What a long strange year it has been. 2020 has been dominated by unrest, polarity, and a global pandemic. Our work may have been disrupted, but the needs around the world have moved forward unabated. What does next year bring? As we head in to 2021, heart disease will still be number one cause of death in the US, cancers number two, and likely accidents will return to number 3. Globally, each day heart disease kills nearly 50,000 people and hunger kills another 25,000. Covid-19 will fade from prominence, remain lurking in the shadows, and what will we have learned? In the aftermath of this year, some truths will stand tall, and for me will bring the focus back to our mission and purpose at C3LX. With the support of platforms like ours, each of us can control our health trajectory to a significant extent, reduce risk, and reverse chronicity. With our global focus, we will double down on supporting permanent primary care healthcare in the third world, immediate relief, and long-term economic development. We must strive to impact issues like malnutrition and starvation, chronic generational poverty, clean water, sanitation, displaced peoples, and the list goes on.
If I can hope for change as we leave 2020 behind, first, it is a renewed focus on improving healthcare domestically to focus on helping people stay or become healthy, not just to focus on (and get paid for) being or not being sick. The unhealthy are the vast majority of the deaths from Covid-19 in 2020. In fact, according to the CDC, the average number of co-morbidities per Covid-19 death is 2.28. Yes, 2.28 co-morbidities per person that died “from Covid-19” in 2020. 96% of the people who died had one or more co-morbidities. We have done everything possible to stop the spread of Covid-19 except address the actual root cause issues. It is time.
And globally? We need to continue to actively work to impact the knotty issues of poverty, genocide, clean water, permanent healthcare infrastructure in the third world, and a host of others. Let’s put the collective government, corporate, and individual efforts of 2020’s fight against Covid-19 toward addressing those very issues. Will 2021 be the year we take a look at our world and apply Operation Warp Speed type efforts to clean water or healthcare? Will 2021 be the year that health insurance companies, healthcare providers, employers, those of us in the technology community, and the government actually come together to move the needle firmly and permanently toward value-based care, prevention and avoidance, health and not just sickness?
That is my hope and my commitment.
Let’s move the needle together. Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Happy Holidays, and a Very Happy NEW Year to you all!
~Andrew Richburg