RE: Difference Between Evidence Based and Authoritative Statements
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I work in the clinical labs.
It's a bit more objective since we are reporting results from testing. As to the interpretations thereof, that's another story usually told by the clinicians.
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I wish that there was more raw reporting from the clinical labs.
I would love to have information about blood sugar levels, blood thickness and vitamin levels.
I suspect that we could learn many things from the data. For example, if the people who got sick and died had high blood sugar; then we would know that we could fight COVID19 by eating less processed sugar. Blood sugar levels often affect bacteria. It may not affect this virus.
There seems to be some relation between COVID19 and strokes. It is likely that the cause of this problem will most likely be found in labs that meticulously study the health of people with COVID19.
So, what are common the indicators of stroke? Did the stroke victims have High Normal or Low Blood Pressure Levels?
I think there are many things one can deduce from clinical tests. Sadly, it appears that some of the quality information is not making it to doctors. Even less of it makes it to the public at large. Some of the info could help people with health decisions.
BTW, I am not as worried about the clinicians as I am worried about the marketing departments for the various lab companies. Clinicians hold back information because they are worried about how it is perceived. Marketing departments actively manipulate information to affect the market.
Authorities are a bit like marketers. Authorities are often driven by political concerns.
Perhaps the pandemic will end in a demand that more raw clinical data is made public.
I would say it's more complicated than that. It is a novel virus. Clinicians are smart and good at what they do, but it'd be giving them too much credit to assume every single one of them knows how to piece together the puzzle when given the data.
At my work (I work in microbiology), we sometimes have to spoon feed them specific information or else they would mistreat the patient. For example, the lab results identify a microbe as ESBL (meaning it can resist against beta-lactams, even if its genes are not in full swing yet). But, if the lab doesn't manually edit all beta-lactam results to resistant, you will find clinicians trying to treat patients with ineffective drugs.
Best part? It would be considered negligence on the lab's part when the doctor should know what the hell an ESBL is. Our medical director gets frustrated with some physicians on regular basis.
Personally, I think that the labs are the unsung heroes of modern medicine. I suspect that the labs will be the source of the information that will help us cope with COVID19, ESBL and the other health risks of the modern era.
I did look up Enterobacteriaceae. Reports talk about an antibiotic resistant bacteria that appears to be present in several hospitals. It looks like these things are in several hospitals. That is truly scary stuff.
I wish media paid more attention to the labs and less attention to the political dance around illnesses.