American Thought Leaders: Dr. Drew: From the Opioid Crisis to COVID, the Physician–Patient Relationship Is Increasingly Impaired. Host: Jan Jekielek. Guest: Dr. Drew Pinsky, MD (12/07/24, podcast/video 37:44)
Podcast: podcasts.apple.com/us/p…
Video (may require subscription, includes transcript):
Drew Pinsky (aka Dr. Drew) is an addiction medicine specialist and host of the TV series “Ask Dr. Drew.” Having studied and exposed American public health and drug addiction for decades, he saw early on that the authoritarian response to the COVID-19 pandemic would cause unnecessary harm and suffering.
This interview offered fascinating parallels between the opioid addiction playbook and the COVID-19 countermeasures playbook, both of which significantly degraded the physician-patient relationship. You won’t want to miss this discussion.
Key Pinsky Proclamations:
A member of the school board came in and said, ‘We’re going to lock the schools down.’ And I said, ‘Why? Why are you doing that? Who did you consult with? Did an infectious disease doctor come in and say you’ve got to do this?’ ‘No, it’s just the right thing to do.’ ... I knew then that was big, big, big trouble.
The physician-patient unit is so badly encumbered and so badly adulterated right now that it’s hard for it to function. There are some of us that can’t get over COVID—not the virus—the way our country dealt with the COVID, just mind-boggling.
Regarding the centralization and algorithmizing of medicine, he says: The young folks are being taught to look at the computer and just fill out forms, do an algorithm, look things up if you don’t know—I mean, I don’t know how you develop judgment. I don’t know how you think about a risk-reward if all you’re doing is following an algorithm on your electronic medical record. It’s really disturbing.
