Virtual Medicine, Virtual Disease, Real Consequences

Abstract

This chapter investigates the hypothesis that the COVID-19 pandemic was the perfect storm due to the misalignment of competing elements of the US healthcare system, the economic commoditization of disease, the economic commoditization of healthcare delivery, and inadequate data to inform medical decision making on a mass scale. The culmination of a decades-long devolution away from patient care to healthcare or more appropriately sick-care created a system that was unable to quickly find the common ground needed to deal with the pandemic known as COVID-19.