Dr. John Alexander Webb is a dynamic health care advocate and focuses on preventive medicine/public health and men’s health. He is a medical doctor (MD), chiropractic physician (DC), and possesses a master of business administration degree (MBA) with a concentration in healthcare administration. Dr. Webb is currently the chief operations officer of Men’s Health Boston (under Abraham Morgentaler, MD) and a graduate candidate (MLA) at Harvard University. In 2020, Dr. Webb will being a two-year training program within the prestigious Preventive Medicine residency and School of Public Health at Rutgers University/New Jersey Medical School.
First of all, this first appearance of the Corona Virus in Wuhan, China; and its fast spread throughout the world mean the most worrying issue for millions and millions of families and people in their homes. So, it is very relevant to understand that the concern about this new disease is totally understandable. Thanks to my long career in public health, we will be discussing this topic. It is with great pleasure that Dr. John Webb greets all of you.
The history of humanity has truly known many HARD diseases such as AIDS, TUBERCULOSIS or Cancer. And as for the diseases that the world focused on in previous pandemics, we have already dealt with Ebola, MERS and SARS. In all cases, humanity proved that it was fully capable of overcoming them. However, the current level of public concern appears to be much higher than that of past illnesses, including previous pandemic illnesses. So maybe people have forgotten that we have been able to overcome any medical hurdle that has come our way as humankind.
In addition, this public concern, which has turned into a collective panic has forgotten that people face many constant threats on daily life, such as influenza (flu), preventable cancers, heart disease or car accidents. When some patients asked me about my opinion about COVID-19, I told them that, based on my personal and professional experience and analysis; COVID-19 does not seem to have the lethal aggressiveness of other diseases to which we are exposed on a daily basis, although the threat is real for people with previously compromised immune systems.
The virus that we are currently facing should not prevent us all from enjoying life by doing the same activities that we did until some weeks ago. However, of course, we need to be a little more vigilant about washing our hands very well and staying away from people who look sick during this early “outbreak” phase of the virus. Also, if you are the one who is sick, stay away from people who are at risk of suffering the most from getting sick, which has also been the case before COVID-19.
Our first line is the set of preventive measures and we must consider these measures for the future. So, hopefully, this will be another exercise to improve public health awareness and learn how to better manage potential pandemics in the country and around the world.
