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Alex Rice Marketing Director at dacadoo May 7, 2020
The Power of Prevention in a Pandemic It’s early May and we just surpassed 3.8 million con rmed cases and 264,000 deaths worldwide from the COVID-19 virus. The U.S., by far, has the most cases and the highest number of deaths despite having the most expensive healthcare system in the world. Tragic from any perspective. Early in this pandemic, two population segments were identi ed as being most vulnerable – not to contracting the virus, but to dying from it: 1. those age 65+ 2. those with serious underlying medical conditions
Certainly, we can’t control our age. Nor can we self-remedy underlying medical conditions like asthma, kidney disease, or being immunocompromised. But obesity? High blood pressure? Diabetes? Many forms of cancer, heart and lung disease? These medical conditions are largely impacted by our personal lifestyle choices… meaning we own a considerable degree of responsibility over the severity in which they affect us, the risk we impart on others, and the burden we thrust on our healthcare workers. The CDC reports that 75% of the annual U.S. healthcare spend – or $2.7 trillion – is forfeited due to chronic diseases that are generally avoidable and preventable. And with COVID-19, the lifestyle choices each of us have made to date – from our eating habits and tobacco use to our physical activity and alcohol consumption – will, if infected, determine to some extent who lives and who dies. Could this COVID-19 event become the de ning wake-up call that convinces us to begin to take greater responsibility and ownership for our health? One phenomenon begging for an answer is how have so many people remained so deeply committed sheltering inexperience place, social distancing and mask wearing – assume all We use cookies to ensure that to we give you the best on our website. If you continue to use this site we will that you areof happy with it.One critical reason is scorekeeping. signi cant behavior changes requested them? Throughout each day we’re updated with the Ok numeric impact of our actions: the