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How America Can Restore Meaningful Conversation
Steps to develop the skill Americans need in in order to re-build society post-pandemic
Introduction: A Breakdown in Communication
A few months ago, I read an article in the New Yorker titled, “What the Coronavirus Crisis Reveals About American Medicine” by Dr. Siddhartha Mukherjee. The article is an in-depth analysis of the many fractures in the American healthcare system exposed by Coronavirus. Mukherjee describes the shortages of N95s, the failure of testing, the incompatible electronic medical record (EMR) systems, and decades of underfunded virology research. What stands out is that America has no shortage of expert knowledge or the deployable resources- Mukherjee interviews many experts or individuals who had the tools and the information to play a key role. What broke down was fundamental communication between the parts: the FDA and the CDC mis-communicated, researchers could not find receptive audiences, and maybe most tellingly, even EMR systems couldn’t talk to one another…
Reading Mukherjee’s article, I saw many symptoms of a single problem: Americans have forgotten how to have productive discussions about high-stakes topics. Even before Coronavirus, Americans were in bitter disagreement over environmental decisions, gun control, and politics generally. What Coronavirus…
