My previous post provides an unfortunate transition in light of the COVID-19 pandemic where I stated that “money is the main obstacle preventing more people from becoming doctors at a time when so many towns and cities are dealing with severe hospital staffing shortages.”
I can add that money has created a new obstacle: Access to sufficient supplies of personal protective equipment (PPE) for front-line medical personnel.
If money did not put a limit on how much PPE inventory a hospital or clinic could ideally stock, then we would not be faced with such a shortage today and putting countless people at unnecessary risk. Pie-in-the-sky thinking? No, just a logical outcome.
Also, where would we be if we managed to invest more time and effort (in a future money-free society) into antiviral research? What promising therapies could have been developed if they were not killed in today’s society because they burned through the R&D budget and there was no more money to invest? We will never know.
When the total amount of money in the world is estimated at one quadrillion US dollars, many still “nickle and dime” everything in times of a pandemic because, sadly, they are mostly thinking about economic losses rather than the loss of human lives.
Pandemics certainly put things in harsh perspective.
