Dear clients and friends: Given your interest in health and medicine, we would like to share with you our collection of the most interesting perspectives on our industry's trends and developments. We are happy to share them with you — and hope you share your thoughts with us.

1. To talk to a COVID doomsayer…

…who thinks the pandemic ruined everything, you can discuss how COVID prompted many African health systems to make sustainable improvements that are preventing new outbreaks: 

From Spiegel International: When the Marburg virus recently broke out in Tanzania, it was quickly detected and combated, thanks to mobile laboratory capacities from the corona period. Authorities in Malawi were able to bring a cholera outbreak under control because the authorities could draw on infrastructure put in place during the measures to contain the spread of the coronavirus. And when Ebola spread in Uganda last year, teams of nurses promptly assembled to spread familiar messages over loudspeakers: Keep your distance. Wash your hands. Remain in quarantine if you've had contact with infected individuals.

“A classic example of political myopia,” Tabarrok contends, where “everyone wants the great new pharmaceuticals without paying for them.”

2. To talk to a mental health care partner…

…who is struggling to find joy in the holidays, you can discuss how people living with schizophrenia are finding pride in the diagnosis. Quote this brave person: 

From Slate: Schizophrenia is not just a disease I live with—it’s also an inextricable part of my identity. Like many of my peers, I tried to run from the label at first, only to learn that denying it amplifies the shame and difficulty of living with one of the most stigmatized mental health conditions. My schizophrenia is and will always be a fundamental part of who I am. Loving myself means loving my schizophrenia. It’s time the healthcare system acknowledges the need for a movement to convince people with this condition of their worth, schizophrenia and all.

3. To talk to your nephew…

…who just came back from a semester abroad in London and reveres all-things England, discuss the crumbling NHS and its overworked staff:

From an NHS nurse, in The Guardian: At one point it feels as if I’m running between bays, and it seems that whenever I enter a room to answer one call bell, another patient collars me and asks for something else. In all the excitement, we have failed to tag the bay with the fall-prone patients, and I arrive just in time to prevent an elderly man from clambering out of bed. Just as I’m leaving the bay, a stony-faced relative approaches me and demands an update on her father’s most recent MRI scan.

4. To talk to the AI fanboy…

…who pontificates about the inexorable future of AI domination in medicine, discuss this sobering study that shows that, even when AI can do the job, people reject it: 

 From a non-profit that ran a study testing AI talk therapy: Messages composed by AI (and supervised by humans) were rated significantly higher than those written by humans on their own (p < .001). Response times went down 50%, to well under a minute.

And yet… we pulled this from our platform pretty quickly. Why?

Once people learned the messages were co-created by a machine, it didn’t work. Simulated empathy feels weird, empty.

Machines don’t have lived, human experience so when they say “that sounds hard” or “I understand”, it sounds inauthentic.

5. To talk yourself into more cheesecake…

…revisit the financial glory of Ozempic and Wegovy – and conclude that, if the treatments are this lucrative, they must work: 

From The Atlantic: The billions of dollars in profits that [Ozempic and Wegovy are] now bringing home—$5.7 billion in the first half of this year—and converting into Danish krone has driven up the value of the currency, which in turn has allowed Denmark’s central bank to keep interest rates lower than it otherwise might have done. Novo Nordisk has also become Denmark’s biggest taxpayer by far: In 2022, it handed over 9 billion krone (about $1.3 billion) in corporate tax; the number will be even higher this year. Some stock analysts have even suggested that the drugs’ popularity might boost airline profits—because their passengers will weigh less in the future.