supply of toilet paper, and the shelves were bare. I settled for a giant box of No Name coffee pods and a machine-assembled turkey sandwich, which I wound up eating in my car. I realized it was getting past three p.m., and I’d forgotten about lunch. 

And there I was in my Mini Cooper, watching the panic-buying through the windshield, while talking on the phone to a business acquaintance named Smith, for the first time. The call went on for more than an hour. We gabbed about every conceivable subject. It started with some blarney about the need to defer St. Patrick’s Day, and it ended with reminiscences of past jobs we’d both had in midtown Manhattan. It was our first, and thus far, only conversation and a classic example of two strangers finding dozens of things in common, forming a bond brought about through general anxiety. We both seemed to feel, as much as know, that something was on its way, and it wasn’t anything good.

On that day, the Ontario government declared a provincial emergency ordering the public to remain at home for 14 days. As the Chronicle group packed up what we needed from our workplace and dispersed, many of us wondered how we might possibly manage through the next two weeks. 

What emerged is that most of our team would thrive, and, speaking frankly, several would not. We quickly found a collective middle-ground. Creating this newsletter, which sprang to life on March 30, became the first of a series of new collaborations and shared exercises we undertook using digital tools. 

We’ve enjoyed sharing our experiences with you through this forum. We appreciate the supportive feedback we’ve received. Tomorrow, I’ll summarize what we’ve learned through this 16-month experiment in deadline-writing that we called CurveFlattening. And you’ll get a preview of our two new e-newsletters, which will arrive next month.

The NPC Podcast is back for another season. The National Pharmaceutical Congress organizers are proud to release our new weekly podcast series, hosted by Peter Brenders. Peter's guest this week is Ronnie Miller, boss of Roche Canada. Listen here now, or download the episode and play it at your convenience. The NPC Podcast is presented in cooperation with Impres Pharma.

COVID CHRONICLE 06/24/21

• Vaccination rates continue to accelerate in Canada and have reached just under half a million shots daily, but the trend reverses in the Lower 48. The Politico website reports the U.S. was averaging more than 2 million shots per day six weeks ago, but that pace has fallen by half. As demand falls, the remaining unvaccinated population is proving resistant to persuasion, and it appears the Biden administration will not reach its stated target of having 70% of adults fully vaccinated by July 4. This provides a complication for those who would like to see the Canada-U.S.A. border reopened for personal travel. Ottawa indicated resumption of overland travel to the U.S. might begin when 75% of Canadians have been fully vaccinated. That target will be achieved in early August at the current pace. However, certain regions of America appear susceptible to the next wave of the Delta variant. Texas and Florida, which have both fully re-opened, have full-vaccination rates of 39% and 44%, respectively, while Georgia has only 34% of its population double-dosed. (How persistent will this vaccine-hesitancy remain in the U.S.? See next item.)
• Anti-vaxxers are acknowledged to be a thorn in the side of the medical community. However, what happens when anti-vaxxers are part of that very same medical community? Houston Methodist Hospital in Texas has around 25,000 employees who have been fully vaccinated against Covid-19, along with about 600 who received waivers on medical grounds and 178 literal die-hards who simply refuse to comply. Those in the latter category were suspended from work this week, and promptly 100 launched lawsuits against the facility. The Washington Post reports that many encircled the hospital, carrying placards with slogans such as “Vaxx is Venom” and “Don’t Lose Sight of Our Rights.” What rights? You have a right to infect patients under your care? Perhaps that might even be true in Texas.

• And then there’s Duarte.  The no-nonsense Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte this week announced his government’s refreshingly straightforward policy toward citizens who persist in sharing their beliefs, along the lines of “Vaxx is Venom.” He’s planning to lock them up, according to Bloomberg news service. Said he: “If you’re a person who’s not vaccinated and a potential carrier, to protect the people, I have to sequester you in jail.” Where you’ll have plenty of time to be as skeptical as you please.

WHAT CHRONICLE IS WORKING ON TODAY

We're excited to begin the "Summer of Dialogue on the Black and Brown Dermatology Patient." This will be an eight-week program featuring weekly themed e-newsletters and a brand new Skin Spectrum Summit podcast, culminating with a live colloquium featuring the Dr. Mercy Alexis Keynote Lecture by Dr. Ncoza Dlova, dean of the Nelson Mandela School of Medicine in Durban, South Africa. Speaking for our entire group at Chronicle, I'm honoured to collaborate with brilliant physicians such as Dr. Yvette Miller-Monthrope, Dr. Marissa Joseph, Dr. Neil H. Shear and many other healthcare leaders. Like everything we do, the purpose of this series is to encourage optimal health outcomes for Canadian patients of all backgrounds, circumstances, and ethnicities. It's coming soon to this space.

TONIGHT I'M READING

Ben Bradlee Jr.'s "The Forgotten: How the People of One Pennsylvania County Elected Donald Trump and Changed America" (2018: Little Brown, Cdn$36.50.) It's going to take a very long time to understand how America's disadvantaged regions came to identify in 2016 with the draft-dodging, atheistic, tax-avoiding, short-fingered vulgarian they elected to their nation's highest office. The author travelled to central Pennsylvania to talk with overlooked voters representing various opinions. Through the discussions, the extent of their resentment toward past leaders is made clear, and their anger about their perceived lot in life is made understandable. Alas, Bradlee's reporting offers no indication of any available solution, nor any means of preventing a return to power by President Trump or similar tin-pot despot assisted by an insurrectionist group. That omission makes this book the very opposite of inspirational. 

TOMORROW AND TOMORROW

As Sydney Greenstreet said in his role as Kasper Gutman, the best goodbyes are short. We'll say adieu tomorrow when we fill you in on our new plans. Till then.