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Bloviating and Bungling the COVID-19 Pandemic

Educational Objective
To identify the key insights or developments described in this article
1 Credit CME

Wegwarth and coauthors1 shed some light into why their country of Germany has fared better than the United States in handling the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic.1 As of November 1, 2020, for example, the mortality rate per million was 5 times lower in Germany than in the United States (128 vs 715, respectively).2 Indeed, the mortality rate in Germany was lower than almost every American state, including Hawaii. This difference in mortality, morbidity, and lost quality of life is difficult to attribute to medical technology, drug therapy, underlying genetics, environmental factors, or virus characteristics. One contributing factor may be differences in public health messages intended to guide individual behaviors to mitigate the COVID-19 pandemic.

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CME Disclosure Statement: Unless noted, all individuals in control of content reported no relevant financial relationships. If applicable, all relevant financial relationships have been mitigated.

Article Information

Published: December 10, 2020. doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2020.32540

Open Access: This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the CC-BY License. © 2020 Redelmeier DA et al. JAMA Network Open.

Corresponding Author: Donald A. Redelmeier, MD, MS(HSR), Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre, G-151, 2075 Bayview Ave, Toronto, ON M4N 3M5, Canada (dar@ices.on.ca).

Conflict of Interest Disclosures: None reported.

Funding/Support: This project was supported by author funding from the Canada Research Chair in Medical Decision Sciences and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research.

Role of the Funder/Sponsor: The funding organizations had no role in the design and conduct of the study; collection, management, analysis, and interpretation of the data; preparation, review, or approval of the manuscript; and decision to submit the manuscript for publication.

Additional Contributions: We thank Cindy Kao, BSc (University of Toronto), Kelvin Ng, BSc (University of Toronto), and Robert Redelmeier, BSc (University of Toronto), for helpful comments on earlier drafts of this article. They were not compensated for their contributions, which were part of usual student activities.

AMA CME Accreditation Information

Credit Designation Statement: The American Medical Association designates this Journal-based CME activity activity for a maximum of 1.00  AMA PRA Category 1 Credit(s)™. Physicians should claim only the credit commensurate with the extent of their participation in the activity.

Successful completion of this CME activity, which includes participation in the evaluation component, enables the participant to earn up to:

  • 1.00 Medical Knowledge MOC points in the American Board of Internal Medicine's (ABIM) Maintenance of Certification (MOC) program;;
  • 1.00 Self-Assessment points in the American Board of Otolaryngology – Head and Neck Surgery’s (ABOHNS) Continuing Certification program;
  • 1.00 MOC points in the American Board of Pediatrics’ (ABP) Maintenance of Certification (MOC) program;
  • 1.00 Lifelong Learning points in the American Board of Pathology’s (ABPath) Continuing Certification program; and
  • 1.00 credit toward the CME of the American Board of Surgery’s Continuous Certification program

It is the CME activity provider's responsibility to submit participant completion information to ACCME for the purpose of granting MOC credit.

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