The Wall Street Journal - 28.03.2020 - 29.03.2020

C6| Saturday/Sunday, March 28 - 29, 2020 **** THE WALL STREET JOURNAL.

Tele-

health

systems

are

growing

rapidly in

response

to the

crisis.

Disasters remind us that

we depend on each other.

Dangerous times remind governments that their

first loyalty is to their own citizens.

Nations Push Back

Against a

Globalized World

Habitsof

Kindness

ThatWill

Endure

AROUND 8 P.M.onJan.20,Ire-

ceived the call: A test had con-

firmed that one of the hospitals

where I oversee clinical care, in

Everett, Wash., had admitted the

first Covid-19 patient in the U.S.

The coronavirus bomb went off

in our corner of the country that

day, and we quickly realized that

the pandemic would change

health care faster than anything

before. We are now leveraging

telehealth technology in ways

that will last long after this pan-

demic.

The Providence health sys-

tem, where I work, now has

more than 1,200 beds occupied

by patients who have the virus

or are suspected of having it

across the seven states in the

western U.S. where we operate.

We’re now testing more than

11,000 people a day and are run-

ning four clinical trials.

Within several weeks we were

sharing lessons we had learned,

from the importance of planning

and data to treating all patients

BYAMYCOMPTON-PHILLIPS

needed. A nurse at a command

center in Montana can monitor

ICU patients in a Washington

hospital and alert a physician to

a change in a patient’s status,

just as if they were located in

the same building.

For staffing shortages, our

“telehospitalist” program lets

hospitals bring in more physi-

cians in a hurry. We have more

than 10,000 doctors enrolled to

help manage patients remotely,

which can provide expert care

in an area experiencing a surge

of patients without needing to

physically move the physicians.

So far, most pa-

tients don’t need to

be hospitalized, and

treating people at

home lets us reserve

our limited acute

care resources for

those with severe

symptoms. Our tele-

health service is

keeping a virtual eye

on patients showing

signs of possible

Covid-19 via a pulse

oximeter (a simple

oxygen sensor placed

on the finger) and a

digital thermometer.

If symptoms worsen,

we quickly arrange

additional care. We have moni-

tored over 500 patients so far

and have the capacity for 4,000,

with more in the works.

Covid-19 has created a global

crisis, but it has also fueled a

sudden leap toward the future

of medicine. Across the country,

we are driving changes that will

bring better health care to ev-

eryone once this nightmare fi-

nally ends.

Dr. Compton-Phillips is the chief

clinical officer of Providence, a

Catholic not-for-profit health

system with 51 hospitals. MISHA FRIEDMAN/GETTY IMAGES

suspected of infection as

though they already had

it. We shared remote

technology with col-

leagues, such as an on-

line AI tool to help pa-

tients determine for

themselves, from home,

the level of care they

need and how to get it.

The severity and sud-

denness of the Covid-19

emergency have has-

tened changes to how

we deliver care. Red

tape that initially ham-

strung the Food and

Drug Administration has

been removed to speed

the development of testing and

treatments. The Centers for

Medicare and Medicaid Services

issued waivers that allow cross-

state licensing of medical pro-

fessionals and reimbursement

for telehealth measures. We’ve

been trying to accomplish some

of these things for years, and

they all happened in the last six

weeks.

Long before Covid-19, our

team had created

a strategic plan

called “Clinical

Care 2030” to use

technology to

provide personalized, affordable

care by the end of this decade.

Those priorities are suddenly on

the fast track. We’re using tech-

nology today in ways that any

public or private health system

can do, in the current emer-

gency and in the future.

To increase intensive care ca-

pacity, our teleICU command

centers remotely monitor ICU

rooms and direct care as

Hospital staff

get tested in the

Bronx, March 24.

A New Frontier for

Medical Technology

KELSEY BRUNNER/THE ASPEN TIMES/ASSOCIATED PRESS

dubbed themselves “The Cajun Navy” and

set out to rescue neighbors.

Psychologists Ervin Staub and Johanna

Ray Vollhardt call this type of reaction “al-

truism born of suffering,” and it has sur-

prising side effects. Most important, it

leaves helpers healthier. We often think of

altruism as a transfer, in which one person

sacrifices to benefit another. But well-be-

ing is not a zero-sum game: When we de-

vote our time and money to other people,

we feel happier. In older adults, volunteer-

ing is correlated with improvements in

health and even decreased mortality.

Kindness can also decrease our stress

and soothe us in moments of great pain.

The psychologist and Holocaust survivor

Victor Frankl wrote that “suffering ceases

to be suffering at the moment it finds a

meaning, such as the meaning of a sacri-

fice.” Many survivors of assault, war and

addiction report that helping others

speeds their own recovery. They discover

strength in themselves that they might not

have noticed before; they find purpose in

what they went through and feel less help-

less. Right now, that’s exactly what many

of us need.

Hurricanes last a few hours, earthquakes

are over in minutes and some terrorist at-

tacks take place in just seconds. They are

terrifying exclamation marks in our lives,

which bring us together in a moment of

shared struggle. Then they fade, and the

lines that normally divide us

slowly reappear. The Covid-19

catastrophe will stretch out

for much longer, and the sus-

tained struggle ahead presents

an opportunity to reboot our

culture and turn this intercon-

nected moment into a habit.

Many of us yearn for

things to go back to normal.

It’s an understandable desire

but one that we should reject.

The crisis offers a chance to build a new

normal. This could mean enacting policies

to support millions as they get back on

their feet. It should also mean a shift in

our values, towards empathy and fellow-

ship instead of ruthless individualism.

