The Turning Point

Michael D. Stein is Professor and Chair of Health Law, Policy and Management of the School of Public Health at Boston University. He is primary care doctor and has been a leader in general medicine and substance use research and policy for decades. He is Executive Editor of Public Health Post, a popular website on matters of population health. He is the author of award-winning novels and works of non-fiction. He has been interviewed by Terry Gross on “Fresh Air” and has been included in Best American Essays Notables. Sandro Galea is Robert A Knox Professor and Dean of the School of Public Health at Boston University. He is a past president of the Society for Epidemiologic Research and of the Interdisciplinary Society for Population Health Science, past chair of the board of the Association of Schools and Programs of Public Health, and is an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine.

Acknowledgments

Dedication

Preface


Section 1. LESSONS

1. From Theory to Practice
2. Next Time, Testing First
3. The Irreplaceable Public Sector
4. Holding Our Breath
5. The Challenge of Addressing Multiple Crises
6. The Invisible Mental Health Burdens of a Pandemic
7. Pandemics and Prisons
8. The Necessity of Speaking with Care
9. Health Behavior
10. The Caring Infrastructure
11. Does Today Matter More Than Tomorrow?
12. Telling Different Stories with the Same Data
13. How Our Expectations Shape Our Perceptions of Reality
14. Can Contact Tracing Work Here?
15. Prescription Against Worry

Section 2. STORY

16. Political Decisions and Science
17. Should We Be More Upset By This?
18. The Responsibility of Experts
19. Defining Our Goalposts
20. The Limits of Our Science
21. The National Character
22. The Right to Bear News
23. The Story of COVID-19
24. Why Did We Close Schools?
25. The Limits of Our Tolerance
26. Mismanaging Messages
27. The Vaccination Glass Half Full

Section 3. ETHICS

28. Time for an Ethics Refresh?
29. Who Goes First?
30. What's Most Important?
31. Achieving Health Equity, Efficiently
32. The Long Shadow of Medical Racism
33. Health Inequities Beyond COVID-19
34. A Hard Weight
35. Mandating Vaccines
36. Leaving the World Behind
37. Digital Surveillance
38. Balancing Autonomy and Individual Responsibility
39. Profits and Profiteering

Section 4. EMOTIONS

40. Grief and Loss
41. Recognizing and Moving Beyond Our Collective Grief
42. Epistemic Humility During a Global Pandemic
43. The Selling of Vaccines
44. Will We Stop Being Afraid?
45. Hope Dies Last
46. Can We Forget?
47. The Centrality of Compassion
48. False Confidence
49. A Tale of Volition
50. Trust and COVID-19

Section 5. THE FUTURE

51. The New Us?
52. Who Decides?
53. Fixing Our Health System After COVID-19
54. HIV and COVID-19
55. Guns and the Unanticipated Consequences of COVID-19
56. Policies That Persist
57. The Invisible Work of Public Health
58. Will Better Public Health Funding Be Enough?
59. Chronic COVID
60. COVID-19 Collectivism
61. Can We Be Led?
62. COVID-19 and the Office
63. A COVID-19 Poverty Surprise
64. Is it Over Yet?
65. Now What?

Sources