Dear American Healthcare Workers...
Dear American Healthcare Workers,
On behalf of our nation, I am sorry.
I am sorry that we are where we are today with a raging pandemic when free, incredibly effective vaccines are readily available. I am sorry the ICUs and emergency rooms are full with people who did not need to get this sick. I am sorry that selfishness, ignorance, and arrogance has exacerbated this crisis and that you have had to bear the burden of life-and-death battles, hospital bed by hospital bed. I am sorry that elected officials have tried to score political points by stoking anti-science narratives based on lies around this virus, the vaccine, and bogus treatments, while attacking your credibility and service. It is beyond shameful. I am sorry that you have been subjected to verbal and even physical abuse while you have risked your lives and the lives of your families.
I remember in the early days of the pandemic when we would gather nightly in New York to applaud your sacrifice. In those days, there was no vaccine. There was no expectation that there would be any protection anytime soon. And yet, day after day, you went into the fight, trying to save lives. How long ago those days seem now. How much has transpired, some of it hopeful, much of it deeply discouraging.
I would like to believe that the vast majority of Americans value your service, even if they will never know the full horrors you have had to endure. Like soldiers constantly on the frontlines, tour after tour, you have had little time for rest. I understand why you are drained, frustrated, and angry. I understand why many of you may choose to leave a profession that has been your life’s work. In times of war, many glibly thank members of the armed forces for their service, never understanding the full measure of their sacrifice. So is it with you today. We owe you much more than our gratitude. We owe you our lives. And we owe you the freedom that allows us to dream of a healthier future.
It is a cruel irony that those who denigrate basic measures of public health under the misguided banner of “freedom,” have confined you to continued imprisonment in a nightmarish world of endless waves of new cases. And now the enemy has regrouped with a deadlier variant, and once again you are asked to man the battlements and repel the invaders. People who blithely castigated your knowledge and the vaccines now selfishly demand that they get every possible treatment. Their presence in crowded hospitals also means there is less time and fewer beds - if any at all - for you to treat patients with other medical needs, like strokes, trauma, and heart disease. The stress on the system builds.
My hope is that your allies across the country, the tens of millions who have been vaccinated, who are trying to protect others and themselves from the virus, have also had enough. Mask mandates are growing, and politicians who try to ban them are receiving serious pushback. Vaccine mandates are also on the rise. This is all progress. But when the pandemic eventually fades, we will need to more than just acknowledge these measures of necessity. We will need to have a deep introspection, an after-action report, to understand how we pushed our healthcare system to the brink and how we make sure nothing like this ever happens again.
Your heroic service deserves to be long remembered and celebrated. But I suspect, more than anything, you would yearn for the appreciation that comes from the humbling knowledge that our public health demands that we look out for each other, that we do all we can to protect our communities and the broader world. I pledge, and I ask others to do so as well, that we will not let this issue fade as the case numbers hopefully decrease. We must demand of our leaders that they fortify our nation for the public-health battles ahead. We need the press to be engaged and we need every platform that disseminates information to make sure that they ferret out the lies, and promote the truth.
That is the least you deserve.
With deep gratitude,
Dan Rather
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I’m an Anesthesiologist, and I LOVE my job and I love putting my patients at ease in the few minutes I have with them before they trust me with their lives. When I ask my patients if they are vaccinated and they reply yes, I thank them, and I breathe a bit easier knowing that not only is my risk now lower, but so is everyone in that operating room. There is so much aerosolization during extubation (and intubation) that I worry about the different staff that are in the room. Anesthethesia techs, moving help, circulator. I take steps to decrease the amount of particles in the air regardless of vaccine status, but not all patients extubate the same. Some are still sleepy and some can cough from the stimulation of removing the tube. When I come across the unvaccinated patient, it really pisses me off because now it’s not just me but increased risk to OR staff, preop staff, post op recovery staff and on and on. I’m kind in my responses and urge them to vaccinate, but inside I’m upset because it’s people like this that will drag this pandemic on.
My yard shares a border with our old cemetery. The tree lined paths are filled by hundreds of town folk who come to visit loved ones, or walk here everyday. With the old wrought iron gates to the cemetery just outside my kitchen door, I watch cemetery life; the squirrel and hedgehog families, frogs croaking in the creek, geese swimming in their pond, the endless flowers and changing seasons, the funeral processions, the walkers, the visitors, the town itself.
The first time it arrived, it was so loud, I went outside to see what was happening. A large flat bed truck carrying a forklift, had stopped just inside the gates. The men climbed down, got the forklift fitted with a hoist off the truck and began stacking headstones beside the gates. When they left, there were 22 headstones waiting for their people. Week after week after week, the headstones kept coming and the pile shrank and grew. Traditionally, the arrival of a gravestone is soon followed by a funeral procession, but not last year. In 2020, piles of gravestones and unattended burials told the story of Covid.
This is Kentucky - no liberal bastion that's for sure. But while folks in other places were arguing over masks and social distancing, you couldn't go anywhere without a mask round here. If you got too close, people backed away, the stores wouldn't let you in without a mask, no exceptions, restaurants had curbside pick up only. If anyone here protested, I never heard a word about it. We still have a town newspaper, so I am sure I would have heard about it, but no, not a word.
At first, I could not account for the strangeness. And then one day I was taking my daily walk and just about two miles of cemetery paths in, it hit me. This cemetery - all its stones, dating back to the late 1790s, was saving its community's lives. People here were listening to their cemetery. Gravestones told the Covid story - not FoxNews or MSNBC.
All over town, homemade signs in front yards reading, thank you, or we are praying for you, or painted with big hearts told healthcare workers, nurses, and doctors they were not forgotten.
A few weeks ago, the big truck arrived for the first time in months. I didn't need the news to tell me, the variant had arrived. Once again, folks are wearing masks and keeping their distance. The cemetery is keeping people on the ground, instead of beneath it.