Duke health's 2025 policy would ban an 11 year old kid from visiting his sick or dying father
Duke's administrators lack critical thinking skills
Duke University has long been known for illogical and unethical covid policy. I wrote about it a few years ago for Sensible Medicine.
Now Duke is back again with a new unproven policy— a 2025 visitor restriction policy that lacks evidence and devalues human visitation. Take a look
What specifically are the restrictions?
Just think about how absurd these rules are. 13 year olds are permitted but 11 year olds are banned. Duke seems to think that turning 12 magically means a person is less likely to be an asymptomatic or pauci-symptomatic viral carrier
Duke also thinks 2 people visiting is safe but 3 is dangerous. But if one goes to the car, a third can come up. In fact, twenty people can come up if they come in pairs.
Duke’s policy is not only not evidence based, it reveals a serious failure of basic common sense.
Here are some thoughts:
Duke should not be able to set capricious visitor rules. We need a Patients Bill of Rights that bans hospitals from setting infection control policies that lack data.
Duke will contribute to moral anguish. Kids will be denied access to sick parents. Sick grandparents are denied the joy of visitation
Here is how one doctor describes it.
I think this decision speaks to how poor the faculty and administrators are at Duke. They lack the ability to formulate sound policy and Duke has had some of the poorest covid policies throughout the pandemic.
CMS should penalize hospitals that participate in dehumanizing and unproven infectious control policies.
If Duke and other hospitals setting deranged rules (Dana Farber masking 2 year olds for instance) believes these policies works, why won't they randomize wards to the policy or a liberal policy as part of a cluster RCT? Why has public health repeatedly, for years, refused to conduct trials to test their conjectures.
If you support this Substack, then please become a subscriber. Academic institutions are not interested in fostering these types of debate.
Previously, we researched all of the evidence supporting these policies and found them lacking. There has been no new evidence since then.
In short, the American public should continue to distrust public health and hospital epidemiologists because these people make things up. Their policies are so illogical, they permit 13 year olds but not 11 year olds— a distinction that has no basis.
CMS should restrict payments to hospitals that engage in respiratory virus theater. And I will conclude with 2 more closing thoughts.
I hope you are consulting with the new administration, you are uniquely qualified to bring the necessary reforms, CMS payment withholding as lever to enforce rational policy is a good example. You could also help the FDA build towards an ‘all cause mortality/morbidity’ centered study design process. NIH will play its role here too. This could help with deeper investigations of causative factors in our chronic disease crisis. So much that only you can help us with Vinay. Strike while the iron is hot!
I just wish more people would say no. I understand it’s hard to be a patient, etc, but what if half of the people scheduled for surgery just said NO because I want to see my loved ones during my visit/it’s critical to my wellness? What if nearly every maternity patient said NO-I need my family here & want my young children to see their sibling? What if the seniors all decided seeing their grandchildren and/or family group after surgery was critical & rescheduled their joint replacements elsewhere? How long would the policy last?