Once your doctor makes a diagnosis, a treatment plan is made. Will it be surgery, medication, or another evidence-based guideline promoting longevity or diminishing suffering?

For example, over the past 50 years, control of hypertension has increased life expectancy while diminishing heart attacks, strokes and kidney disease. Starting a patient on medication is not simply flipping a coin. Taking a good history, doing a worthy physical exam, and knowing how compliant a patient might be helps in making that decision.

For COVID-19, isolation by staying home was meant to “flatten the curve.” Now, though, how do we “reopen” communities safely? As there are for medical decisions, are there evidence-based guidelines that might help?

No.

How do you know the business where you buy food or dine out with your family will be safe? Has the barber sterilized the scissors, or the church sanitized the pews correctly? What makes a business owner believe they have devised the correct way to prevent viral exposure?

Medicine long ago was standardized, using evidence-based information, yet the behavior of COVID-19 is still unknown and therefore not easy to contain.

Reopening should not be simply flipping a coin.

Gene Uzawa Dorio, M.D., is a geriatric house-call physician who serves as president of the Los Angeles County Commission for Older Adults and Assemblyman to the California Senior Legislature. He has practiced in the Santa Clarita Valley for 32 years.