I know it feels impossible, but try to

look forward to a time when the world is

no longer paralyzed by this virus. Months,

years and decades from now, the effects of

the pandemic will linger in the form of

economic strain and long-term health

problems. We will continue to need each

other more than before. We must continue

to help each other more, too.

Dr. Zaki is a professor of psychology at

Stanford University and the author of

“The War for Kindness: Building Empa-

thy in a Fractured World.”

I KNOW IT FEELS IMPOSSIBLE,but try to

think back to the ancient past—sometime

in 2019, before you had heard of the coro-

navirus. Back then, how would you have

predicted people would respond to a sud-

den global pandemic? You might have

imagined a scene from “Contagion” or

“Panic in the Streets”—mobs looting phar-

macies, neighbor ruthlessly turning on

neighbor.

In truth, some people have brawled over

now scarce items like toilet paper, but many

more have done the opposite. Covid-19 has

sparked a global epidemic of kindness. Even

while forced apart physically, countless

people have found ways to help and con-

nect with one another: deliv-

ering groceries to immuno-

compromised neighbors,

engaging in “distant socializ-

ing” with lonely older adults,

creating pop-up donation

campaigns for those in need.

Restaurants have turned

themselves into food kitchens

to serve displaced workers.

Whole cities have given

standing ovations to their

health care professionals. Lawmakers have

broached relief policies, such as eviction

freezes and temporary universal basic in-

come, which seemed unthinkable mere

weeks ago.

Disasters rip away the tidy fallacy of

self-reliance and lay bare our utter de-

pendence on each other. They shock us

into seeing our shared fragility, which is

also our shared humanity. That’s why, in

times of crisis, we are usually eager to

help strangers, in what the essayist Re-

becca Solnit has called a “carnival of

compassion.” After 9/11, people around

the U.S. stood in line for hours to donate

blood. In the af-

termath of Hurri-

cane Katrina, a

group of private

boat captains

Restaurant

workers distribute

food in Colorado,

March 17.

BYJAMILZAKI

The crisis

offers

a chance

to build

anew

normal.

pen when all of this is over? While trade,

travel and international cooperation will

surely come back from their crisis levels,

it’s not hard to see this outbreak as mark-

ing the most decisive break yet with our

globalized system.

The backlash against globalization has

been perhaps the defining political trend

of the past decade. For all the benefits it

clearly brought—low-cost production and

highly efficient capital markets—the dis-

tribution of costs in an integrated global

economy has been heavily skewed toward

the less advantaged in developed econo-

mies such as the U.S. Add to that the cul-

tural alienation felt by many of those

people as their more fortunate

and successful fellow citizens

looked down on them, and you

got the populist revolution of

2016.

After this crisis, global sup-

ply chains with limited inven-

tory will be regarded with

much more caution by CEOs

and shareholders. Nations’ need to main-

tain supplies of vital lifesaving equipment

will accelerate the repatriation of signifi-

cant production. Businesses will discover

that all that expensive international

travel that seemed so crucial can actually

be replaced by videoconferencing and

other technologies. Governments and

peoples will view each other with a last-

ing mistrust as we learn more about the

falsehoods we were told.

Above all, the renewed sense of fragil-

ity that we all feel today will surely

strengthen the bonds of national commu-

nity. We feel a special solidarity with

each other as we watch our doctors and

nurses bravely saving lives in New York

and New Orleans, just as Germans will

feel the same with theirs in Dresden and

Dortmund.

The pandemic that has struck down

the world economy is the most powerful

reminder yet that the globalized world

we have created in the last half-century is

a construct—as well as, to some extent, a

creator—of a world of peace and security.

It may not survive a less stable world.

Mr. Baker is The Journal’s

Editor at Large. ALAMY

THERE ARE NO ATHEISTSin foxholes,

it’s said, and we are learning quickly that

there are no free traders in a pandemic.

As the coronavirus spread its deadly

tentacles across Europe earlier this

month, the German government an-

nounced a ban on exports of surgical face

masks. Shipments of the masks that were

already on their way to neighboring

countries were turned back at the border.

The country that repeatedly lauds the

borderless economy and castigates those

narrow-minded nationalists who would

build walls, restrict trade and favor their

people over the interests of

“global citizens” is now hoard-

ing vital equipment to keep

Germans alive at the expense of

fellow Europeans. When it

comes to the lives of its people,

you might even say it’s Ger-

many First.

No one should be surprised

at or critical of the Germans. Any govern-

ment’s primary responsibility is to pro-

tect its citizens. Despite the grandiose

rhetoric of the most ambitious globaliz-

ers, it seems that nations still take pri-

macy over supranational ideals and insti-

tutions. Never more so than in an

emergency.

The coronavirus outbreak has sent the

world into geopolitical as well as literal,

home-based lockdown. International

travel has collapsed, subject to tight re-

strictions as countries close borders.

Trade is slumping as global supply chains

are disrupted. Capital is coming home as

investors seek safety. National govern-

ments almost everywhere are undertak-

ing massive fiscal and monetary pro-

grams to breathe some life into moribund

national economies.

Countries are seeking to do what they

can to bolster their own standing in a

moment of global panic. The U.S. points

a finger at China as the origin of the vi-

rus. China promotes absurd conspiracy

theories about the U.S. Rogue nations like

Russia and Cuba try to polish their repu-

tations with public relations stunts like

sending aid to stricken Italy.

The larger question is what will hap-

BYGERARDBAKER

Above,

national flags

outside the

U.N. building in

New York City.

REVIEW | AFTER THE PANDEMIC