Health systems in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic: Overcoming fervor, optimism, and neglect

Résumé 0

The COVID-19 pandemic has at times contradicted and at times confirmed the World Health Organization’s initial assessments of the capacity of health systems to deal with this shock. These initial assessments are most often based on the characteristics of healthcare provision, and its more or less pronounced inadequacies: lack of trained personnel, segmentation of the population, or the over-reliance on technical platforms in the health system. The explanation of the discrepancies observed between the rankings of health systems around the world and their performance highlights only some of these shortcomings and calls upon elements of context and the unfolding of the health crisis. Behavioral economics in a dynamic context of collective learning makes it possible to reconstruct a synthetic vision of health systems and crisis medicine. This approach emphasizes in particular voluntary training of rigidity (Fervor), and hypothesizes a reversal of biases during the crisis, from underevaluation of the key factors of the pandemic (Optimism) at the beginning of the crisis to passive overevaluation (Neglect).