If there’s one message I really want to hit home here is that we are going to get through this, pandemics happen in societies, it happens in the world …and most of us are going to be okay and we just have to focus on on the end game, not what we’re in right now – Dr. Alex Lickerman
As I publish this on April 6, 2020, there are 340,000 cases of the Coronavirus in the U.S. with over 9,700 deaths. Over 70,000 deaths world wide.
The amount and velocity of information on the pandemic can be overwhelming and much of it is conflicting. Do this – don’t do that, this works, no it doesn’t. On top of all that add anxiety for whatever our economic circumstances are, mix in our cognitive biases and the truth becomes relative.
So I need help parsing it.
Enter Alex Lickerman, M.D.
Alex is a direct primary care physician at ImagineMD, spending the first 20 years of his career as a leader at the University of Chicago, where he ran primary care for seven years and taught generations of today’s leaders in medicine. There he enjoyed a reputation as “a doctor’s doctor,” caring for many physicians who are themselves today considered leaders in their fields.
I wanted to talk with Alex about the Coronavirus because of his unique qualifications as a physician and his work in resilience. Alex is the author of, The Undefeated Mind: On the Science of Constructing an Indestructible Self that formed the basis of the landmark Resilience Project, which he began while at the University of Chicago.
Short show (36 mins) but I get to ask a lot of questions that he kindly answers in detail
- Comparisons New York vs Chicago
- What’s unique about the Coronavirus
- Current best treatments
- Separating fact from the news
- Symptoms and timeframes
- What should I do if I get sick?
- How long will this last?
- Tylenol, Advil – which ?
- The problem with hydroxychloroquine
- Percentages – sick or very sick
- Hospital capacity in the US
- On face masks
- How long will this last?
- Why and how we can be calm
Resources
- Get updates on the virus from Alex via his blog, imaginemd.net/blog
- Imagine MD
- Books (Undefeated Mind and The Ten Worlds)
- Charts, worldometers
