We think we might have discovered the problem with the coronavirus public health response

There are tales of horror from the public health world concerning the coronavirus. CDC and the FDA in the US combined - presumably on the grounds that no bureaucracy likes to see other people doing its job - to prevent testing for the virus. Even, at one point, banning home testing kits. Here in the UK Public Health England has not exactly covered itself in glory despite that £4 billion and change a year they get. Even when people try to defend the World Health Organisation they do so by harking back to the half a century ago eradication of smallpox, not by reference to anything being done right now.

We think we’ve found the one little detail, the perfect exemplar, of what has gone wrong. Writing in The Guardian a professor of public health, at Imperial no less, tells us of her work:

Mathematical models are being refined to predict the extent and speed of spread and estimate the impact of control methods. My own group is studying the response of communities, showing how the epidemic is amplifying existing social inequalities.

We’re in the middle of a pandemic, exactly when we’d like to know interesting things from the public health wallahs, they’re still off treating the subject as a branch of grievance studies. They’re not even being coy about it, the evidence is being proudly presented as with a two year old showing off the new potty training skills. We would, professor, rather prefer to know how not to kill people while still preserving civilisation and some semblance of an economy. Rather than, say, how disease perpetuates the inequities of a patriarchal and neoliberal capitalism or whatever it is you think you might be able to show.

That is, the problem with the public health response to the coronavirus is that public health isn’t about public health any more. So, perhaps we should stop exalting the subject - or even looking to it for advice?