For Covid-19, a kind of medical hive mind is on the case. By the tens of thousands, doctors are joining specialized social media groups to develop answers in real time. One of them, a Facebook group called the PMG COVID19 Subgroup, has 30,000 members worldwide.
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Doctors are trying to fill an information void online. Sabry, an emergency-room doctor in two hospitals outside Los Angeles, found that the 70,000-strong, Physician Moms Group she started five years ago on Facebook was so overwhelmed by coronavirus threads that she created the Covid-19 offshoot. So many doctors tried to join the new subgroup that Facebook’s click-to-join code broke. Some 10,000 doctors waited in line as the social media company’s engineers devised a fix.
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Groups have taken differing positions. By March 14, the specialists in Lang’s Openxmed group made up their minds: They concluded it wasn’t worth the risk to keep coronavirus patients on ibuprofen. They could just switch to Tylenol. The larger COVID19 group reached a similar conclusion. But the thousands of doctors in Mehta’s group were less convinced, deciding there wasn’t enough evidence to change practice.
“You have to understand that medicine isn’t black or white,” Sabry said. “It’s a whole world of gray.”
This is like many stories from 5 or 10 years ago about the Internet changing everything. Haven't seen one of those in a while.
From the article:
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