In the wake of mass cancellations and delays in elective healthcare due to the COVID pandemic, Sandeep Jauhar, MD, wrote in the New York Times , "Perhaps Americans don't require the volume of care that their doctors are used to providing."
There was plenty of support for the cardiologist's opinion, but the bullies crawled out en masse on social media. Interspersed between the re-tweets and "likes" on his feed were comments that his article was "trash, junk" and his opinion "humanitarian euthanasia." One frustrated patient wrote, "I have 2 surgeries on hold; describing this as 'fine' would be a definite overstatement." Yet another critic compared the Times to the National Enquirer for having published his article.
Nearly all the naysayers misunderstood his point.
Sandeep Jauhar, MD
Jauhar referred to patients with "stable chronic conditions." This does not include those with pressing needs for surgery or unstable/progressive symptoms, or those with a new or incompletely treated or inadequately assessed diagnosis. Jauhar acknowledged that postponing care had poor consequences for some patients, "such as those with newly diagnosed cancers that went untreated."
And he didn't come to this conclusion without some measure of data. He referenced a recent Kaiser Family Foundation poll of 1189 adults.
